Jeep® Sporting Destinations

The Ghillie's House

by Jim Fergus

"...at the hotel the evening before I had asked directions to the ghillie's house on the banks of the River Don, so that I might at least talk to someone about fishing."

Scotland

Scotland--land of great water...
and great Scotch.

"God's a distiller because he makes alcohol boil at a lower temperature than water."

Willie Phillips, Esq. Macallan Distillery

I'm telling you, the Scots are the friendliest folks on the face of the earth; stop a perfect stranger on the sidewalk to ask directions and they're likely to drop whatever they're doing and take you right to your destination.

The Scots are also the most polite people I've ever encountered. They don't, for instance, believe in honking their car horns except in the most extreme situations -- if, say, they're just about to run you down in the street because, being a "daft American," you're looking the wrong way as you step off the curb. Other than the fact that tourists run the very real risk of being killed rather than merely surprised by a honk, the result of this restraint is that the city streets in Scotland, however crowded they may be, are strangely, pleasantly quiet.

It was early June and I was in Scotland to tour Scotch whisky distilleries with a group of American journalists (yes, I know, it's a dangerous concept from the start, as journalists are notorious rummies who hardly need a professional excuse to swill whiskey). Indeed, so taken was I with the Scots and with the country itself that were it not for the six-month quarantine required before bringing pets into Great Britain (a measure, so far successful, to keep rabies from gaining a toehold in the country), Sweetz and I would seriously consider launching an extended sporting tour of the Scottish countryside -- something along the lines of what a wealthy eccentric by the name of Colonel Thomas Thornton undertook in 1784.

On his tour, Col. Thornton equipped himself with the following: "two boats, tents and equipment, nets, six falcons, four setters, six pointers and a deerhound, two double-barrelled shotguns, one rifle, three single barrels, eighty pounds of gunpowder, eleven bags shot and sufficient flints, along with hams, bacon, reindeer and other tongues, smoked beef, pigs, countenances, pickles, sweetmeats, biscuits, flour, corn, beans and oatmeal, as well as porter, ale and small beer '(the latter being a necessary I had found great want of)', etc."

His entourage included a "falconer, wagoner, groom and boy, as well as Mrs. C., a housekeeper"; plus he brought with him his own private artist to immortalize the tour on canvas -- a Mr. Garrand -- and two valets, one for each of them. Which, even with the Suburban and the Airstream loaded to capacity with all my sporting stuff, and even if I had my personal photographer Steve Collector along, makes me feel like I'm traveling light. Where would our valets ride?

Sometime after completing his tour, Col. Thornton penned a book with a title nearly as ungainly as his caravan: "A Sporting Tour Through the Northern Parts of England and the Great Part of the Highlands of Scotland, including Remarks on English and Scottish Landscapes and General Observations on the State of Society and Manners."

One of my favorite passages in Thornton's book reads: "The gamekeeper, on beating the centre of the last wood, as we were returning home, flushed a cock, which, without waiting to give his Grace [the Duke of Hamilton] or me a shot, he killed. I think I have observed before that the sporting servants all over Scotland are too much on a footing with their masters; it is the custom of the country. To allow a servant to sport with the master, on any pretense, except where the master is a miserable performer, which can alone make it admissible, amounts not only to the appearance, but in fact is poaching."

One night toward the end of our trip to Scotland, I and my fellow whiskey-sodden journalists found ourselves at the magnificent Kildrummy Castle Hotel in the Highlands. It was an enormous stone mansion house -- one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen -- set high in the valley of the River Don, surrounded by acres of lush, nearly tropical gardens, woodlands and farm fields -- all overlooking the picturesque ruins of the 13th century Kildrummy Castle.

It was our last night in the countryside before heading to Edinburgh the next day, where we would visit the Scotch Whisky Heritage Center as the final part of our education in the venerable history of Scotland's national beverage. There, 300 years of whiskey making has been recreated as a theme ride in which visitors, seated in electrically powered whiskey barrel cars, wind through a series of historically correct theatrical sets manned by authentically attired wax figures as a voice-over narration tells the tale of "uisge beatha" as the Scots call it -- the breath of life. It is a delightfully quaint experience by Disney standards and, I think, the perfect place to take the kids to encourage an early interest in Scotch whisky.

But I'm getting ahead of myself again. Presently it was early morning on the Kildrummy Castle grounds, and I was walking down the road to the River Don -- a storied Scottish salmon river. I have not had the opportunity to introduce you to any of my fellow journalists, but they were as fine a group of gentlemen as ever I've spent time with sipping wee drams into the wee hours. But they were primarily urbanites -- an entertainment writer from The New York Post, the food and wine editor of Washingtonian magazine, and so forth -- and let's just say that they were somewhat less interested than I in sport and the outdoors.

In any case, what with all the distillery touring and whiskey sampling, it had been difficult for me to make much time to even get outside, and this morning, I had risen early, determined to at least get down to the river. The hotel owned a beat on the River Don, but I had neither the gear nor the time, and though the Scotch whisky industry couldn't have been more generous to our group (especially in the way of keeping us well-supplied at all times with whiskey,) one thing they had neglected to offer on this trip was an incredibly expensive day of salmon fishing.

Still, at the hotel the evening before I had asked directions to the ghillie's house on the banks of the River Don, so that I might at least talk to someone about fishing. Ghillies, of course, are the Scottish equivalent of fishing guides, or as Col. Thornton would have it, "sporting servants," and I thought it might be interesting to visit with this one a bit before our bus departed.

It was a perfect morning, clear and cool; the birds were singing and the pheasants were trotting out of the fencerows alongside the road. What a time Sweetz would have had flushing them! -- maybe when we made our tour of the Scottish countryside, which I was now thinking of calling: "A Sporting Tour Through the Northern Parts of England and the Great Part of the Highlands of Scotland, including Remarks on English and Scottish Landscapes and General Observations on the State of Society and Manners."

On a lane to the river I passed a pretty little farm, of which there are oddly few in this region as a consequence of the "Highland clearances" of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Then all the peasants and small farmers were summarily ordered off the land by the aristocracy so that they might have the entire countryside to graze their sheep. Not surprisingly, many of these evicted Highlanders came to America -- including my ancestors -- where they could purchase and farm their own land, where all men could hunt and fish and where no man was better than another. At least that's how it was supposed to be in America.

Just as I passed the farm, a man, possibly the farmer himself, came around a bend in the road riding an antique bicycle. I said good morning and asked him where I might find the ghillie's house. "Follow me, sir," he said in typically polite Scottish fashion and he turned right around and showed me the way. "Here we are, sir. Right there is the ghillie's house." I thanked the farmer and he tipped his cap and pedaled off.

The ghillie's house was a lovely little thatched roof cottage set right on the banks of the river -- an idyllic spot and I thought that I wouldn't mind at all the life of a ghillie, "sporting servant" or not. I had been told at the hotel that they didn't have any "fishers" scheduled today, but when I knocked on the door, no one answered. The ghillie wasn't home. It was a beautiful morning, the salmon were running; I hoped he was poaching.

Copyright © 1999 Jim Fergus. All rights reserved.

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