Braveheart by Bus – 13 August 2011

This day started out very early. My bus from Perth left at 4:35 AM and Bro. Crook was nice enough to drive me to the Park and Ride from where it left. I felt bad but he insisted that he would already be awake and I didn't fancy walking around an unknown part of town at 3:30 in the morning. It was necessary to take this frightfully early bus to be in Edinburgh by 8:00 when my tour bus was scheduled to leave.

The tour was funny because while it started with only 30 people, another tour bus broke down and we took on another 27 passengers from a international language group that was focused on teaching English. Basically no one spoke the same language so the poor tour guide and bus driver were at a loss how to explain when and where to meet the bus when we stopped. I thought it was very amusing though. Another cool part about taking a bus tour was meeting a whole different range of people. Some of the people I befriended was a girl from Australia who had been teaching English in the UK for the past two years but was now getting ready to go home, a couple from Singapore who were on their belated honeymoon and invited me to visit Singapore and see Asia (yes we exchanged contact info) and finally I got to know a man on the board of trustees at Cornell who I exchanged opinions with about the developing Japanese market in the 1980s where he worked in international banking, the best way to organize courses, programs, and semesters in colleges, and why travel is so important for people. It was great! I was glad I knew what he was talking about and I was glad that even though I wasn't at an ivy league he still respected me as a student for finishing my degree early and making a viable plan for using my history degree (he was a history degree too and then he studied banking in graduate school). People lead such interesting lives – I love hearing all about them.

But back to Scotland, some things I saw were a lot of highland cattle, the Highlands themselves (specifically the area of Glencoe), a bit of the West coast, and gorgeous lochs including the Loch Ness. I also saw where they placed Hagrid's hut in the Harry Potter films, the bridge the Hogwarts express travels over, and other Harry Potter sites. They were great. :)

 

Glencoe was gorgeous. There were hardly any trees over rolling terrain that would suddenly shoot into a staggeringly tall mountain. It was very wet so small waterfalls cascaded off of each mountain and the tops of the cliffs were hidden in mystical mists. I wanted to build a small cottage there and never leave! This is the area that the famous Rob Roy comes from. He and his men would charge passing herders of highland cattle for their protective forces, if they refused the service then they were practically guaranteed to be ambushed later. Rob Roy's gang came to be known as The Black Watch because most cattle were black then. And now there is a special Scottish division in the military called The Black Watch.

The other place I loved was Loch Ness. I walked through Urqhart Castle and touched the water of the loch that lapped up onto shore. No sightings of Nessie that day but it was easy to imagine her presence. I learned a ton of interesting things about the lochs but the most interesting to me were the following: Nessie is protected by national law – if she is ever captured they can take DNA samples and photographs but then she is to be immediately released back into the loch. An official Nessie sighting is one that is made by three non-affiliated people, from all different angles, at the same time. There were five of those last year. And finally, the Loch Ness is over 700 feet deep at its deepest which is deeper than the North Sea and the bottom layer of water in this fresh water lake is actually sea water. This means a very diverse range of creatures (monsters) could live within the lake.

Every area we saw this day was magical and special but it only made me realize how much more of Scotland I needed to see. Next time I am going to rent a car and drive through, stopping anywhere and everywhere so I can really get to know this fabulous country.

When I got back to Edinburgh that night I had just enough time to snatch up some dinner and make it onto my coach bound back to Cardiff. It was a long and fairly sleepless night but it was good to be back. Hannah had been alone in Cardiff while I was gone and it was nice to see her again and know I was missed (probably because she had no one else but that doesn't matter).