by Iain Banks
I shout, ‘Woo-hoo!’ the way people who are of a certain age and have watched The Simpsons and South Park too much will tend to.
Everybody else is looking at me like I’m a bit of a mad fellow, but, hey, I’m used to that.
Via St Cyrus to Fochabers; we have a fine lunch at a hotel called The Ramsey Arms, just through the town’s impressive arch. I take a photo of the Fettercairn distillery. This is another whisky I’ve always been – to use John Peel’s phrase – somewhat underwhelmed by, though it’s not without its fans, and does well as a component of the Whyte and Mackay blends. Maybe it’s something to do with the ‘Old’. It’s marketed as Old Fettercairn and somehow that first word just annoys me. In what sense ‘old’? We know the stuff in the bottle can’t have been made last week, for goodness’ sake. It’s most commonly found as a 10-year-old; that isn’t old either. The distillery was founded in 1824, but that doesn’t make it particularly ancient – lots of distilleries had been founded in the latter years of the previous century, and many of them are still going today … so what the hell’s old about it? Still, could be worse, I suppose; could be Ye Olde Fettercairn or something.
Heading north again, we pass William Gladstone’s old family home at Fasque, just outside Fochabers. As a prime minister, Gladstone probably did more for the whisky industry than any other, repealing the punitive Malt Tax in 1853 and legalising the retail sale of bottled whisky. I recall reading – again in Michael Broadbent’s Vintage Wine – about a wine cellar in the house that had lain unopened for 45 years until 1972. It was full of wine and port that had just lain there, undisturbed, at a nice, steady eight degrees C since 1927 – with perfectly drinkable vintages stretching back way into the 1800s – and it hadn’t been opened in all that time because nobody could find the key. Toffs, eh?
The B974 rises from the fertile coastal plain that is the Howe of the Mearns – Lewis Grassic Gibbon territory – towards the first low, rounded hills of the eastern Grampian Mountains, wriggling up out of the broad wooded glens, stretching across the heathery moors and up to the summit at Cairn O’ Mount. This is a brilliant road. Not busy, well maintained, shrugging off the tight, blind, tree-obscured corners lower down to ascend into sinuous progressions of open, sweeping, climbing curves and gently undulating straights. In a car with plenty of power and torque like the M5, even fully loaded, it’s bliss. Faced with a tight bend followed by a steep upward gradient, the car just hunkers down, snarls politely and rockets away.
We’re not actually travelling outrageously quickly, usually staying within ten or so m.p.h. on either side of the speed limit, partly in deference to my three passengers (who, I’m pleased to report, have no complaints) but the sheer pleasure of stringing together the sequences of bends on the way to the car park at the viewpoint is just wonderful. We stop at the top to admire the view and take photos, though the best view is to the south, and it’s a bit hazy and into the sun, so not great for photography.
We set off again, heading gradually downhill towards the Glen of the river Dee through a succession of nicely cambered, generously open bends, gradually encountering stands and small forests of old Scots pine, their scaly red roots curling out of the sandy soil like dragons’ claws.
This is, very understandably, a popular route with bikers. You can tell that because every few miles, pretty much since Fettercairn, we’ve been seeing yellow roadside signs telling us things like 34 ACCIDENTS ON THIS ROAD IN THE LAST YEAR, with a little symbol of a motorbike underneath.
I don’t recall ever seeing signs like this, anywhere in Scotland, so you get the impression that not only is this a very popular road with bikers, but that it really must be one where they have a hell of a lot of accidents. This is slightly mystifying; it’s twisty, certainly, but so are hundreds of Scottish roads. There are a fair few deciduous trees in the lower reaches to the south that might cause problems in the autumn when they drop their leaves and it gets slippy under-tyre, but not that many, and once you get above the tree line, that’s that problem gone. There doesn’t seem to be any particular reason for the road to be especially prone to gravel or stones or mud, and it’s not as though the views are so gob-smackingly wonderful that you’d end up staring open-mouthed through your visor at them and forget to steer back out of the corner or whatever, so what’s the problem? Maybe it’s one of those trial things, where they choose one bit of road to try out a new signage system; we’ve got one of those on the M90 north of the Forth Road Bridge, opposite Dunfermline; thin posts on the far edge of the hard shoulder whose tops flash when there’s a problem ahead.
I find myself wondering if the signs are digital and update themselves in real time; if you wrapped your RS-1 round one, would it suddenly click up from 34 to 35 ACCIDENTS ON THIS ROAD IN THE LAST YEAR …? Probably not.
Deeside; all very civilised and terribly nice. After the exposed heroics of the broad hilltops, the roads curl themselves up comfortably amongst the farmed, forested folds of the Dee’s middle reaches, dappled under the new green leaves of spring. We take the 976 on the south side of the river, heading for Balmoral.
Lochnagar is a fine whisky and a really neat, smart, manicured little distillery, sitting in the grounds of Balmoral Castle like a model of a distillery put there for the royals to play with, a bit like Marie Antoinette had a pretend farm built in the ground of Versailles. I mean, it’s not; it’s a perfectly serious and professionally run distillery producing a fine whisky, but there’s a still a sense of it bearing the same relationship to real distilleries as show gardens at the Chelsea Flower Show do to real gardens. It doesn’t actually smell of new paint – you know that thing about the Queen thinking the whole world smells like that – but it’s almost too tidy and well formed. A lovely place, though, unless you abhor things being just-so. It lies resplendent under a bright spring sun when we arrive there, and we see some butterflies jolting their unsteady way around the well-kept shrubs, the first of the year.
For some bizarre reason which I realised at the time I was not fully aware, or indeed in control of, we had, over the past few days, started to critique the toilets of the distilleries we visited. Something to do with being in critical mode, I suppose, and this rubbing off on the people I was doing the touring with (a week later my pal Dave would demand a separate critical category for distilleries’ car parking spaces. Car parking spaces? I mean, really). I’d even drawn up a special table in my rapidly filling notebook for this purpose (under ‘T’, obviously), with columns for Roominess, Nice Pong, Decor, Cleanliness, Worth Leaving a Comment in the Visitors’ Book For and Just Generally Brill, and so I can report that the facilities at Royal Lochnagar came out with a cut-to-the-chase Just Generally Brill commendation.
The whisky (ah yes, finally we return to the whisky) is – at least in the 12-year-old version we chose – very redolent of the second-fill sherry casks it spends its time in, while showing malty and slightly smoky notes, with touches of honey. If I lived in Balmoral I think I’d be quite happy to have it piped the mile or so into the castle, to appear from a third tap in every bathroom. Well, maybe not for every guest.
Apparently Queen Victoria used to mix Lochnagar whisky with her claret.
Oh dear.
While we’re wandering the grounds, enjoying the sunlight and breathing in the wonderful scents of the gardens and surrounding countryside, Les and I spot a weird-looking pyramid-like structure poking up from the trees on a nearby hill. We never did ask about it, but having now looked at my OS map I strongly suspect it’s a personalised royal cairn. There’s Princess Beatrice’s Cairn (it’s probably that one), Princess Helena’s Cairn, Princess Alice’s Cairn, Prince Albert’s Cairn … the hill is littered with them. Some family tradition, perhaps. Anyway, so now we know.
Highway the Hard Way: a Road Bore writes.
Urgh. I think I may be drooling. Because now we come to the A939. In the M5. Actually the first bit from Crathie isn’t the A939; it’s the B976, but it leads there, then on to the notorious Cock Br
idge to Tomintoul stretch. This is the bit of road that’s always first to get blocked by snow at the start of a Scottish winter. Sometimes they call it the Lecht road, after the summit pass, where the Ski Centre is. Dear goodness flipping michtyme, what a road.
Partly it’s the fact it’s just such a gloriously clear, brilliantly sunny spring day, and there’s so little traffic – most roads are at their best in these circumstances. Partly, though, it’s the openness, the fact that you can see so far, with no trees, no foliage, no lumps of landscape in the way to obscure sight lines round corners. This near agoraphobic bright-sky exposure also lets you make certain there are no sheep preparing to wander across the road, or oncoming traffic that might prevent the use of the road’s full width. Partly it’s the long, rising, undulating, rarely perfectly smooth nature of the road surface itself, and partly it’s just a succession of brilliant bends and just pure plain boffo straights or near-straights lancing towards the horizon or propped against the sheeny slope of heather, aimed into a cobalt sky.
This is a truly magnificent, spectacular, spellbinding, addictive road. If I was alone I’d already be very seriously considering turning around somewhere ahead and coming back to do the whole thing again in the opposite direction, and then turning once more, back this way, to resume the route we’re on. Les actually says something to this effect and I laugh and agree, but really it’s a petrol-head thing and neither of us think it would be fair on Ann and Aileen. Just this one-way scoot is enough.
Again, we’re not going anything like scarily fast, so the whole process feels smooth, with no savage braking, mad-boy acceleration or limit-testing cornering, really just a sequence of balanced stances the car takes up, pitching forward or back and from side to side, all of it way, way within its capabilities. It feels strong and safe and secure, as though it knows exactly what it’s doing, and is positively flattering my driving.
We reach the Lecht itself, the emptyish-looking pass where the Ski Centre sits; broad expanses of pitted asphalt braided with gravel washed off the slopes, a few cars and trucks, many grey, shed-like buildings of folded steel, and a thin network of ski-tows straggling off up the hill on both sides. It all appears a bit raw and desolate, already out of season at a time of year when, at the the end of a long hard winter, the whole place might still have hundreds of people skiing and boarding. We slow for the deserted-looking complex, treating it as a built-up area, then start the descent. In amongst such skiing territory (albeit Scottish-type skiing, with, as a rule, the concomitant freezing winds, short steep narrow slopes and face-stinging sleet), it’s hard not to feel you’re settling into a sweet, curvy downhill slalom-like rhythm, carving the tyres from curve to curve. In an old car, or just something with narrower tyres and less grip, you’d actually feel you were using the shoulders of the tyres the way you use skis’ edges, canting and cutting into the turns, the chirp and squeal of rubber on tarmac a synonym for the swish and rasp of ski on snow. As it is, the M5’s lawn-roller-broad tyres just tear stickily over the road, barely stretched.
The route descends into the trees and a few mid-afternoon shadows. More wonderful driving, the sort that would be the highlight of most days, but not after the Lecht road.
We arrive in Grantown-on-Spey – just time to stock up on some sweeties – then we head via Tomatin to Inverness and a bit of shopping.
Tomatin distillery lies just off the A9 – on a stretch of smaller road that used to be the A9 before the road was improved in the seventies – under a bridge that carries the main railway line from Stirling to Inverness. This is the same line that passes close by Dalwhinnie, and like Dalwhinnie this is a high-altitude distillery, lying at over a thousand feet. It’s not quite as snow-prone as Dalwhinnie but it must be a good place to make lots of whisky because it’s a deceptively huge distillery with 23 stills, though not all tend to work at the same time. The first distillery to be wholly owned by a Japanese company (and another case of the place basically being rescued from overseas), the tour and tasting are free, which, given that it’s so close to the main road, should make it better visited than I suspect it is.
The whisky itself is another of those undervalued ingenues that could stand a deal more promotion; full of sweet, roasted nut flavours and smokily spiced. Arguably the trouble is that there’s room for only so many distinguished malts even on the by now fairly well developed and knowledgeable world market; if you put a lot of money behind a whisky like Tomatin, you might just take market share away from other whisky without otherwise making much difference (more to the point for any given owner, you might take market share away from one or more of your own whiskies; this is one reason why manufacturers like to promote a selection of their whiskies together, probably the best known dating from when United Distillers – now Diageo – bundled whiskies like Cragganmore and Dalwhinnie together in their Classic Malts collection). I suppose the solution is simply for the single-malt market to get still bigger, so that there’s room for even more whiskies at every level.
There’s a house on the road up to the distillery itself which has a white mile-post-style sign in the garden that reads THIS WAY IS THAT WAY on one face, and THAT WAY IS THIS WAY on the other. This is not exactly Highland Existentialism, but it beats garden gnomes.
Inversneckie! Inverness was Europe’s fastest growing city in 2002, allegedly. Certainly feels like a busier place these days, though it’s not all change; the bit by the river hasn’t altered much since the Eden Court theatre was built and the new road bridge went up (not to mention the replacement railway bridge, required after the floods washed away most of the old one a few years ago). This is still a city where you occasionally see somebody fishing in the middle of it. The river Ness flows through the centre heading for the sea, shallow enough by the banks for people to stand there, water splashing round their waders, their lines creating great lazy 8-shapes in the air as the rods sweep slowly back and forth.
There’s a huge recently expanded shopping complex which we park in and which I get lost in but eventually, after some apparently compulsory clothes shopping, we make our way to Leakey’s before it closes. Leakey’s is a second-hand book shop housed in an old barn of a church near the centre of town. It’s packed with books, prints and maps, has a busy upstairs café and lots of paintings by local artists. In the cold months it’s heated by a colossal wood-burning stove the size of a shed which sits square in the middle of the place radiating warmth and making it feel welcoming even in the depths of winter. The place has become something of an Inverness institution and a landmark for bibliofiends and cartofans. The first time I came here I bought so many old maps I could hardly carry them. This time, while I’m checking that there aren’t too many of my books for sale in the Fiction section, my arms full of more old OS maps, Les finds the Food and Drink section and the old whisky books; I snaffle the lot, bar a couple of doublers, and need help to get them back to the car.
‘You actually going to read all this lot, Banksie?’ Les asks as we squeeze the motley collection of tightly straining carrier bags into the boot (most cars would have sagged significantly on their springs under the extra weight, but the M5’s made of sterner stuff).
I look at him blankly. ‘Read them?’ I think about this. ‘Well, some of them, I suppose.’ Les looks increasingly sceptical. I think some more. ‘Well, I’ll sort of scan all of them. I mean, I can’t claim I’m going to read every single word of every single one, not cover to cover.’
What can I say? I’ve been given an excuse to buy books; this isn’t something I am easily capable of ignoring. Even when I was a student and didn’t have much money, I’d buy every book on my reading lists as well as all the books I wanted to read for pleasure or because I thought they were actually necessary for my course work, for the simple reason that – like a reference book – a book on a book list didn’t need to be read; a book you felt you ought to have but didn’t need to read cover-to-cover was like a bonus for me; it meant more books on my shelves without the nagging guil
t of not having actually read them all (at the time I refused to let a book defeat me; I even made it all the way through Sam Beckett’s Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnameable trilogy. Took me about a month because I kept falling asleep, but I did it. I’m a little more relaxed about this sort of thing now; if a book hasn’t grabbed me in the first hundred pages or so, I just let it go).
At the time – and I do not exaggerate – I preferred to economise with my drinking money than cut back on the book-buying budget. Okay, I was an atypical student.
But anyway; of course I bought all the whisky books Leakey’s had! I can probably, I remind myself, even claim them against tax. But the main point is; they’re books. And I have a reason to buy them; I am almost beholden to buy them. I owe it to the whisky book to buy them, to my publishers, to my readers! It would be dereliction of duty not to buy them; they were there, they were for sale, I’m writing a book on the subject they’re all about; isn’t it obvious I have to rescue all of them?
In the end I do read all of them. Well, almost all of almost all of them; they end up covering a large part of a table to one side of my writing desk with lots of little strips of Post-It notes sticking out of them denoting Interesting Snippety Bits which at the time I’m totally convinced I’ll faithfully incorporate into this book, though when it comes to it the vast majority of them get ignored.
We stay at the Bunchrew Hotel, along the Beauly Firth east of Inverness. This is an old bishops’ palace set amongst a profusion of huge, mature trees. It stands right by the water at high tide and looks out over towards the Black Isle. It’s that shade of traditional pink that apparently used to be produced by mixing whitewash with pig’s blood (that’s what they used to do in the old days, I have it on good authority) and it has the pointiest pointy turrets you ever did see. Does lots of weddings.