The Hitch Hiker's Guide To Scottish Independence - Chapter Four - Perth

Well the next day I did get my white English lift, though he wasn’t a jerk, and as he was married to a Scots girl, retired, and living in the Highlands his credentials were somewhat compromised. And I didn’t fart in his shiny new 4x4, but only because it was an old Vauxhall estate. Ken gave me a lift back to Spean Bridge from where I could follow The Prince’s army’s route to Perth. His view on independence was that it was inevitable and that they should “stop messing about and just get on with it”. He said he’d worked for a company under contract to the Scottish Government, and there’d been strong resentment amongst his Scottish colleagues that “decisions could only be taken in London. (They felt) it was a real insult to them and there was no reason they couldn’t make their own decisions and of course they’re quite right.” I pointed out that the Scottish Government was there to devolve power from London. “Well, to a certain extent yeah, but that’s just given them the confidence to think they can do it all, and I’m sure they can.” I told Ken of my love and fascination for Scotland, and that I thought after all we’d been through together it would be a shame now to go our separate ways. “Yeah but we’ll still be close friends, still be close allies. I don’t think it would make a lot of difference to people just travelling around. There won’t be a border post at Gretna Green”.
Hmmm. Really Ken? Are you sure? Let’s just have a think about all those happily co-existing neighbours in the world. Greece and Turkey? India and Pakistan? Japan and China? North and South Korea? Israel and the entire Middle East? The list is endless. Even England and France have been fighting for most of the past thousand years and England and Scotland only stopped fighting once they united. It’s asking for trouble. And another thing Ken my friend, I don’t think independence is “inevitable”. If the SNP lose the independence vote surely the whole question will be killed stone dead for decades.
Ken dropped me in the village and I walked out along the A86 towards Perth to find a suitable place to start hitching. This is a lonely and remote place. After ten minutes of walking I still hadn’t found a suitable lay-by or bus stop, and neither had a single vehicle gone past in my direction. I walked back into the village and made my stand outside a primary school where a grass verge might allow a quick thinker to pull over and pick me up. After the first hour I still felt OK. Cars were only going past at a rate of one every two minutes and there were no commercial vehicles to speak of, which I couldn’t understand as this was the AA and RAC’s recommended route from Fort William to Perth, but it could have been worse. It was cold but crisp and dry, the nearby snow-topped peaks stood out sharply against the blue clear-bright January sky, and nobody from the school had yet accused me of being a pervert. But then things started going downhill. After ninety minutes I was getting cold and having long and out-loud conversations with myself as to whether each approaching vehicle would stop. After two hours I was freezing and I’d arranged the straps on my rucksack into a smiley face with whom I was vigorously discussing my options. The thing was, my schedule required I had to get to Perth that night. If I wasn’t going to get a lift to Perth then I could either go back to Fort William and get a train or bus, or I could take a local bus from here towards Perth, get as far as possible and try again. I wanted to cut and run to Fort William but Smiley Face wanted to press on. Impasse.
Now the thing about hitch hiking is that it only takes one person to stop. Even if you’ve been standing there for six hours and been passed by a thousand cars, the next one might be that person. And when they do, everything changes. A world of boredom, cold and disregard becomes a whole new world of excitement, delight, and belief in the essential goodness of human-kind.
Well the next person did stop, and my world did change, and bugger me if it wasn’t the four hairy-arsed Jocks in a builder’s van as previously predicted. As I climbed in the back and looked around me I knew I was going to be with these guys for the next two hours as we drove the ninety miles to Perth high over the bleak and isolated Grampian mountains. If I was ever going to be gang-raped on this journey, this was going to be it. I clenched my buttocks.
But I needn’t have worried. Aaron was driving and was clearly the ringleader, and then there was Neil, Craig and “Big Wullie”, aka “Lungs” who sat next to me coughing his guts up all the way to Perth. I’m guessing they were all in their late twenties and they were a great bunch of lads. Or at least I think they were but Neil, Craig and Lungs had impenetrable Scottish accents and Aaron was the only one I could understand. They were returning to their base in Perth after working at the new sawmill being built at Corpach, just outside Fort William. They were floor screeders (no, Im not sure either!) who spent their lives travelling all over the Highlands for work. Yesterday they’d been to Skye and tomorrow they were going to Dundee and they loved it. Each of them sported a flamboyant moustache which had been applied by marker pen the previous evening as a forfeit for losing at cards. Aaron said he always picked up hitch hikers because he remembered the time he’d been sacked as a picker from the Fife raspberry fields and had no money and no other way to get home.
We chatted about football and it turned out three of them were Rangers fans and Lungs was a Celtic fan. The further I get on this journey the more I’m finding this issue of Scottish sectarianism to be almost entirely myth. Then we climbed above the snowline and the views became too stunning for anyone to want to talk much. Suddenly an RAF fighter jet screamed down the valley below us. Then as we descended again I tried to bring up the subject of independence. Now I know it was already clear that I wasn’t sat in a van with four Oxford PPE graduates, and that these guys, friendly and fun as they were, were not the most worldly or well-educated bunch. Even Aaron, the most articulate of the group, had earlier expressed surprise that England used different banknotes to Scotland. Nevertheless, I was still astonished by the response.
“Och, it’s nae guid asking any of us about politics” said Aaron.
“Well how are you going to vote in the referendum?”
“Referendum? Is there going to be a referendum?”
Union 2: Independence 2: Nae That Bothered 6
So I didn’t get gang-raped. In fact I spent two hours in the company of four young men as pleasant and personable as you would wish to meet. Aaron in particular was the sort of person who would go out of his way to help a stranger. As we approached Perth he pointed out where I should stand the next day to get a lift to Edinburgh. Then he recommended places in Perth to drink and eat (all chip shops. Clearly to Aaron and his posse food is something you grab hurriedly between pints). Finally, he diverted especially to drop me in Dunkeld Road, just outside the city centre, where he said I’d get the best value room for the night. Dunkeld Road did indeed seem to consist entirely of B&B’s which I’m sure are all entirely respectable, and I know he meant well, but I was tired and hungry and couldn’t face the stress of the intimacy of a guest house. I needed the facilities and anonymity of a small hotel so I started the trudge into town to find one.
At the Tourist Office I asked Carol about somewhere to stay for the night and for local sites linked to the Jacobite Rebellion. She killed my two birds with one stone.
“Why don’t you try The Salutation on South Street? That’s where Bonnie Prince Charlie stayed when he was in Perth. I think they can still show you some of the rooms he used. I think they have a Highland Dancing event on tonight but they might be able to fit you in.”
The Prince spent nearly a week in Perth as he marched south on Edinburgh, and set up his headquarters at the “Sally”. And it was there that his fateful first meeting with Lord George Murray took place. Murray was an aloof and forthright aristocrat, a seasoned campaigner and a supreme military tactician to whom The Prince gave joint command of the Jacobite army with James Drummond, Duke of Perth. There is little argument that almost all of any military success the Jacobites gained on their march into England and subsequent retreat to Scotland was almost entirely due to the inspired skills of Murray. However, The Prince and Murray were to argue incessantly, and eventually their relationship deteriorated to such an extent that The Prince took sole charge of his own army at Culloden. To the very last moment Murray argued fiercely against both the siting of the battle and the tactics to be deployed. Nevertheless he played a heroic role in the battle, and one can only speculate as to the outcome of the day had Murray been in charge.
The façade of The Salutation is a little shabby but is made striking by two life-size statues of Black Watch pipers in full ceremonial dress set in alcoves about twelve feet above the ground. Despite the Highland Dancing event they had a room for me and it was within my budget, though in retrospect I don’t think too many places in January in Perth would have been outside my budget. Elise the receptionist was very helpful about The Prince:
“Oh aye, it’s the Stuart Room you’ll be wanting. It’s on the first floor, just up those stairs. It’s just a boring old conference room now, but that’s where he was set up all right.”
Tired as I was I didn’t even go to my room but went straight up the stairs with my rucksack still on my back and stood outside the door to a room where a rebel Prince and his retinue planned the overthrow of a King and the downfall of the House of Hanover. I took a deep breath, steadied myself, and opened the door. I found myself in a small dark room about fifteen by twelve feet, with low ceilings, a tartan carpet, and only one window set in the external wall. The only furniture was a rectangular table in the centre of the room with four chairs placed against each longer side and three against each shorter. Well OK Elise, I suppose you could say it’s a boring old conference room, but it’s a conference room that would have looked almost identical on the day in 1745 when Prince Charles Edward Stuart, Lord George Murray, James Drummond, John O’Sullivan, Cameron of Locheil and the rest were sat round a similar table plotting and scheming a traitorous rebellion.
The Sally bar was empty that night, but the Capital Asset pub around the corner was bustling and I got one of the last seats. I’m not surprised it was bustling, a pint of real ale cost me two-thirds of what it would have done in the south of England, and when I ordered my gammon and chips I got another pint free with the meal. Perhaps it was all the beer that got me mulling. The pub was full of well-dressed, prosperous, people of all ages from teenage students to late middle-age, chatting and laughing, just normal people having a normal Thursday night out. If it wasn’t for the accents it could have been York or Cheltenham. I know I shouldn’t be surprised by this, but I’ve visited Scotland more than thirty times and each time I come it reinforces that England and Scotland are very different countries. Any southerner who thinks Scotland is just an adjunct to England where people talk funny is just ignorant as well as totally wrong. Some English may be dismissive of the small and unimportant country in the north, but similarly, the Scots have their own lives to lead, and don’t spend all their time dwelling on their relatively huge neighbour in the south. This does not of course mean that the two countries must necessarily go their separate ways. Look at the United States for example. Do the people of Hawaii really have much in common with those of Arkansas? I strongly suspect that the Scots and English have a stronger mutual bond than those of California, Alaska and New Hampshire. And the US seems to work. On another but related level, the ’45 Rebellion can be seen as the last stand of the Celtic way of life. The Scots have never lived under any form of physical subjugation, but some Scots have probably lived under some form of Anglo-Saxon cultural subjugation to a greater or lesser extent. Is now an appropriate time to re-assert Celtic culture through independence? Nah, I doubt it. They’d just end up watching Hollywood, CNN and HBO like everyone else.