(with due apologies to Ekta Kapoor)
I had booked a weekend away in Culrain when I was desperate to get away from Edinburgh, the festival, and the crowds. The festival (thankfully!) is over but then I anyways went this weekend.
Culrain, which in itself is a back-of-beyond village (actually not that – just a group of wee houses), is about an hour and a half by train from Inverness (which is a 4 ½ hour train ride from E’burgh). Rather a far way off to see a collection of houses, you would ask.
Culrain is known for Carbisdale Castle which has a rather colourful history behind it. The Duke of Sutherland (whose family owned tonnes and tonnes of land in the area) decided to marry a widow and this new bride was not too popular with her in-laws (probably they watched a Hindi film too many). When the Duke copped it, he left everything to his wife which, naturally, displeased her in-laws. To get back they got her incarcerated on charges of faking the Duke’s will. After some discussions (to which Ekta Kapoor probably was privy), a settlement was reached and the in-laws agreed to fund a castle for her! On the condition that she would not build it on the in-laws land.
Being the wily woman that she was, the Duchess got the castle built just where the estates of her in-laws ended. And to add insult to injury, she decided that:
1. Her castle would have one room more than that of her in-laws (Dunrobin Castle).
2. The clock tower would have clocks on three sides only. The fourth side, which overlooked the in-laws land, was kept bare-faced.
3. The location of the castle was such that the in-laws could not miss it whenever their train passed. The desperate in-laws then decreed that the window shutters in the carriages had to be lowered whenever the train passed from in front of that castle.
Clearly too much सास-बहू happening!
After the widow died, the castle passed onto a Norwegian shipping magnate whose family then gifted it to the Scottish Youth Hostel Association. Long story short, to stay in that castle-cum-youth-hostel was the reason I went to Culrain over the weekend.
Staying at the castle is, to use a cliché, a destination in itself. It is not a hostel in the usual sense of the word i.e. it is, thankfully, not full of smelly students. It has large lounges with marble statues and paintings, imposing staircases and fireplaces, and a huge library (with hardbound editions of obscure old books). The place apparently also comes with its own set of ghosts – the man who plays the pipes, children crying, a dying soldier, and the standard-issue Woman-in-white ghost. Fortunately, I did not have the pleasure of meeting or hearing any of these people from the netherworld.
For a change, I was the youngest person in my bunk-room of 12. All the other 11 were, co-incidentally, cycling from the southern tip of UK (Land’s End) to the northern tip (John O’ Groats) which is over 1000 miles! And most of them would end up completing it in 12-13 days. That certainly put in perspective the 21 miles I recently cycled between Edinburgh and Linlighgow (especially given that my feet and backside complained about it for days afterwards).
When I was asked, “Are you also cycling from North to South?”, I had to sheepishly say that I was only there to laze around and possibly do some walking. So that is exactly what I did – there were quite a few trails around the area and my hillwalking-in-windy-conditions skills were tested to the limit. I didn’t succeed completely as I came back with a cold!
(Sept, 2009)
