On to Scotland: 15SEP-19SEP
The next day, we had a long, boring travel day. It was either 6 hours on a train and getting in really late in the day, far from a rental car location, or 5 hours waiting around for a flight to Glasgow, picking up a car, and driving no more than an hour to our first night’s B&B near Loch Lomond.
In retrospect, we should have spent more time around York and fewer hours at Leeds/Bradford (LBA) airport (we went earlier in the day in the hopes of getting an earlier flight, but no such beast). We arrived at Glasgow (GLA) after a short flight and our car adventure, also known as “David’s Mirror Image Drive on the Left Nightmare” began. In short, it was nerve wracking at first, but we only had an hour to drive to the Old Toll House B&B in Tarbet, and it was fairly simple highway driving. Gorgeous along Loch Lomond, and we had a very cheerful welcome from Jim at the Toll House.
Our luck with B&B’s held – another VCANDBVS room with a mattress from IKEA that sounded like it was stuffed with empty Carlsberg beer cans and old newspapers. For additional night time enjoyment, a rail line went right behind our heads and the highway was right out front — a prime location for a toll booth but not so great for a quiet holiday retreat. Jim booked us a table at the Village Inn, up the road just beyond the junction with the Maryburgh road, on an extremely beautiful loch “in the gloaming” (in the lovely evening light). Another good meal, with indifferently good service, on a sticky table with four legs set just wide enough to sit at, but not wide enough to really relax.
Sigh – at this point the smallness of things had become a bit wearisome, but the good food and delicious bitters and ciders helped take the sting off.
The next day, on Jim’s recommendation, we stopped off for a loch-side walk along the BBBOLL (Bonnie, bonnie banks, etc) and it was breathtakingly pretty. Then we had an easy and very scenic drive through Glencoe to Fort William, and where we would be for the next 3 nights at a very large guest house called Guisa-something (Guisachan, pronounced “Geez-aaaaghghghh’n”).
Finally, a quiet room with a reasonably comfortable bed, with a shower that may grow up to be a phone booth some day! Dinner was at “No. 4,” just off the main square next to the TIC, which we came back to after a lot of wandering the main (pedestrianized and cobblestoned) street. Fort William is long and skinny, and boasts an unusually high B&B to residential home ratio, and also a completely unavoidable roundabout. The guest house was up a short steep one-way street and had a great view from its terrace of Loch Linnhe and a bit of Ben Nevis. They had a beautiful breakfast room and an extremely cozy but stinky lounge (with a bar) that smelled of stale cigarettes, lager, and old socks.
The next day dawned bright and clear, and “glorious” according to an old gent we met. We took a tiny noisy diesel powered foot ferry to Camusnagaul (pronounced “Camus-na-arrrrrrrrghhhh”) and followed an indifferently waymarked woodland path up through mossy green trees and rocks, and over muddy streams. We eventually found the viewpoint, with benches as promised in the walk booklet. Lunch was a couple of cheap takeaway packets purchased from a shop in the town.
We wandered down to the shore and puttered along up the road for a couple of hours before we met up with the old gent. Immediately after his “glorious sunny day” comment, clouds of doom and Scottish travel karma blew up from the East.
After walking along the road for a while, we headed back to wait for the ferry in the limited comfort of the bicycle shed at the ferry landing (the waiting room was a crumbling, smelly old fish shed).
It was on the way back that we spotted “the house with the self mowing lawn.” Much more cost-effective and environmentally friendly than 6 guys in a pickup with two lawnmowers, a leaf blower, and a power rake.
Following the pattern we’d established after our first few days in London, when we’d made the mistake of staying out all day and getting home after 7pm, we had some relax time at the hotel before venturing out to stalk another wild Hieland dinn’rrrrr. After getting politely turned away from two likely places, we ended up at the Ben Nevis Inn, a pub where we had lunch the first day. We’ve both grown fond of the small, butter-yellow Scottish tatties (potatoes). I neatly separated a delicious Scottish trout from its skeleton, and David had a steak pie, and we fell into conversation with a tiny, skinny old geezer from around Bristol who had horrifying teeth and almost as horrifying views on how “the blacks” were ruining everywhere they moved in, in Britain.
We made gentle remonstrance* (as in “things do get better; there are places at home we wouldn’t go, but on the other hand, diversity means interesting people and restaurants in the long run”).
However, once out of the dangerous waters of racism and politics, we got on pretty well with him, and he revealed that he was a retired builder who had done a lot of rehab work on old Victorian houses. He got a huge chuckle when I accused him of being the guy that turned all those tiny closets into inconveniently small ensuite bathrooms in all the B&B’s we’d stayed in. He was quite a cute old character and seemed quite lonely – no family and spending Christmas alone in New York, strangely enough.
The next day dawned grey and colder.
It was at about this point that we sent a good few emails back and forth to the vet and to Steve — the vet reported that Stuey, my cat, had a tumor in one of his toes, and they wanted to do chest x-rays to rule out a much more serious tumor that it may have metastasized from there. We made frequent use of the internet access in the TIC all 3 days. Steve also offered to pick Stuey up on the Saturday we arrive home — great heroics for a guy allergic to cats — so that our kitty would be home to greet us when we get in, saving him another 2 days at the vet. The vet found nothing on the x-rays, but Steve gave them the OK to amputate his toe to prevent further spreading, after Steve consulted with David’s mom (awwww!). We let him know via email that that was the right thing… though at a cost of $420, my poor little old kitty is probably getting a bit expensive.
However, Steve said he seemed to be doing well and came out of surgery all right, so we’ll have to check in with him later.
That night, we had dinner at “No. 4” restaurant with Jette Goldie, a HIGHLA-L listmember. It was a very fun evening with lots of list gossip and chat. Good dinner too – we had spent the entire day driving around to Mallaig, (sending a few emails from a tiny grocery store-chandlers’-hardware store there) and drove right by the tiny road that went to Castle Tioram, location of the Highlander “Homeland” episode, but it was raining and we had a long drive back to town for dinner with Jette. We ended up taking a car ferry, too – so an eventful day with some great views, a good lunch in Mallaig (extremely fresh scallops, etc.) but unfortunately a little too rainy and cloudy for best enjoyment.
Anyway, our dinner with Jette was as delicious as we thought it might be. Only problem was Jette had no working cash card for her taxi fare back to her hotel, so we spotted her a fiver. Great conversation – Jette is very outspoken and funny and insisted that Scottish coffee is much stronger and higher in caffeine than American. I’d have to agree — breakfast at Guisachhwhehs-aaaachooo! (gesundheit), like other places, had stong coffee. Not to mention plenty of eggs, beans, mushrooms, thick hammy bacon, toast, Scottish marmalade, fried or poached tomato…
After the first few breakfasts, I had fallen back on cereal, toast, and once we got out of London, local sausage. The Scottish breakfasts were about as stodgy as the English ones, but served with a Scottish accent.
Our last day, we faced a slight challenge — we were driving back all the way to Glasgow, dropping the car off at the airport, then taking a bus down to Glasgow station for the train to Carlisle.
(end of the Scotland part of the entry)
Left out of the entry was the nerve-wracking fun of picking up the rental car (all normal, except transacted in a Scottish burr) and the actual first few moments’ of driving. We had several roundabouts to get through before we got out to the main highway… once actually on the motorway, we relaxed a little and watched for our first big landmark. If you recall, back in London the travel agent at the Scottish Tourist Board had been somewhat stumped by Jim’s enthusiastically opaque Scottish accent, and had written on our driving directions for us to take the signs for the “Aaaaiiskeeen Bridge” and go north leaving Glasgow airport. We had figured out at the time that “Aaaaiiskeeen” was spelled “Erskine” on all the maps, so we knew where we were headed. But just to be sure, we asked the car rental agent about our route. Sure enough, she confirmed that we couldna miss the siggnns, and to tak’ tha Aaaaaiiiigghgghsskeeen Brig’ an’ conteenue norrth.” Good enough, just checking.
As we drove up toward Glencoe, I could see parts of the West Highland Way long-distance footpath from the road – it really made me want to try it some year. And on the way up, we’d tried to have lunch at the The Drovers, but they weren’t quite open for lunch yet.
However, we did meet up with a nice man from North Carolina who took our picture when we stopped for a break at the top of a long haul. David was surprised to hear him speak with a Southern accent – he’d approached him tentatively and spoke clearly and slowly in case the guy turned out to be German or Dutch (as was so often the case). The reply startled us both. It was one of those “Oh! Hi! Um! You’re American like us!” travel moments that afterwards make you slap yourself upside the head and say “D’oh.”
And so, the first day or so in Fort William were pretty much as above, except that it was extremely nerve-wracking the first time we went through all the roundabouts (David was the unlucky driver, I was the nervous passenger). And I really want to know why they need 3 roundabouts in a row there – why? The town itself is cute, but there’s really only one main street. We walked up and down and figured out where all the restaurants were, and that was about it. We did do a little shopping – we kept finding our way to the outdoor store, where I spent a lot of time (but not much money) sorting out a better belt for my convertible hiking pants. There’s a lot of downtime wasted in towns while you try to figure out things like a bottle of shampoo, or a gift for a friend at home, or something to keep your pants from falling down. We also spent some time in the TIC the first day, getting brochures and walking maps. In the end, we didn’t walk nearly as much as I’d planned, because the weather was so iffy. We discovered the internet access points there, and of course had to spend some time catching up with our lives back home…
And after getting the first email from the vet, I spent a lot of time feeling helpless and worried, and getting through the days waiting until the next chance to check email and see if there was an update on Stuey. There wasn’t a lot we could do, and we were reasonably sure that there was no need to drop everything, eat a lot of change fees and cancellation charges, and rush home.
It wouldn’t have done any good, anyway. So we went on with things.
The day we went over to Camusnaaaarggghhhlll, we took a smelly little diesel boat like a little red tin can (with about the same seaworthiness). It was not this ferry, which went somewhere else and looked much more pleasant. However, later on it filled up with older tourists just before our ferry departed, so maybe it was just as well – it looked like they were being taken for one of those “and now everyone sing along!” kinds of boat excursions. Still, they definitely had a cheerier boat than we did.
The drive we took was a long day – we mostly just drove along, and stopped occasionally to look at things, so it was very relaxing and without any plan. Parts of the coastline along the road were weirdly beautiful, but unfortunately we took no pictures on that part of the drive. On the way back, we took a different route and tried to find the “Homeland” castle as stated, but just as we got to the access road, the rain started to come down really hard, and we missed the turn, and I just said “oh, forget it, let’s just head back.” I was getting pretty tired by then, but also just didn’t have my heart in the trip, because the email we’d gotten in Mallaig with the news on Stuey had been a bit guarded. Apparently there was also something going on with his eye too, although he was recovering and eating well enough after the surgery.
We eventually found our way back via a tiny little car ferry across the loch (our alternate route brought us back along the far shore) and we ended up back at Guisaaaarrrrghghghghun at a reasonable time to meet up with Jette.
That was fun, getting to meet an acquaintance from the “glory days” of the list. We took her to dinner at “No. 4,” because that seemed like the nicest place around – and totally unlike most other nice restaurants in the area, very unpretentious and also totally nonsmoking! Heh. Actually, I liked the decor there very much – it was all light wood, river pebble on the walls, slate floors, plants, and an airy atmosphere that was partly contemporary, partly traditional.
We had some very, very nice wine there, good thing we were on foot. Jette had turned up in high heels – not the best gear for cobblestones – and she had even taken a room at another nearby B&B so she wouldn’t have to drive home to Edinburgh. It was really, really amazing that she was willing to come all that way for dinner with us, but we were glad that she did. It was good to laugh and talk with someone about old times, friends in common, and share notes about what we’d seen. She’d only recently bought her car, so was interested in places we’d been in England that she might like to visit.
That was one thing that struck us again as it had in London: how strange it was that people in England thought other parts of England were fabulously remote. I’d noticed this on previous trips, too. Yet Jette thought nothing of flying to the States for the occasional convention. I wonder why it is – since the rail system is good enough to get a person almost anywhere they want to go, why is it that they think Scotland is the uttermost beyond, and a Scottish person like Jette thinks that the Cotswolds sound fabulously exotic?
The next entry will pick up with the stay in Carlisle, and then on to the Yorkshire Dales.