Grooving with the Picts

A day of adventures on the high and low roads of Perthshire. Today we put our our rented van to the test on some seriously skinny roads. Rowan named our chariot “The Dreadnaught” which is appropriate as it’s much larger than anything else we see people (other than lorry drivers) using. You basically have to drive off the road on the left to allow an oncoming car to pass. On the straightaway it’s alright but on a blind corner against a stone wall is something else!

We first visited the Ian Burnett chocolatier in Grandtully. Treats in hand we next went to the Dewar’s Aberfeldy distillery for a tasting. Lovely scotch on a nicely kept production facility. 

Stone circles and a reconstruction of an Iron Age lake dwelling followed by a 5,000 year old yew tree now in a churchyard rounded out the day. 

The folks at the Crannog Centre were welcoming and very earnest in their “Experimental Archaeology,” and some had been at it for nearly a decade. It was an excellent demonstration of Iron Age life skills, but it did bring up some lingering questions, first of which is: why would people living on a lake (oops, LOCH) that connects to an excellent (and still productive today) salmon river NOT eat the fish? 

The guides insisted there’s nothing in the archaeological record to support fish consumption. Apparently the ear bone is what survives to tell the tale. Now, they are portraying the leaders of society, so maybe the plebes who lived on land had a different story, or maybe the archaeologists just haven’t found the right midden yet, but in a time when growing, processing, and storing food, especially protein, was so challenging, it makes no intuitive sense that such a rich resource would be ignored. After all, where we’re from a whole culture developed with salmon as its foundation, its staple, and one of its prime trade goods. The Picts truly were mysterious.