David Bennett

Where To Go In Scotland

Scotland is not a big country. It has mountains and lochs and castles and forested hills within easy reach, and even from coast to coast it is not more than a two-hour drive.

This is Kilchurn Castle in central Scotland at the north-east end of Loch Awe near the small village of Dalmally. To the west is the coast and the Isle of Mull.

Set on a small mound against a backdrop of green hills, it seemed exactly right and fitting as our destination a couple of weeks ago following a meandering car drive from Edinburgh.

There were sheep grazing in the long grass on either side of the sandy path and in the distance I could see more sheep on the mound on which the castle is built.

This photo is a crop of the full frame of the shot I took while we were still far down the path.

In my mind’s eye as we walked, I was happily composing the shot of the sheep on the mound that I would take when we got much nearer – except that a young boy jumped down onto the grass from one of the windows of the ruin and the sheep scattered.

And that is how I didn’t get the shot I wanted.

Ah, well – the castle and the sheep will have to wait for another visit some time in the future – perhaps when we visit the Isle of Mull.

A Powerful History

The castle was originally built on a small island in the loch, when the water level in the loch was higher. Then in 1817 the water level in the loch was lowered so now the castle sits on the little mound on the shore of the loch.

But Kilchurn Castle itself is six hundred years old.

It was built in the fourteen hundreds by Sir Colin Campbell, 1st of Glenorchy (as he was designated) who was granted (given) Glenorchy by his father in 1432.

He was also given lands by King James III – including the barony of Lawers, Perthshire – for his services in capturing Thomas Chalmer, one of the assassins of King James I.

The story of the Campbells and Kilchurn Castle goes as follows. In the mid-13th century Robert the Bruce gave the MacGregors’ lands around loch Awe to Clan Campbell in retaliation for the MacGregor of Glen Orchy’s intransigence in continuing to support William Wallace.

Now when I was growing up in the industrial north of England, I occasionally heard mention of the ancient and longstanding feud between the Campbell clan and clan MacGregor, but it didn’t mean very much to me because I didn’t have an historical context for understanding it.

Now that I am here in Scotland and reading more about the clans, I get a sense of the history of the castle and the land at Kilchurn.

And with mention of William Wallace, I see that the feud has to be understood against the backdrop of the Scottish wars of independence fought against the English in the late 13th and 14th centuries.

It was obviously a bitter feud and I learn that in the 1600s the even the name MacGregor was outlawed in Scotland.

Even today there are tensions, as you can read if you google for the Campbells and the MacGregors.

A plaque at Kilchurn Castle explains that the castle was used as a government garrison during the failed Jacobite uprisings of 1715 and 1745 – and now I have learned something of the history of the clans, I can see why the castle was a government garrison rather than a rebel stronghold.

Whatever the dispute between the clans, in 1760 it all came to an end for Kilchurn Castle when it was badly damaged by a lightning strike and abandoned.

Kilchurn Castle Today

Today Kilchurn is looked after by Historic Scotland, and during the summer months it is open to visitors.

Although it seems from the outside to be nothing but a ruin, inside there are wooden staircases bolted to the walls so you can climb up and look out over the landscape.

This is the view down Loch Awe – the longest freshwater loch in Scotland – and as you can see on the map above, the loch is a thin ribbon of water stretching south west.

Today, the straggly woods around the castle are home to some sheep.

The sense of place is probably very different in winter, but in the June sun it is a very romantic spot.

Rocky Outcrops

Around the castle there are jagged outcrops of rock – part of the documented Loch Awe Syncline. This is where the rock strata have been folded and then warn down over the millennia leaving jagged rocks cutting at an angle through the landscape.

The dark rocks in the foreground at the left in this last photo are part of this syncline, as is the white outcrop behind.

No Need To Plan Your Visit

Apart from checking with Historic Scotland that the ruin is open, Kilchurn is the simplest of places to visit. Just turn up and wander around the between the shore, the trees, and the castle.

And breathe in the pleasure of a place far from even the sound of traffic.

I had the opportunity to shoot with a Nikon D5100 recently and to take it on a trip to the United States.

I have been shooting with a higher-end camera – the Nikon D7000 – for a while now. It is a lovely camera, but it weighs 220g (almost half a pound) more than the D5100.

And because I prefer to carry as little weight as possible when I am traveling, I grabbed the chance to take the lighter camera and just one lens – the Nikon 35mm f1.8 AF-S – to the USA.

I have used the D60 and before that the D40, and both of them are very good cameras. So I had some expectation of what the more modern D5100 would be able to deliver.

The D5100 – D7000 Comparison

The D5100 and the D7000 use the same sensor, but the image-processing engine within the two cameras is different.

There is no doubt that the D5100 can produce high image quality – as witness this shot and the crop from it:

So this comparison is not about the image quality, but about the handling.

The D5100 In Use

The D5100 is a pleasure to shoot in all but one respect. That one respect is the essential one of being able to see whether the camera has focused on the subject.

I already knew from the D40 and the D60 that there is no lock button for the focus point. So if one catches the rear four-way controller, the focus point will be moved – to the side or up or down, depending on which part of the controller one catches inadvertently.

The standard way to deal with this is to get into the habit of hitting the OK button in the center of the four-way controller when one raises the camera to shoot. That centers the focus point.

So, picture the scene: the camera goes to my eye and I look through the viewfinder. Except that in California, the light is bright and contrasty, rather than overcast and cloudy as it had been in Edinburgh.

I have hit the OK button – so I know the focus point is in the center of the frame as I look through the viewfinder.

But exactly where is the center of the frame?

You might think that is easy to answer, but with your eye jammed up against the viewfinder, it is not so straightforward to see.

Now on the D7000, the active focus points are big and bright: When the red light on the active focus point lights up, you can see it.

Not so on the D5100. The focus points are tiny and in bright sunlight against a busy scene, it is very difficult to see the little red light that lights up on the active focus point when the camera achieves focus.

Remember that you would not looking at a blank white background like that shown in these illustrations. You would be looking at a busy and perhaps colourful scene where you have to pick the red focus light out of a confusion of shapes and colours.

Sure, after a second or two of hunting for the illumination of the active focus point and repeatedly half-pressing the shutter, you will see it.

But those are precious seconds when you want to be focusing and shooting. And the feeling of uncertainty that it causes is not conducive to keeping a steady hand and a clear mind while shooting.

Conclusion

This is a step backward for Nikon compared to the focus points on the D40 and the D60.

And that is as much as I want to say about the D5100 in the real world: Great camera – pity about the poor illumination of the active focus point.

We were in Berkeley for a week recently, visiting a lifelong friend of Tamara’s – a lovely woman named Judy who is ill.

After a short flight from Edinburgh (where we live) to London Heathrow, and a couple of hours wandering around the airport shops, it was onwards with a non-stop flight to San Francisco.

It was late afternoon when we landed and somewhat later when we arrived via the AirTrain at the car hire counter at the airport.

After we did the paperwork, we walked through to the car park. “Pick any one of those,” said the woman in the booth and we looked at a long row of very big cars.

We chose the smallest one.

I was slightly tense about driving because I hadn’t driven on the right (wrong) side of the road for a while. And after an eleven-hour flight and feeling a bit dazed, I had to ask directions to get out of the car park…

In fact, the route to Berkeley is pretty straightforward – just take the highway to the Bay Bridge.

The Bay Bridge

The Bay Bridge is one of the longest bridges in the world at four and a half miles excluding the approaches. And the traffic is four lanes wide – and as you can see, it is all going one way.

I did wonder at one point where the oncoming traffic was.

In fact the traffic coming the other way is on the upper deck of the bridge (above all the ironwork in this photo), as we found out when we drove from Berkeley into San Francisco one day.

Finding Berkeley

Driving off the bridge and then eventually on to the Berkeley off-ramp led us to a winding spaghetti of roads filled with commuter traffic all seeming to be heading for one converging spot.

The sheer volume of traffic plus the early evening California sun made the whole journey hyper-real.

Then we turned off into Berkeley and it was like stepping off the world.

The houses are low lying and there are trees and flowering bushes growing in gardens – and all under the rich blue of the California sky.

It is not all beautiful, and there are rougher spots in the town, but all in all it is quite beguiling.

Tamara worked in San Francisco years ago and she lived in Berkeley. She tells me that Berkeley has grown a lot in the intervening years – with more people and more buzz.

And Tamara and I visited San Francisco for a week or so about ten years ago, and we spent a day in Berkeley.

My only clear memory of Berkeley, however, is of the short-stack pancake breakfast we had in a cafe nestled against the hills. That also was in the company of my wife’s friend, Judy.

First Impressions Of Berkeley

It’s not easy to accurately encapsulate a town in a few sentences, of course.

One thing I noticed though is that besides the university students, Berkeley has its share of alternative lifestyle seekers, and its down-and-outs and its crazy people.

One thing you don’t see, however, is people hurrying along. They might be jogging – and there were a lot of people doing that – but you don’t see commuter-style hurrying.

I Go Grab A Coffee

Having driven from the airport and checked in to our hotel, I was feeling very lively even after the eleven hour flight, so I walked up the street to get a coffee.

The cafe section of the Au Coquelet cafe is a big open-plan room and it was wall to wall with people with their laptops open.

There were some couples and small groups, but mostly people were on their own. They were buried in the laptops and the cafe was quiet, like a study hall rather than a cafe.

I wondered – was this Berkeley? Had America moved into the cocooned world of online reality?

Thankfully no, but it is pretty quiet in there.

By the way, I plan to write an article shortly about how we got on line with our computer and how we made telephone calls without breaking the bank.

The Hills Beckon

We stayed at a hotel on University Avenue, which is a very long street – and over the coming days I kept looking at the tree-covered hills that seemed to begin just at the top of the street.

And one afternoon, Tamara and I started driving up the street towards the hills.

It seemed that wherever we branched off and whichever street we took, it eventually petered out into a private road leading to a lab or some other building belonging to the university.

A couple of times we asked directions for how to circumnavigate the university grounds, and eventually we got directions to how to find a clear road that would lead to higher ground.

This next photo is a shot looking back into the town from after we had just received directions. At this point we were not very high up, and I had not idea how much more of the hills lay above us.

I am not quite sure what we were expecting – certainly not that we would be up in the clouds, surrounded by trees in a misty atmosphere that reminded me of forests in South America (where I travelled some years ago).

‘What a nice surprise: Welcome to the New World,’ I thought to myself as we drove along sandy roads through forest-covered hills.

Eventually we got a bit lost, and after a long descent we found ourselves headed for the on-ramp to join a highway heading towards somewhere or other far from Berkeley.

So we turned around and headed back up until we came to a mist-shrouded crossroads. We pulled to the side and waited for a car to pull alongside so we could ask directions.

Commuting, Northern California Style

Eventually an upmarket car pulled up and we asked directions. The woman driving the car was smartly dressed and she had the air of someone who had just finished a day’s work.

She gave us directions and we drove on.

As we drove, I pondered what a lovely way it must be to finish a day at the office by commuting home over these hills and into Berkeley.