There were lots of things that made me feel at home in Scotland, including my favorite candy bar, Cadbury fruit and nut bar, in every gas station and every grocery store. Cadbury is a British brand. On August 9, 2017, I went home in a different way. I wandered through Caithness, the county at the northeastern tip of Scotland, where the Calders came from.
Dave and I started the day at Strathpeffer, on the bottom right of this map, drove up the eastern coast, and spent most of the day around Thurso and Wick, the biggest towns in Caithness. Dunnet, the town most of my Calder ancestors come from, is between Wick and Thurso. John O'Groats is the port from which we left, on August 10, 2017, for a day trip to the Orkney Islands.
After driving through the Sutherland lands on August 9, 2017, still empty 200 years after the Highland Clearances, we wanted to see where that monster man, the Duke of Sutherland, lived. We stopped by his Dunrobin Castle near Dornoch, an hour up the coast, but the castle wasn't yet open when we visited.
His statue made him look heroic, rather than devilish.
North of Helmsdale were the Grey Cairns of Camster, dating from between 4000 BC and 2500 BC. These burial chambers are hidden in long, low mounds rising from a lonely moor.
We also stopped at Hill o' Many Stanes, a fan-shaped arrangement of 22 rows of small stones, from around 2000 B.C. There were 600 stones in the original pattern.
In Ft. Lauderdale, just a few weeks ago, Jonny stopped at the library and met a man named "Calder." His family came from Wick, Scotland. "You were related, for sure," I told Jonny, when he repeated that story. Calder is a common name in Wick, Dunnet, and Thurso, and I bet we're all distant cousins. Some of the Calders in my line were born in Wick and Thurso, as well as Dunnet. Dave and I stopped at the Wick Heritage Center, to understand better what this area of the country was like in the 1700s and early 1800s, when my family was here.
This docent at the museum reminded me of my dad, with his round, ruddy face and friendly, kindly manner. "You look so Scottish!" I told him. "Wait till he opens his mouth, and you'll believe that even more!" another docent laughed. They both had quite a brogue.
These two samplers celebrate the lives of men who died at sea. I always heard that my great-great grandfather, George Calder, was a ship captain who died at sea, but other records from Edinburgh list him as a clerk.
The furnishings from the 1800s were similar to what we'd seen in many other museums--box beds, doilies, heavy Victorian dressers.
This trunk reminds me of my Grandma Eyring's trunk from the 1880s.
Wick is a fishing town which boomed when herring was plentiful and has faded now that the herring are gone.
Wick is a gray town, like so many others in Scotland. This was an overcast day, which made the town look even grayer!
Throughout Caithness and Sutherland, there are abandoned homes where the crofters lived before the clearances.
We finally aived at Dunnet Head, the most northerly point of mainland Britain.
This fellow was from France and had traveled all over the world. He had a sticker on his suitcase from Moab, Utah!
We could see the Orkney Islands in the distance, across turbulent Pentland Firth. My Calder ancestors married women from the Orkneys. The Orkneys were once a Viking stronghold, which were ruled over by a powerful nobleman from Norway. They were the headquarters for Vikings to make raids across Britain. That's where my 6% Scandinavian blood no doubt comes from!
Finally, we came back home to Dunnet. This visit, we had more time to look around.
We stopped at the town church which was constructed in the 1200s and renovated many times since then.
Many of the gravestones in the church yard were for Calders.
We searched for the building that carried a "Calder's Ale" sign when we visited in 1995. It is now a motel, and the clerk had never heard of Calder's Ale.
New since 1995 is "Mary-ann's Cottage." Mary-ann married a Calder, and the two of them lived in this house for a lifetime, until Mary was in her 90s and left for a nursing home. The house was in Mary's family for generations before. I have seen a photo of the home of my ancestors in Dunnet, and it looks like this one.
We had a conscientious docent show us around the home. She explained each implement in the house and barn, including this broom to clean the chimney.
Here's a picture of Mary Calder and her husband, two of my relatives.
The house didn't get electricity and indoor plumbing until the 1960s. Clothes were washed by hand in a big bucket, with a washboard, and then the water was squeezed out with the white hand wringer in the background.
Mary Calder burned peat to keep warm. She and her husband dug the peat from fields near their home and then dried it enough so it would burn.
Mary rode her bike to Church until she was in her 80s or 90s. "The pastor knew he could begin when Mary got there," our docent told us.
Water for the animals was collected from a cistern on the roof, but the family had to walk half a mile to bring back water for indoor use from a spring.
Rock walls are everywhere in Scotland.
The docent showed us how Mary cooked on an open fire.
Mary braided her hair in a Scandinavian style.
A basket of peat was kept near the stove.
I loved the old photos of Mary and her family. I could imagine my father's ancestors living the same age-old way that she did.
We went to the Dunnet graveyard and found the Celtic cross war memorial which we saw in 1995. The list on the memorial of "men who died fighting for Scotland" included many Calders. Jonny began his law school essay by describing the feelings that memorial evoked in him. He named his essay, "The Globalization of a Utah Boy."
Next stop was Thurso, a bigger town than Wick or Dunnet. This is a Google photo, but it evokes the Scottish style of that place.
My most memorable experience in Thurso was visiting the museum and seeing its collection of Pictish carved stones. The Picts were a warlike race who painted their bodies blue when they fought with the Romans and English. They disappeared when the Scots invaded from Ireland, but DNA researchers say there is still Pictish blood in the Highlanders. And in me, I assume.
Finally we arrived at Forss House, an elegant country house hotel where we had "half board"--breakfast and dinner, as well as a room to stay. This was David's very favorite hotel in Scotland.
Our room was a separate cottage, named "Hairy Mary."
A garden surrounded our cottage.
As with other Scottish country hotels, there were animal trophies on the walls and lots of plaid.
We enjoyed the "full Scottish breakfast," which included not only cereals and juices, but eggs, baked beans, baked tomatoes, pork sausages, bacon and "blood sausages" (you don't want to know).
The grounds of Forss House were lovely and beckoning, but we had miles to go.
