Present Joys

Part of a series.

We awoke in our Glencoe B&B feeling much more optimistic. At 8:30 we had a fabulous breakfast of bacon, sausage, fried egg, tomato, and toast with home-made orange marmalade and a tiny glass of sparkling elderflower juice. Ann, our hostess, bustled in and out of the dining room. “It’s a beautiful morning!” she exclaimed at one point, and I realized she’d opened the windows. It couldn’t have been above 60° F. “Quaint” doesn’t begin to describe how cute this couple was—probably in their upper 70s, living in this adorable, cluttered little house on the misty edge of big mountains, with their windows open to enjoy the morning air, and their kitchen radio blaring a Glasgow radio program which feels like it’s coming from a planet a million lightyears away.

We left the car at our B&B and took a walk to Glencoe Lochan (apparently lochan means “a small loch”), a beautiful place for a morning excursion. Sadly, the Glencoe Folk Museum had just closed for the season, so after our walk we said goodbye to the village and hit the road to head north toward Fort William. The West Highland Museum there had some cool Jacobite artifacts and some examples of highland dress. I was parked illegally the whole time, though, so I had a hard time fully enjoying myself. (Have I mentioned I really hate driving here?) Oh—but the museum also had one particularly neat display about St Kilda, a remote Hebridean archipelago whose 36 inhabitants were evacuated to the Scottish mainland in 1930. It’s an interesting story.

From Fort William we headed east to Steall Waterfall in Glen Nevis, a park which Karen had wanted to visit. As I write this I see Ben Nevis, a mountain at the base of the park, is the British Isles’ tallest mountain, and Steall Waterfall its second-longest waterfall. No wonder it was so busy with visitors. It truly was a jaw-droppingly majestic place. We spent most of the afternoon there, just enjoying the massive scenery and the bleak Scottish weather. This sort of thing is Karen’s version of going to art galleries—she could hardly tear herself away.

We have only one night and one day left to explore the highlands before heading to Glasgow—in hindsight, I wish we’d left ourselves a few more days. Daylight is scarcer than I’d anticipated, and we hate to waste four or five hours daylight hours in the car. So instead of going north, we decided to head south toward Oban, to see some new parts of the country and to maximize our time out of the car. We’d called B&Bs this morning in Glencoe, so there was no drama there. Oban is a port city on the west coast, with a shipping and fishing heritage that make it feel different from any of the other places we’ve visited yet. The waterfront and harbor area, with shops, restaurants, and lots of boats, felt carnival-like with colored string lights reflecting in the dark water and McCaig’s Tower looking festive perched on the hill above the water.

This B&B was totally different from our last one. In Glencoe we’d been in somebody’s guest room, sharing a bathroom, and enjoying a made-for-us breakfast the next morning served in our hosts’ dining room. This place was a lot more like a hotel: six private rooms, each with en-suite bathrooms, and a breakfast buffet served in a dedicated space filled with 2-top restaurant-style tables.

After dropping off our bags, we walked around the harbor and enjoyed the new sights. For dinner, we ended up in a fish and chip shop on the waterfront. I finally broke down asked the lady at the next table what “Irn-Bru” was, after seeing it on restaurant menus for the past few days. She eagerly bragged that it was a Scottish soft drink—a phenomenon whose taste “could not be described”—turns out, it tastes like someone dissolved baby aspirin into cream soda. That’s not to say it was unpleasant. I liked it a lot! According to the internet, Irn-Bru outsells Coke in Scotland, which is an impressive feat. It’s imported into the US (I’ve never noticed it) but with a slightly different formula due to FDA restrictions. So I’m glad to have enjoyed the real thing in its home country.

Our next-table friend nodded approvingly as I consumed my Irn-Bru and mushy peas. “You’re an honorary Scot!” She also asked us what we planned to do in Oban, and when we told her we weren’t totally sure, she suggested taking the pedestrian ferry to the isle of Mull for the day. It sounded like a good plan to us, so tomorrow that’s what we’ll do.

Part of a series.

Today we bid farewell to Edinburgh and embark for the highlands. We got up at 6:30 with not nearly enough sleep and checked out of our Airbnb right away in order to pick up a rental car at Waverley Station. We’d originally planned to take a train to Stirling and pick up a car there, but it didn’t cost any more money to get the car in Edinburgh, and we figured if we did that, we could stop and see some more stuff on our way to Stirling. This immediately proved a wretched idea—I don’t know what in the world we were thinking when we decided to pick up a car in downtown Edinburgh during rush hour. Oh, and of course, the car has a manual transmission, and even though I knew that would be the case and did some meager preparation for it, I’m literally barely able to drive the thing.

While still within wifi, Karen had downloaded 200 mb of Google Maps data to her phone for offline viewing. We put in the address for Dunfermline and hit the road. This trip was certainly the worst 45 minutes of our trip, and a top contender for the worst 45 minutes of my life. Gear-shifting with my left hand sucks. Driving on the left side of the road sucks. Driving fast on roads with literally no shoulder sucks. Starting and stopping on hilly, incoherently-laid-out streets in rush hour traffic sucks. This was not a good time.

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Dunfermline Abbey, when we finally got there after much weeping and gnashing of teeth, was absolutely lovely. After seeing the slick and refurbished historical sights of Edinburgh, it was refreshing to see ruins. Dunfermline Abbey is just so old there isn’t enough to restore or reconstruct—all you can do is make the ruins easily walkable and provide lots of interpretive information. The overall effect was very peaceful, natural, and meditative. A good break from driving. Then, back in the car to Stirling! This second attempt at Scottish driving went much better than the first, and we got to the castle without too much additional frustration.

Stirling Castle was cool. Okay but not spectacular. Especially in contrast to the untouched beauty of Dunfermline, Stirling Castle seemed over-modernized. Interiors of buildings were painted to look brand new, with brand-new-looking furnishings and even fake food. And the costumed interpreters were just too much for me.

By far the best part of the castle was seeing the Hunt of the Unicorn, a set of fifteenth-century tapestries painstakingly recreated as period-accurate furnishings for the palace. The finished pieces took 14 years to create and are only half the detail of the original tapestries. There’s an anachronistically modern building tucked just inside the castle wall which serves as an exhibition about the creation of these tapestries. Amazing, and makes me want to try my hand at weaving like this.

From Stirling, we decided to drive to Glencoe for the night. As we drove northwest, the roads got less busy, except for the occasional semi truck that was too wide for its lane. We were absolutely certain we’d be able to find a B&B in Glencoe for the night, and since it was still early afternoon, we didn’t think we had anything to worry about. But then it started raining, and the sun started setting at about 4:30, and everything began feeling ominous. Our 5:30 arrival in Glencoe felt like 11 pm due to the drizzling rain and utterly black darkness. We stopped at one of the B&Bs recommended in the Rick Steves book (they had a “vacancy” sign outside) but were turned away.

So we sorta drove around in circles. Not having cell service made all of it much harder. After a half hour of various difficulties, getting lost, making a few desperate phone calls, we finally ended up at a B&B just down the road from the first place we tried (go figure). I guess there’s just really one road in Glencoe village. Words cannot express how good it felt to know we’d found a place to sleep. In hindsight I guess it sounds melodramatic, but ahh what a night.

We were famished. On our host’s recommendation, we drove about 2.5 miles up a crazy narrow single-lane forest road to the Clahaig Inn (this whole episode felt like something from Twin Peaks) and had a hardy meal there. They had free wifi (the first time we’d had any connectivity all day), so we were able to do some research on our next day’s travels. Back at our B&B, the humble room was adorable and our hosts were lovely. Ann, the lady of the house, asked us whether we’d like “Would you like the Scottish breakfast tomorrow morning? Bacon, sausage, egg, toast, tomato?” And when we nodded her eyes sparked and she remarked, accurately, “Oh! You’d like that a lot!“ Phew. I had a good sleep that night.

• Before this trip, I had many people tell me it wouldn’t be a problem to drive around and find a B&B to stay in! Be spontaneous!, they said. But it turns out most B&Bs don’t actually want you staying there after the summer busy season. We drove past tons of B&Bs on our travels, but they almost all had “no vacancy” signs.
• Man, Glencoe village is really a tiny, remote place. I feel like I’m at the edge of the world—and I know I’m barely into Scotland’s highlands. There must be something about arriving in a place under cover of night that makes it feel remote and lonely…
• After seeing approximately 1000 more people wearing I finally broke down and looked up the Scottish poppy thing. Okay, so it’s a veterans’ charity donation (I gathered that much) with an annual promotion that ramps up for the weeks leading up to Remembrance Sunday in november. Now I understand why so many people are wearing poppies now. It certainly makes more sense as a seasonal trend than a permanent style thing.

Part of a series.

Sunday in Edinburgh! We are finally getting the hang of waking up, I think.

We had breakfast at our Airbnb and set off promptly at 8 to hike up Arthur’s Seat, a mountain situated just behind Holyrood Palace. It’s hard to believe how close these big, barren mountains are from the center of the city. The cool, wet morning air meant there was no sweating, and the overcast sky meant no squinting without sunglasses. I love the weather here. And the view from the highest point of the mountain was fantastic. Yesterday, we’d noticed a cute old church on the Royal Mile, St. Columba’s Free Church, and we decided to join them for worship at 11. We had just enough time to walk there quickly from Arthur’s Seat! Our home church has “fraternal relations” with the Free Church of Scotland, so it felt a very familar there. It was a wonderful break in the hurriedness of our time in the city.

After church, we figured out the correct bus route to take us to the Royal Botanical Gardens—the farthest-away thing we’d attempted to see yet in the city, and the only thing we couldn’t easily walk to. The gardens were free to visit and lovely to look at, even this late in the year. (Check out that crazy tall hedge.) We decided to walk back home from the gardens, which was a bit of a trek. On the way there, we climbed Calton Hill again—this time in the daylight. My feet are killing me. So far, it looks like I did a fantastic job packing for this trip. I don’t feel burdened with unnecessary garments, and I’m wearing everything I brought. But, besides my house shoes, I only brought a pair of penny loafers and duck boots, and they’re not cutting it for all the walking we’ve been doing. I went to the grocery and got a cheap pair of insoles, which I jerry-rigged with folded up paper towels to help my metatarsalgia. What was I thinking not packing better shoes?

After a nice dinner at the Safari Lounge (just up the road from our Airbnb, and recommended to us by our host), we made a long walk back to the Royal Mile and to Ensign Ewart, a pub at the top of the hill. I’d seen that Sandy Brechin, my favorite Scottish accordion player, was going to be leading a session thre. It turns out he leads a session there every sunday night. I don’t know how I managed to miss that during my Edinburgh trip planning, but I’m glad I figured it out in time! People with instruments starting trickling in to the dark, low-ceilinged pub a little after 9 pm, and there were soon too many people to fit around the single reserved table. The next table over, where Karen and I were sitting, got absorbed into the musicians’ space. When the musicians discovered I also played accordion, they asked me to “have a turn” playing. I politely declined this, until they just wouldn’t let me anymore. I ended up playing The Hut on Staffin Island as it was nearing midnight. The straps of the accordion I borrowed were way too loose for me, and even besides that, I did not play very well. But it was sort of a dream-come-true situation! And it was great fun! Certainly my best experience of the trip so far.

A Scots translation of 1 Cor 13:1 on the driveway into Queensberry House, part of the Scottish Parliament complex. I have no idea why they put it there, but it sent a shiver down my spine when I discovered it.

This is just what normal street signs look like in Edinburgh. All of them. I can’t imagine getting used to seeing such nice lettering everywhere I go.