Taylor son of Michael son of Harlan son of Isaac son of Marion son of John son of Isaac son of John son of John Thomas Flatt son of Jasper Flett son of Jasper son of William son of Jaspert of Hobbister son of Robert of Hobbister son of Ninian of Hobbister son of William of Hobbister.
In 1482 in Hobbister in the Orkney Islands way up north of mainland Great Britain, my 14th great grandfather was born.
He was a Flett, not a Flatt, as the name change in our lineage occurred when John Thomas was sent to America apparently for committing larceny.
At least this is all what Ancestry.com tells me, and I’m rolling with it.
Remember my day of indecision in Barcelona when I couldn’t settle on the plan for the next couple of weeks? I had a similar night in Dublin. It wasn’t quite as dramatic, and I mapped out the rest of my time in Ireland pretty quickly. But what I wasn’t counting on was the night stretching into the wee hours of the morning looking up my familial history.
Before I started this journey, one of the things that I thought would be cool to do is travel to some places where folks that came before me resided, but I never followed through in doing any research on that.
That is until I had decided that I loved Ireland so much (without even really seeing much of it yet to that point) that I hoped some of those who had come before me were from there so I could go find their places.
And so that’s how I ended up until nearly sunrise — random aside: but the looooooong days up this way are insane… sun up before 6, sunset in the 9 pm hour and not really dark until well past 10 — plugging away at my family tree on Ancestry.
I couldn’t believe it when it kept on finding father after father in a direct line from me to my dad and so on, but there it went, all the way back to William Flett of Hobbister who was born in 1482.
After finding a couple neat facts that I won’t reveal yet in this entry, it was settled. To Scotland I go.
So from Limerick, I took a bus back to the airport in Dublin after deciding that, again, a budget airline was going to make more sense than ferrying over to the UK and then taking however long to train up here. And also again it was going to be a late-night flight.
It ended up being an early-morning flight.
It’s really quite amazing if you think about it that the only travel issues I have run into during this whole adventure prior to leaving Ireland was when I thought I might have to sleep underneath the train platform in the Cinque Terre in Italy, so I’m not really complaining, especially because this wasn’t *that* big of a deal really. It was more comical than anything now that I feel better from the bad cold I was suffering from on Sunday.
Ryanair began the boarding process for our flight, only to have us all standing in a holding area just off the tarmac for 15 minutes so they could come tell us hey j slash k, the crew for this flight hasn’t landed yet. They’ll be here in an hour.
Crew gets there later than that. We board. We sit there. We sit there.
“Hi this is the captain speaking. So as you know we are a new crew for this aircraft. We were told it was good, everything ready to go, plenty of fuel. Turns out, that is incorrect. They did not put enough fuel in the aircraft if they put any in at all. We’ve called a couple times, but we are still waiting.”
Oh. Okay. Cool.
We finally takeoff about 30 minutes later, and after a bit of an adventurous landing in a foggy Edinburgh — they wouldn’t let us keep our devices on at all for landing for fear of the light from them messing with the pilot in some way — we were a good two hours behind schedule.
We’ll ignore the story for now about how when I stood up to get off the plane, my knee completely buckled and I had to be about three milliseconds away from an ACL tear. It hurt. Bad. But we’re still here.
Thankfully I had decided to take the afternoon/evening train from Edinburgh up to the farthest north stop in Scotland or else I would have been a really grumpy passenger on the most amazing train ride I’ve had yet.
Even just 45 minutes outside of Edinburgh (which is also amazing looking and I will be back there this weekend) was stunning beautiful, but as the train kept going further and further north, the views only became better and better.
The Scottish Highlands are simply incredible.
There were so many visual highlights: the church spires that poke out above the tree line as the train zoomed past small Scottish communities, the River Garry flowing along to the left side of the train, the mountains off to the right side, the bright yellow swatches of gorse bushes growing all over the place, so many sheep.
After stopping in Inverness for a change and as the tracks continued to carry me higher, I couldn’t help but think that life in the places passing by has to be a little more simple, a little more unchanged. This is probably both good and bad, but I admit I’m a little envious.
At some point the views switched to watery scenes as the trip hugs the coast along the North Sea, and each stop appeared to be even more quaint, soaking in a nostalgia of which I know nothing but feel its presence so strong.
Finally a nine-hour train journey concluded in Thurso. Go right now and look it up on a map. It’s waaaay up there.
I dealt with only a small handful of folks in Thurso, the people at the hotel and the taxi driver, but I can tell you this unequivocally: the folks there might be among the most kind and hospitable I’ve ever met. It wasn’t anything extraordinary that happened. But rather it was just how pleasant they were doing the ordinary things.
It felt good.
It felt like… home.
But home isn’t in Thurso.
Thurso was simply the place to catch the ferry to head to the Orkneys, specifically the island referred to as the mainland.
That sea-faring adventure was today, and let me tell you that I was not at all prepared of how amazing of an experience it was going to be.
It was only a short 90-minute sailing, and only the first few minutes of it were non-eventful.
I sat in one of the lounges for maybe 20-30 minutes before venturing around the ship, laughing at myself as the rocking of the vessel would remind you that the waters were in charge, not your legs, and you’d walk wherever the sea wanted you to. Thank goodness for handrails.
Finally I made my way up to the sun deck, a comical name considering the clouds and mist, but the weather didn’t matter. Not one bit.
Ireland can have the Cliffs of Moher. I couldn’t possibly care less that I missed out on that now.
It started with the Old Man of Hoy which is a sea stack with a heigh of nearly 450 feet. Some of the cliffs that you pass after that reach more than 1,150 feet towards the heavens. I simply had no idea we were going to see these things. Pictures, as is so often the case, can’t possibly do it justice, but I did record a lot of video that I will share on my social platforms that I think helps make the case that this is one of the most beautiful places on the planet.
And now I know why I have so much of an affinity for amazing landscapes considering that amazing landscapes, apparently, are in my genes.
Wait. That’s weird. That makes it sound like I have geological DNA. Anyways…
The ferry arrived into Stromness shortly after 3 pm, and after I checked in at the absolutely adorable Ferry Inn and successfully completed the maze to find my room — no joke, there were at least four turns and three flights of stairs and I have no idea how this is all in the same compact building with only about 15-20 rooms — I went out and wandered around the town for a bit.
Of course the highlights of this saunter had to be seeing the delightfully diminutive Flattie Bar and stumbling upon the E. Flett Family Butcher.
Dinner was yet another fish and chips at the nautically-decorated restaurant back at the inn, and I must say I was quite glad to see they offered a grilled version (and it was delicious). And the theme from Thurso continued on here, with everyone just seeming so… nice isn’t the right word. Pleasant isn’t the right word. They’re both of those things. But there has to be a better word for it.
Synonyms for friendly according to Merriam-Webster include collegial (check), merry (yep), neighborly (absolutely), gracious (for sure), but I think the word I like the best is warm.
I can’t wait to spend the next few days with these folks that call the land of my ancestors their home. More adventures await, but for now it’s off to attempt to sleep despite the fact that it’s well after 10 and still plenty light outside.
Maybe it wasn’t just the larceny offenses that forced John Thomas to America. Maybe he didn’t like the long days.
If so, I can totally relate.
Rails to Ride 