Ken: Hello, my name is Ken Whalen, myself and my wife are owners of the Culag Hotel in Lochinver. That's in the Northwest of Scotland, in a very beautiful area called Assynt. It's rich in natural wildlife, very beautiful mountains. And Lochinver is a fishing village. Sabine: Ok. Ken: We're the owners of the Culag Hotel, which is a stone-built building of over two hundred years old. It was originally built as a process factory for the herring fishing. But unfortunately, the person who built it went bankrupt, and it the building itself went into the hands of the Duke of Sutherland, and their family kept it as a hunting lodge originally, and eventually it became a hotel. We have owned the building for four years, but the previous people, they had it for hundred and eighty years as a private dwelling and as a hotel. Sabine: Mhm. Ken: The hotel has a seasonal tourist-trade, which is from about April to August. It tails off in September, and then we rely on the fishing fleet, mostly the French and the Spanish, who offload deep-sea fish in Lochinver, and it's taken by truck down through England, usually for sale the next day in France or Spain. Sabine: Mhm. So there's lots of fishing going on here? Ken: There is a small local fleet, which normally catches shellfish, lobsters and that sort of thing. Most of the boats the bigger boats are all deep-sea boats which are owned by the French and the Spanish. The Spanish particularly, they do what's called long-lining, where they run a long line out with lots of individual hooks, and they catch a better quality of fish, 'cause they're individually caught. The French fishermen, they mostly do deep-sea, where they trawl, and they trawl very deep, and they catch a variety of fish, very few of which would be consumed in Britain. Ken: Originally I was an engineer, but about eight years ago, we made a decision to become self-employed and we originally ran a pub, a small pub in England, for about four years. That was also in a very rural area, in the Peak District, just outside Macclesfield. It was very quiet. So, we decided to make a change and come back to Scotland. We have relatives in the Assynt area, and we knew this hotel was up for sale, and we scraped a lot of money together, and between that and what we owe the bank at the moment we were able to purchase this hotel. We run it as a it is a very family-orientated hotel, we employ local people throughout the year. Sabine: And you yourself, where are you from, originally? Ken: I was born in Edinburgh a long time ago and went to college, used to do part-time work in hotels and bars to supplement my meagre income whilst going to college. Eventually I became a consulting engineer and I worked mostly from Edinburgh. But eventually, I had a project in the Middle East, in Dubai. And I went to supervise that project, for well, it was meant to be one year, but it got extended, and extended, and eventually I spent ten years of my life in Dubai. That was in the eighties to nineties. After that we came back to the UK and continued my work as a consulting engineer with a number of different companies, but eventually we decided that I'd prefer to work for myself and we went into the publican business. Ken: Running a small hotel is very time-consuming, and you have very little time for yourself. We start breakfast at eight o'clock and we don't close the bar sometimes until one o'clock, which means by the time we have cleaned, we have checked the tills, it's maybe two or three o'clock in the morning. So there's very little personal time, there's always something, something to do. We do our own refurbishment as far as possible, to keep, basically to keep cost down. And also because to involve a contractor it is expensive because they have to travel, they normally have to travel from Inverness, which is a great deal of oncost. Well, the hotel business is a challenge to keep all customers happy as far as possible. Ken: The Assynt area is well-known for its for its scenery and its wildlife. A lot of tourists come here for to go walking. Not necessarily to climb all the mountains, but there's a good number of mountains to climb, all very interesting, usually quite unique, and they're individual mountains. Sabine: I've heard from someone else here that mountains of different height have different names? Ken: Alright, well . There was a guy called Monroe, who charted most of the mountains in the UK. And all mountains over three thousand feet, about a thousand metres, come into his list of mountains. Now this list does vary slightly because there's changes in technical accuracy about mountain height. But mountains over three thousand feet are called "Monroes". Between two thousand, I think its two thousand or two thousand five hundred and three thousand feet, another gentleman, years ago, called Corbet decided that these were also worth recording, and these are called "Corbets". There's a lot of people around who challenge themselves to climb all Monroes or all Corbets or both. And there's civil records held - people who have done them all, people who have done them all in the shortest period, and there's in the mountain climbing exercisers, there's a lot of variety, especially in Scotland. Ken: A lot of people tour round the coastal routes. And of course Lochinver is on a coastal route, it's a junction between two very small coastal roads and the main road which goes down to Inverness. Most people here are for the scenery, we do get a number of people that want to go climbing, and they have specific mountains that they want to climb. We also get a number of people who are just interested in doing walks from half an hour, for a little exercise, to two and three hour walks. Over and above that we have a number of bird watchers. Bird watching seasons do vary throughout the year. The There's lot of coastal cliffs and a lot of seabirds to look at, including puffins and cormorants, and there's quite a variety of wildlife. And people do come up in fact we have a German company that comes every year, as a tour, and they normally bring between nine and thirteen people, just to have a look at the local wildlife. There's other groups that come for the sports fishing - both angling sea-angling and on the rivers and lochs. One of the more impressive fish is halibut, which is caught off one of the local ones that was caught we have a picture in the bar, and that was caught off Storr point - as big as tall as the person that caught it. We regularly have halibut on the menu. It's a very easy fish to filet and it makes excellent steaks. Sabine: Ah, and what about the Highland Games? Ken: Highland Games? Ah, this weekend we're coming up to the Lochinver Highland Games, which is in Lochinver it's opened by a chieftain who arrives normally by boat, as a small part of the ceremony. The basic thing is for some children's games, is for some proper weight-lifting games, they do competitions for Highland dancing, for weight-lifting, traditional Scottish games. And the most popular one which is throughout Scotland, and that is drinking. There's a great deal of drinking done both on the field, afterwards, and the night always finishes with a dance, where even more drink is consumed. Sabine: Quality drinking. Ken: By the end of the night it's not quality drinking. % % Acknowledgements, availability and copyright % -------------------------------------------- % Acknowledgements: The project has been supported by the University of % Tuebingen. The video interviews have been carried out and recorded by % Sabine Braun, Stefanie Hahn, Petra Hoffstaedter and Kurt Kohn. The % speakers have agreed to the use of the materials for non-commercial % research and education purposes. % % Availability of the ELISA corpus: The ELISA corpus is made available by the % Department of Applied English Linguistics at the University of Tuebingen. % It is freely available at this website for study, teaching and research % purposes, and copies of the transcripts may be distributed, as long as this % statement of availability appears in the text. However, if any portion of % this material is to be used in educational presentations and publications, % permission must be obtained in advance. Commercial use of any form is % excluded. For further information about permissions, please contact Dr. % Sabine Braun at s.braun(at)surrey.ac.uk. % % Copyright of the ELISA corpus: Department of Applied English Linguistics, % University of Tuebingen. %