Scotland the Brave

Time is too short, but we wanted to details of a few of our Scottish adventures! We are currently perched on the grassy hillside of Dunflodigarry on the Trotternish peninsula of the Isle of Skye. It is paradise. The view looks directly out onto the water, and grassy hills surround us, with the dramatic, forbidding cliffs of the Quirang at our backs. We've been bless with some uncharacteristically (for Scotland) sunny weather. It's been amazing. AM has indulged me in letting me drag her at various times during the early morning to places where light from sunrises would be nice.

A few highlights of the trip thus far:

*Edinburgh is perhaps the world's most photogenic city. It is a gorgeous old mound of black rock and grey stone, all growing together in a gloriously romantic and organic combination of natural beauty and civilization. It is also beautifully in bloom -- pink blossoms float around the dark stones; lilac grows in the hedges; yellow furs spread across the hillsides. We climbed Calton Hill at sunrise on Saturday (not difficult to do, as we were jetlagged, AND our dodgy hostel was filled with bizarre and shrieking characters; I felt like Jane Eyre, shivering in my bed, listening to unknown persons giggling like maniacal apes at ungodly hours of the morn) to see the lovely spring dawn creep over the hill and shine on the far castle.

*Ruined abbeys are among the loveliest structures in creation. Walking 13.5 miles between various of them, however, is really exhausting. We hiked from Kelso to Jedburgh, and I thought it was only a 12 mile hike when I suggested it; once I had the map in hand from the information office, I decided to keep that little fact hidden from Josh until we were on the road. I thought it would be a fun surprise: "Actually, we didn't hike 12 miles in 4 hours; we hiked 13.5!" (AM seems to think I am some witless and illiterate fool that can't read maps or signs, or tell the difference between 12 and 13.5, but whatever) The first 8.5 miles went very quickly--a little path that wound beside the Teviot River, dotted with heron, swans, and ducks, hemmed in by gorgeously vibrant fields of yellow rape seed. This is Walter Scott and Robert Burns country--lush, verdant, peacefully humming with natural life. We passed the ruins of an old castle and trailed along the old railway line. We ate apples as we walked down a path in-between hedgerows and fields of green and yellow, the hedges springing up with wildflowers in pink, white, and purple. The last 5 miles culminated in a near vertical scale of a hillside on an old Roman road--smooth, rounded cobblestones poking out beneath the dirt. We had a trusty Powerbar to thank for making possible our last crippled lurch into Jedburgh as we raced/limped to make the 7pm bus back to Kelso.

*Glasgow was nice but the street lights were long, and we only spend a few hours there for church and some museums. We did learn that someone from Glasgow is called a "Glaswegian."

*Loch Lomond and the hostel at Rowardennan is still absolute paradise on earth--one of the most peaceful places I've ever been, eliciting happy contemplation in the most effortless way. Bluebells cloaked the forest floor, and the loch sparkled in the evening sun as we took a stroll before making ourselves dinner in the well-remembered hostel kitchen. There were no small family rooms in that hostel, so I slept in a room full of awesome middle-aged English ladies hiking the West Highland Way, and Josh slept in a room full of smelly but cheerful Scottish laddies hiking the West Highland Way. I much prefer the hiking crowd to the drunk, lay-about, maniacally-screeching-at-4am crowd. This is also where we received the surreal news that Osama Bin Laden was done for (one of the English ladies was checking the news on her BlackBerry that morning; Henry Crawford had also died, which was even bigger news to them).

*The Highlands. There are some awesome, rugged old Scotsmen out here. We passed two of them on our way up to the Lost Valley at Glencoe as they were going down. We were heaving for breath and covered in sweat, and they were walking past us in all their silver-haired glory, waving their walking sticks and nodding their hats at us. Hardcore gents! You wouldn't catch me on an incline like that in my golden years; it would spell a broken hip or two for sure. The Lost Valley was well worth the incline, however. The path led up between two of the Three Sisters (rugged peaks at Glencoe), following a babbling brook and waterfalls, affording dazzling vistas of the Highlands the higher we climbed. It led to a hidden valley where clans used to hide their stolen sheep and cattle from raids. To us, it offered a lovely place to picnic and commune with the ghosts of my murdered MacDonald ancestors (Glencoe was the site of the 1692 massacre of the MacDonalds by the black-hearted Campbells).

*Ft. William--although we hadn't counted on having to pay for a 10 minute, 10 dollar ferry to the other side of Loch Linnhe, the view from our inn was well worth it. There had been an inn on that site for 600 years, the present building existing from the mid 18th century after its predecessor was burnt down during the Jacobite wars. Our window looked directly out over the loch and all the mountains that framed it, AND we had a canopied bed (childhood fantasy . . . way too many Disney princess movies).

*Isle of Skye--the highlight thus far was our evening hike to the Quirang last night. It ended up being steeper and longer than we had anticipated, which resulted in a scramble on the way down to beat the fading light, but it was worth it a hundred times over. The Quirang is a mass of soaring basalt rock--grass topped cliffs jutting out against the skyline, looking out over tumbling green valleys below and the sea beyond. Josh told me before we started that he felt like he was about to go on a first date with a girl he liked. I asked for clarification (eyebrows arched). He said that the anticipation and excitement was such that he was afraid he would just end up being disappointed (he's been staring at a picture of the Quirang on our Scotland calendar for 4 months now, salivating over it). His nervous excitement manifested itself in the frenetic pace he took, straight up the mountain. I followed faithfully, cool and steady as a plow. The sun had already passed beyond the Quirang but it was still a little less than 2 hours from setting, so the valley was already in shadow. After turning off the road we wandered on spongy grass sheep trails, past a still dark loch, gaining in steepness as we went. We crested the top of the first incline and wound around the top of a rocky valley, turning right and climbing over an ancinet stone wall. The view at this point was beyond breathtaking--valleys stretching before and behind us, brooding steep cliffs on either side. We headed west, towards the setting sun, and could see its reddish light hitting the summits above us. It was another scramble up to the top of the cliffs, and then I made a made dash for where the red light was striking the rocky chimneys at the top of the cliffs. It was absolute glory--the sunset before me, the sea behind me, endless stretches of green cascading below me. We then moved in the other direction as quickly as possible, for we were after Josh's "first date"--a great grassy plateau in the middle of the Quirang called The Table. This required much more scrambling and heaving over vertical rises, and is where my pace became particuarly plow-like and Josh became an ever-quickly vanishing frenetic dot in the distance. In the end, we made it, staring hundreds and hundreds of feet down upon The Table. But the sun had set, and this meant we had to haul it down before we started breaking ankles and such. It's a good thing we're not superstitious. Those dark, haunted valleys, perfectly still in the falling night, would have been a playground for an imagination not hemmed in by the confines of rational, modern thought . . .

*Hair. Josh's hair is enormous and sentient. The lower parts of it lay flat and silky down his neck (yes, mulletlike), while the upper layers magically take on an astonishing amount of volume, giving it a bouffant appearance. I have many pictures of it in all its varied moods (I have many pictures of Josh in general, especially pictures of Josh taking pictures), and I sense a blog post coming on when we return.

*Food. Hooray for British yogurt! As marvelous as ever. The same for the cheese, the crisps, the chips, the chocolate, and the steak and ale pie. Josh has yet to try haggis, although he is planning on it. I had it when I was in Scotland make in '01 and consider that box checked.

*Happiness. Abundant, in the extreme. This is such a beautiful, haunting, enchanting place--it's no wonder it has been romanticized for centuries. We wish you could all be here with us!