O'er moorland and brae: Ages past

We are on the northern part of the Mull of Kintyre and the mist really is rolling in from the sea. For the first time this trip the weather is closing in, damp, foggy and cold. We are not enthralled with this weather. It has been such a magic summer we want it to continue but we fear it will not.

We are hunting down the Dal Riada (the power brokers in this part of Scotland, way back) so are trying hard to ignore the weather; but first we call in on the Campbells of Inverary. Inverary is another lord-built village. The Duke of Argyle, the Campbell clan chieftain, decided to rebuild his house, making it less fortress-like, more picturesque and palatial, so he needed a more expansive view clear down to Loch Fyne.

Which couldn't happen if the village and the villagers were in the way. So, he ordered the old village torn down, and a new one rebuilt. And it happened. As it did in many other fiefdoms at that time.

Down Dorset way, in similar circumstances, the old village of Milton Abbas was, literally, flooded in order to move its contrary inhabitants. It was move or drown.

Not everyone in Inverary was delighted with the Duke's dastardly decision. Mr MacCorquodale ran an inn at the bottom of the village: a profitable concern that brought him goodly returns on his tasty ales. So, when the separation wall went up between the castle and the loch, Mr MacCorquodale mortared a pot and a pan deep into the stone wall at exactly the spot where his inn once stood. To remind his descendants that this was not only where he had once lived, but where he worked and objected. His embellishments survive to this day.

Inverary town itself, is all white Georgian with black trim, built on a green sward that rolls like a vast carpet right down to Loch Fyne. In the back of town the Duke had smaller, plainer houses built for the poor. He did not trust that they had the wherewithal not to burn down wooden or thatch dwellings, so he ordered their homes built with stone floors, supported on brick arches. They, too, are there to this day. A memorial to his thinking.

We drove south on the narrow loch road until we came to the tiny Crinan Canal. This short and pretty route, with its fifteen closely knit lochs, stretches some nine miles, enabling boats to access the Atlantic directly from the waters of the loch, without having to go around the rougher waters of the Mull of Kintyre. And it saved time for the seamen. Like a small Panama. Which had a pretty harbour at the end where we had lunch.

We then drove the green lanes of Argyll, clouded in mist today, but thick with centuries of stone structures visible in fields on both sides of the road. Three thousand years before the Campbells, there were folk living in this place: a Bronze Age people, who built ceremonial standing stones, mounded burial cairns and stone topped chambers all over their land, for generation after generation. There are something like 800 sites in just a few kilometres along these lanes: the fields are littered with their ancient stone remnants. They were here for a long time.

But today, we are looking for a different people: we have come to find out how the folk of the kingdom of Dal Riada lived. They occupied this western part of the north of Scotland at the very time the Britons and Angles were further south, and the Picts, were over to the north and the east. A thousand years before the Campbells. But it is not easy finding traces of them.

Historic Scotland has not shouted their location from the interpretive panels the way they usually do. But, after many twists, turns and retries, we eventually find a sign that points us to Dunadd Fort: the heart of the Kingdom of the Dal Riada. From this hill top fort they ruled this part of Scotland starting in the 6th century way back when the Irish saints were about their mission.

Some academics think the Dal Riadans were a branch of Irish royalty, who moved themselves and their supporters to this part of the highlands and islands of Scotland, as well as occupying a goodly chunk of County Antrim in Northern Ireland. Others think they might have been a more indigenous people. Regardless, the Dal Riadans were an important power in this region for over three hundred years, and Dunadd was their powerful fort. And, when St Columba came a'calling, they became a Christian power as well.

Finds show that they were quite a sophisticated people. They had good trade and shipping connections, quite similar to the monks of Iona. These brought them fine goods such as gold, dyes, herbs and luxury wines from across the seas. And exotic foods which they no doubt indulged in after St Columba crowned King Aiden of Dal Raita, the first Christian King of Scotland. In return, they likely traded fur and leather and gave special gifts to important guests. Crucibles and molds have been uncovered on this hill site, showing that intricate jewellery was made and worn here.

They were called Scotti, a perjorative term given by Latin writers to those who spoke Gaelic. But in time their very nickname, became the name given to the entire nation, as by the 9th century the Scottis and the Picts merged, to became the earliest unified nation of the Scotland we have today.

In Fortingall, on the shores of Loch Tay, we came upon a small group in a church yard, photographing an ancient skeleton of a yew tree. Today, what is left of the huge tree is more like two smaller trees growing from two parts of the outside diameter of the aged trunk, which is still visible, low to the ground, and which once measured 17 metres in diameter. Until souvenir hunters took chunks away. And small boys lit fires in its decayed trunk. And funeral processions trampled across it.

Yet, still it survives. Albeit, now it has a wall protecting it. The yew is older than the Campbell Clan. It is older than the Dal Riadans. It is even older than the Bronze Age monuments that have withstood the cold and the damp of thousands of years wear and tear in these fields of Argyll. Scholars claim the roots of this tree are 5000 years old, and have it listed as the oldest living thing in Europe, if not the world.

In some extraordinary way, every 500 years or thereabouts, the yew trunk starts sprouting anew, regenerating from the sides of its roots. We treated it with respect. Very likely it knows mystical things we don't: mayhap even the secret of life itself.