A Walkabout in Scotland

Join me as I take you on a personal journey to a place I have long wanted to visit, a walkabout that exceeded my expectations and generated some unplanned life-shifting emotions and routines. We shall meander together in a place on either side of the dawn of civilization. Some days, I sat in coffee shops soaking up the vibe. Other days, fear and wonder veered just off the edge of a small road. You, too, can visit Scotland, and if you keep your mind and senses open, you will not leave her unchanged.

Edinburgh: A Portal Through Time and Space

It is Sunday, September 15, 2024, the first day of our Scottish holiday after settling in at our hotel room. I am sitting in a corner coffee shop on the south side of Edinburgh (pronounced Edinburrow by the locals) on my first day after restful sleep. The Earl Grange Café sits catacorner to a beautiful old Scottish church with gargoyles on the main steeple—with layered, stacked stone as old as time. The sun peeks out as lovely young ladies jog by in shorts and tennis shoes in the cool morning air. A parade of bikers and tourists saunter by. Inside the café with me is a young couple who sound as if they might be English. An older couple munch on egg biscuits while old retro classic American songs play on the wall speakers. Most of the trees outside are verdant green while others turn bronze in the Fall changeling of seasons. The older couple is most certainly American. Now they are joined by a young couple from India or Pakistan with a small boy and his scooter. This American is sitting with his laptop, running a café tab of—to date—one cup of Americano and one banana. In this moment of sunshine suddenly pouring in over my table for the first time of the day, I am quite content and in love with traveling to such a wonderful place as Edinburgh.

All the trepidation of the pre-trip jitters is gone, the long (and surprisingly enjoyable) flight is over, and I suddenly wish I were wealthy enough to travel every year across the world like this. I feel a good vibe here despite the virtue signaling and politics of this city and country. But politics is secondary when you are on walkabout. Culture is culture, Rome is Rome, and you can immerse yourself in the detachment of it as a casual traveller, and I’m on holiday--glad to be free of the cultural warfare happening back home (it is an election year) for a few days. We got a good start to our journey with a friendly Pakistani taxi driver named Akir who took us here from the airport. He spoke with Joyce about the towns she had visited 20 years ago, Lahore and Islamabad, and he gave me a best-of driving lesson that topped the tank of all the YouTube videos I had watched before the trip. Akir gave us the extra nuances of choosing the correct lane and turn signaling while navigating roundabouts that run clockwise in Scotland. Everything is in reverse on the roadways, but it seems like an easy brain switch to make with all the highway survival that we do naturally in America. Akir was friendly and helpful and seemed to enjoy sharing his advice on travel and how to drive here. He liked helping us immerse. Akir has lived in the UK for 17 years but returns to Pakistan now and then to let his children know their grandparents.

The “Indian” family in the café have now moved out on the patio to sit with some other friends who arrived later. No cell phones to distract them; just children playing on the sidewalk and bright sunshine and laughter among friends. Now the streets are bursting with pedestrians, bikers, and runners. Edinburgh is a little bit of heaven, a fragment of paradise on a perfect day. You will have to excuse my euphoria; it seemed to come out of nowhere. The automobile traffic is now quite intense. It seems almost everyone says hello to everyone walking along the streets. I’ve only been in Edinburgh for one night’s sleep and I’ve fallen for this city. Though I have only walked four blocks in two days, I love this tiny urban area south of the downtown area. Endless rows of brownstone structures line the street with trees everywhere. Remnants of cobblestone and stone composite give character to the asphalt and concrete. There is a softness as well as a timelessness to this town.

I’m ordering another Americano, so I should be nicely wired up by the time Joyce arrives. The coffee is quite good here. Now we are listening to “Love Was Made for Me and You.” The crooners on the playlist just keep on coming. I flipped my ball cap around backwards and feel like a kid again even as I soak up the 1960s songs from better times in America. It is easy to forget how divided our country was back in the 1960s as I sit here today. But the seething politics of my homeland now seem a long way away. I shall return to battle again when I return, but the walkabout is good for the soul. It clears the mind, takes you away and back in time. Here in my safe vantage in the back corner of the cafe, I can watch the endless array of people from two points of view out of two sets of giant glass windows. The people-watching is superb. I can feel my everyday life fading away more each moment.

I wonder if I should wrap this up for the day and see if I can bring home some coffee and breakfast to Joyce before she arrives. Or should I just wait and take her to the church after we have eaten here? Decisions, decisions--and now I have decided thanks to the venue, the people, and the music. Even as the clouds roll in for a typical Scottish shower, I shall stay on here and enjoy and wait for Joyce to come. She will figure it out and be glad she came to drink good coffee and eat hot breakfast here in the café with me. She will come when she is ready, which is perfect timing, since I don’t want to go anywhere. And it is no wonder the streets are buzzing; it is Sunday, and Mayfield Salisbury Parish Church is about to go into session. I see a well-dressed old gentleman standing on the front patio of the cathedral wearing a jacket and tie, shaking the hands of incoming visitors. It is a good day to be a church in Edinburgh. I think it might rain soon, but that is how things go in the north of UK, yes?

As I sit here alone, I am content just as I was when I traveled solo in Iceland. You think times could not be better traveling like this. And yet here I am because of Joyce, the woman who taught me the ways of wanderlust and travel. The guy who would rather just be closer to home away from the stressors of packing is here alone and glad for it but also glad to be waiting for her to swing in as she may. She will find a more relaxed gentleman today despite two cups of coffee coursing through my wiring harness. The neuro-receptors are swimming in caffeine, a factor in my happy state of mind. That and getting 11 hours of sleep after only two on the plane across the pond. I suppose good rest has something to do with it. But I think it is more about being in Edinburgh. Looking across at the church, listening to old songs playing on the radio, watching gray skies float in like a dirty blanket, there is a goodness to the spirit here in this place that transcends a cup of coffee. I could spend several more hours here. Joyce will figure out eventually that I’m not coming and join me when ready. I have found my joy here in this wee coffee shop. See what I did there?

Scanning the café, I just spotted a bar with stools along the Ratcliffe Terrace windows, reminding me of another café when we visited Brooklyn. You can sit there with your coffee and watch the world go by at the bar. The café is nearly full now. Three or four cups of joe and two biscuit sandwiches with bacon and egg should put some pounds in the shop owner’s pocket. To finish things out, I bought Joyce a cup of Americano with milk and two Scottish breakfast tacos (she slept in after all). When I left the café, a woman with a French accent was singing “As Time Goes By” from the famous American movie Casa Blanca. All things considered, a good start in the British Isles.

And now it is Monday morning back at the Earl Grange Café again surrounded by people all around me. The only small empty table in the room sits next to me on the other side of a large indoor palm tree. A gaggle of ladies sit across the way next to the plate glass fronting West Mayfield. Two other women chatter to my right. I already blessed the one directly next to me after she sneezed quietly. On my walk over from our hotel I thought I heard a great horned owl hooting over the rooftops (it turned out later to be mourning doves with a Scottish accent), and I was reminded by the squawks of seagulls that this remarkable city sits by the sea. We should have a look at the coast today or tomorrow. Yes, tomorrow after we pick up our rental car, perhaps a dive to the coast near Oban before heading to Stirling then Glencoe. Or maybe someplace else. That kind of thinking shall become a theme during this journey.

I had some good Americano black coffee after ceremoniously lifting the saucer to smell it then slurp. Then soon thereafter I added a spot of milk until it was dark mud brown and delicious. Meanwhile the streets are alive with traffic—in cars, on bicycles, and on foot. The temperature is so nice that the shop owners have propped open the front door, letting in some cool air. So I’m back here in my favorite café in Scotland so far. I think I could spend another week in Edinburgh, sinking into the calmness of the culture and slowing down a bit to see more of it. I would stay right here in Newington. The two nice ladies are leaving and confirmed our whereabouts on the south side of Edinburgh via an internet neighborhood map on my phone.

So yesterday was a great start. We walked six miles all told, mostly on the hilltop where Edinburgh Castle has sat for some 1000 years. The castle grounds are immense and beautiful, the castle built of stone right into the rocks of the mountain. The old cannons and steel grates of the ramparts are still there with views on all sides of the Holyrood Park hills to the east, the Firth of Forth (a bay that flows into the North Sea) to the north, and some beautiful mountains off to the south. I got a picture of the views, often through stained glass or the emplacements of the artillery pieces stationed all around the epicenter. We even found a panic room inside the main castle where queens and kings hid during battles that raged outside the stone walls that protected them. There is a deep history about this place, including the castle itself. I’m no history buff, but I could feel the years stretching back toward pre-history inside the dungeons where prisoners of war (even from the American Revolution) were held in dank squalor. I took a picture of the actual prison door where an American patriot prisoner had carved a crude picture of the American flag. That one is suitable for framing for yanks like me.

I just ordered up my first cuppa “flat white” here at the Earl Grange. A flat white is something like a cortado on steroids. Two shots of espresso with cream milk; that should send me down the highway of neuroplastic pyrotechnics. A cortado is equal parts espresso (one shot) and foamed milk—so a flat white has twice the firepower. I was chattering like a squirrel in a tree above a cat in the yard by the time I left the coffee shop. So my first couple of days began with enchantment in an old city and a café. But that was nothing compared to what lay ahead.

What else can I tell you about the landmark castle of Edinburgh? It is like a miniature city on a hill rising out of a city. Brick and cobblestone roads and walkways everywhere; crowds pressed in on you in many places, especially the Royal Palace; small gatherings of tourists around tour guides giving snapshots of history in each spot; dogs on leashes; cars beeping to get past you while you stand in the roadway (because you forgot to notice you were standing in the castle’s street); little shops and mini cafes; and an endless array of vistas in every direction. The oldest building in the castle property was St. Margaret’s Chapel, dated around 1130 AD. The chapel was small and cozy with some beautiful stained-glass art for windows and a small altar with another larger pane of colored art. Near the chapel was a dog cemetery off the edge of a cliff where queens of old buried their pets. From the vantage there, you could see a row of old tombstones for the ancient canine bones. Beyond the outer walls where we stood, you could see the long vista of the sea in a 180-degree panorama. There is so much more to remember and tell. But today it is time to sit and drink coffee with breakfast. Joyce just arrived at the Earl Grange Café.

On Tuesday morning, we awakened to pack and head for the rental car place near Edinburgh airport where our journey to the Scottish Highlands begins. I am guessing I should be rather good at turn signals and roundabouts in the first hour. Our plan is to make our way to Stirling to do a load of laundry and pick up some basic staples at a grocery, perhaps check out the Wallace Memorial tower and any other places Joyce wants to see before heading northwest into what appears on maps to be rugged territory on our way to Glencoe and Fort William. My hope is to see some northern lights tonight at our small cabin in the dark night skies of the country. The weather service says the end times of a solar flare should still give us a chance at seeing nighttime electrons in the northern sky. Not a good chance, but we shall see.

We are mostly packed as I sit on the bed with Joyce napping beside me here at our Edinburgh Bala House Inn. The custodians are a family business of Irish and Indian descent. The innkeeper, Nadia, still has an Irish accent and is most helpful and friendly and keeps a clean, tight ship. If time had permitted, I would have liked another flat white--a cuppa electric-isotope coffee as smooth as satin and strong as used motor oil. I shall have another few cups of this concoction during the trip. In the meantime, we just propped open the bedroom door to let in some cool air.

Yesterday we went back into the heart of Edinburgh and spent the highlight of the day up on Calton Hill on the eastern edge of the Royal Mile. What a beautiful vantage of the old city with distant views of churches and spires and the Scott Monument, which is the most unique and beautiful attraction of the city in my opinion. More on that to follow. Up on Calton Hill we had a nearly 360-degree view of the seaside to the north, the city to the west, and Holyrood Park and the notable anvil of a mountain just south of us rising like a green wedge from the city’s edge. Arthur’s Seat is up on that ridge. The mountain rises at the eastern edge of Edinburgh as a reminder of the rough topography on which the city has lived for centuries. On Calton Hill is the National Monument, a partially completed row of Greek columns (an attempt to replicate the Parthanon in Athens); a Babylonian-looking tower; and several other old domed edifices. On the north side again is the long view of the port and seaside of the old city. Seagulls, which can be seen soaring over the downtown like vultures, are everywhere. Tourists and local families lay on the cool grass at Calton Hill Park with children or dogs. Bright red berries in wild holly trees speckle through the park, and oak trees were starting ever so slightly to change colors from green to bronze. Two young Japanese men (one of whom was quite large, like a Sumo wrestler) allowed me to help them climb up the steep steps to the Parthanon-looking structure, then they helped me up as well. While I stood between two mighty columns, Joyce took two Herculean pictures of me in various mock poses of manliness. Then the Japanese fellows and I helped each other down with reciprocal thank you’s and glad to meet you’s and then shook hands adieu.

The cityscape to the south and west was a time machine of architecture without the tall cylinders of glass-filled skyscrapers of other cities. You look across both space and time here in Edinburgh. We did not make it to Arthur’s Seat, but from where we stood on the southern flank of Calton Hill, we were able to view the grandeur of Holyrood Park Mountain, and that was just fine and beautiful for me.

After Calton Hill, we walked some more in downtown Edinburgh along Princes Street to get some cash from an ATM at the Bank of Scotland, then we made our way back to the Scott Monument for an intimate experience of this strange and unique structure. Of all the beautiful cathedral spires peppered across the city, this monument seems the most primordial and strange, like a medieval skyward arrangement of scaly daggers of stone welded together high into the sky and with a lone white marble sculpture of Sir Walter Scott in the center at the base. If the Eifel Tower is the symbol of Paris, the Scott Monument is its counterpart for Edinburgh. The Scott Monument rises like a dragon tail into the heavens to remind us that beauty and God and pagan witchcraft are blended here as the heartbeat to a prehistoric place.

Driving on the Left to the High Country

We left Edinburgh on Tuesday in a high-tech Kia “Ceed” hatchback that burned petrol (what Brits call gasoline) and sported an automatic transmission and onboard GPS system we paid extra for. I never did figure out how to use the GPS system, but it was there in case of emergencies. Considering the broad-spectrum remoteness of the areas to which we planned to drive, I was not interested in an all-electric vehicle. When we pulled out of the rental-car car park, I thought I was ready for the nuances of driving on the left side of the road and reversing my mental switchyard for mirrored roundabouts, but that was not entirely true. Though most of my driving was quite sound, it took nearly our entire drive through the mountains of Glencoe before gaining any real sense of certitude where our location was within the lines of our left lane. The perspective of the right-hand steering wheel on the near side of the center lane was not an easy translation even though I experience the same thing in reverse in America all the time. Driving on the right in America with the steering wheel side of the cabin so near the center line is so commonplace that it feels like breathing. Here in Scotland, the oncoming traffic--which is often a giant lorry or bus—is instinctively a bit threatening to my brain stem, making me naturally wanting to veer to the safety of the lefthand curb, which I hit at least a dozen times along the way, perhaps double that number. During my pre-trip research and YouTube video training and conversations with other tourists, I had learned that this phenomenon is common, and I did get a sense late yesterday (today is Wednesday) of my neuromuscular memory of safety within my own lane.

What I did not anticipate, which turned out to be a blessing and a curse, was the many high-tech safety gadgets designed into the car that were constantly dinging, beeping, and flashing at me all the time, telling me I was on this or that side too far in my lane, or speeding, or alerting me to a change in the speed limit. Most of these features were helpful, but the endless reminder of the green flashing car icon on my dashboard telling me to adjust my location in my lane was a great distraction for me and created extra anxiety even as my experience gained traction. The truth is, the little dashboard icon was probably correct in pure terms and often preceded my hitting or at least brushing the curb on the left soon after flashing. Other times I noticed a pulling against my own tactile steering as the vehicle seemed to sense I was unstable and enabled some sensor-driven oversteering mechanism that helped guide me back into the center of the lane. For all I know, this mechanical and electronic guidance system helped prevent an accident, but I was not expecting all these features to assault my normal learned behaviors from my previous experience. My own vehicle back in Texas, a Toyota Tundra pickup, is 22 years old and has none of the technology of this late-model Kia.

I think I shall read the book from the rental car before venturing out today to gain a better understanding of the safety features, to take advantage of their utility as well as soften the anxiety. If I am honest, I could easily find myself getting wound up in the disturbance of the technology versus my instincts. Late yesterday, I got into a good rhythm of my old self, sensing a new upsurge of confidence. There is no sense in shattering that confidence with some overthinking here in my travel journal. It is also comforting, especially now, to know that this veering to the left is a common occurrence with blokes like me (see what I did there again?). Just remember to stay to the left, let the steering wheel pull against my hands just a bit, and keep driving—and the normalcy and confidence will grow. I read the Kia user manual, and the steering-wheel control and the flashing lights are working correctly. The extra power assist was there to help me not drive out of the lane. I suspect the parameters are set to tight tolerances and that I was not in that grave of danger at the time the features were engaged. I want to test the flashing dashboard cluster behavior a bit more—then get on down the road.

Onward to Glencoe and a Croft Cabin

All that said, the drive from Edinburgh through Stirling—where we did our laundry at a mobile station for about $20 USD and stopped briefly to see the top of the famous Wallace Monument peeking from the tops of trees—and especially through the mountains that rose up around us as we approached and traversed the Glencoe Valley were fantastic and dreamlike. So many superlatives, so little time. The views were filled with majestic ranges of mountains cast in brown and green velvet with rivers here and lochs there. I could have filled up my phone with pictures had my hands not been so tightly gripped on the steering wheel. If the Isle of Skye is the most beautiful part of Scotland, that will be quite a feat to compare with Glencoe. I am grateful Joyce chose to put Glencoe on our primary itinerary. We shall return to the valley of Glencoe today to experience it again in more measured and awe-inspired fashion, stopping for the panoramas we surely missed yesterday, doing some hiking, and picking up a good cup of coffee somewhere along the way. Even as I write this, the thought of returning to the place (Glencoe Valley) in which fear and anxiety ruled my mind yesterday is filled with some genuine excitement. Glencoe promises to be a highlight of this trip. I’ve seen it once already from the periphery of my right-hand driver’s seat. Today driving will normalize, but the mountains, rivers, and lochs await as a reminder that heaven does exist on Earth.

After reading the Kia user manual, I set my jaw and attitude straight and we left late morning to drive back to Glencoe Valley. We stopped in a lovely curio and bookstore and eatery for lunch on the way and had some wonderful grub and two cups of coffee. I had my second flat white cuppa, which was delicious. The café shop was doing a good piece of business and had arrays of local art and photographs for sale on commission on the walls. It seems inflation has hit worldwide. Two sandwiches and two cups of coffee plus tip came to GBP 24, which translates to about $32 USD I’d guess. Let me check: close enough at $31.74. That is an expensive lunch snack and cup of coffee for two! But I did enjoy the cheese and Lorne sausage on a roll. This “sausage” was made from a mixture of minced beef, rusk or fine breadcrumbs, and spices. I highly recommend this common Scottish meat with or without catsup.

To continue the driving story, having read the book, I realized that my first day of driving was an ignorant blend of sensory overload with all the different alert sounds and the flashing green lights on the dashboard cluster that were all telling me I was either entering a new speed limit zone, I was breaking the speed limit, I was about to drive left or right of the middle of my lane—as well as the constant tugging and pulling of the invisible hands of the electronics trying to correct me this way or that on the highway. And all the time—especially during the first day—I was failing to calibrate and find my visual and spatial sense of the correct aspect of the hood and quarter panels along the visual track of the car in the face of oncoming traffic. As described earlier in the journal, I just did not have the muscle memory and experience to know to trust that the visual approach of vehicles just feet or inches from my right elbow would be safe. When you are in the driving zone, as I have been for some 55 years in America, you just drive and trust that the sensory dome around you will be safe, the oncoming traffic will pass you by.

Yesterday, Wednesday, was the breakthrough I was hoping for. After a good talking to with myself and soaking up the engineering of the fancy new Kia features, I began to trust not only my motor memory and location in the lane, but I realized the automatic steering with which I had been fighting against (and over compensating, oversteering) on the first day, the complex systems of navigation, steering, and functional alerts—were my friends and not my enemies. It was good to understand that all these features were normal operation and there to protect me (to a point). So I allowed myself to drift more to the right and “notice” how the cars and gigantic lorries were passing me by without utter destruction. I loosened my tight grip on the steering wheel as it tugged me this way or that—still holding on and at the ready to adjust manually when I saw oncoming vehicles that were obviously too close to the centerline or crossing into my lane—and found the green lane-keeping assist icon would stabilize and hold steady as she goes. I began feeling the old familiar aspect of the steering wheel on a point in the lane ahead where it should be—and found that I was driving through long stretches of curves and straightaways without jarring sounds nor a flashing of lights. It all settled in nicely again. And the gentle auto-steering of the wheel became a trusted amigo as well. What had started as a gordian knot of too much information became a borg-like assimilation of technology, trust, and innate human skills. You still must drive and take command when pedestrians or other drivers do stupid things but allow technology to give you a hand. I give myself some credit for all this, but knowledge has its merit. When you understand what is happening and why the multitudinous sounds and flashes and tugs are doing what they will, well, it allows you to trust the world of the highways and be king of the road again.

And that, my friends, is all I want to say about that rubbish—for now.

As for the rest of our Wednesday, we took a nice hike in the Signal Rock and An Torr on our way from Fort William to the Glencoe Valley and found a delightful collection of nice paths along babbling brooks (which come at you from everywhere seeping out of the rocks of the hills) and a rushing river below a wooden walking bridge. The vegetation was alien and beautiful with ferns and mosses gathered about on trees, roots, rocks, and soil wherever you looked. Verdant landscapes were near and far with mountains rising in all directions made of stone. You can now see how up close what is at your feet can paint such velvet pictures of entire mountain ranges along the distant vistas while driving through them. And the colors themselves were quite varied. As Fall is beginning, I note a range of yellow and green and reddish vegetation as you gaze upward along mountain faces from base to peak. Though we have enjoyed almost perfect weather on our trip thus far, you can tell the rainfall here is common. Along the way on our hike, we met many friendly folks with their friends and families. We picked up two sturdy walking sticks along Signal Rock to steady ourselves and even kept them in the back of our car for future hikes in Skye and Inverness. I can remember keeping walking sticks during my youth as well, perhaps a sentimental hording streak. Or maybe it is a guy thing.

After our little hike, we jumped in the car to drive to a high vista described in our Rick Steves travel book at one end of the Glencoe Valley and sit in the warm sunshine looking across the vast panorama of the entire glen below, where a loch sparkled and the mountains themselves sparkled with diamond necklaces of tiny brooks dropping from summit to the bottomlands. The mountains rose up all around us and then fell away into the west as we gazed at the highway snaking its way toward us from where we had just driven a half hour before. Tiny families of people hiked along a path far below our vantage as we sat together on a large block of granite. On such a fine sunny day, we simply soaked up the rays and the warmth in a light breeze to take it all in. I took several photos and realized later—just as it was at Edinburgh Castle and its amazing views—there is nothing quite like putting your phone in your pocket and feeling it all with your senses, seeing the grandeur no camera can quite capture. One might say this place would be a good one to be an eagle and soar over such a fine spectacle of heavenly beauty. The greens and blues and white puffs of clouds overhanging the loch in the distance are reminders of the gratitude of eyesight on a bonnie day in the hills of Scotland. To fly through it would be fine.

Back at our Croft Cabin near Fort William we ate some chicken soup and dry toast and watched the guinea hens poking their heads around corners, chirping to each other, while sparrows and songbirds flitted through the firs overhead outside. I set my alarm for 1am tomorrow morning to go outside again to try and catch the northern lights. No luck again last night, but I shall keep looking every night it is not raining. As I ramp down my writing for the day, I was alerted by the roar of a military fighter jet that just flew over the cabin. In the childlike exuberance I learned from my mother, I dashed outside too late to see the aircraft. The owner of the establishment was outside with her friend’s Bassett hound and tells me the jets come over all the time in ones, twos, and fours.

There is something special about this Croft Cabin sitting in the shadow of Ben Nevis, the tallest mountain in the UK. The location sits at the end of a one-lane country lane that feeds into several small crofts (segments of old farms) in the countryside and yet not too far from Fort William. The cabin is clean and cozy and full of lovely art that shows the pride of its owner in such a beautiful rural land. The host says the family croft goes back a long time, so you can feel her caring hand and welcome in every room and amenity. I can imagine myself coming here to hire out her cabin for months at a time to sit and write and gaze out the picture window at the shoulders of Ben Nevis. Tiny songbirds flit in and out of the pine trees and sing their welcoming of the Fall. The property sits just below an old radio tower, and you feel as if you have fallen into another time and place far from the rush of the cities.

The stars here are bright at night. The days move along without any cares. The croft waits for you in the evenings while the Big Dipper and North Star remind you of the irrelevance of your location on the Earth in its tiny place in the galaxy; the constellations are still there no matter where you are standing. As with my thoughts in Edinburgh, I could stay here in this special place for weeks at a time if I had enough money. This feeling is a common theme during this holiday walkabout—wishing I were rich so that I could stay here a little longer. It is unrealistic to expect daily life and work to fit into such a mindset, but there is something to be gained by allowing a holiday to wash away your cares. You can find the present here. Here you can put time and place and worries in a box. Here you can partition the challenges of life on either side of tomorrow and yesterday. Somewhere on the inside edges of those bookends is right now. Tough days will come, but you can choose to be present and build strength and courage for the challenges. In the meantime, you smell the fresh air and watch red maple leaves flutter to the ground.

Yesterday was Thursday and I got another day of driving under my belt, feeling my sea legs sprout without being cocky. I even drove with one hand while eating an ice cream cone and simply allowed the robotic steering system to pull me through several curves without incident. So things are looking up in the driving department. We stopped by the same café as the other day to have some good drip coffee versus the bitter and sometimes tasteless cringe of the local instant coffees we have been experiencing in the various lodgings here in Scotland. I have become accustomed to the rich and flavorful cups of fresh ground coffee through a paper drip cone back home. The coffee shops here have been consistently delicious brewhouses, to be fair, but expensive. You can figure $3.50 to $5 (after the conversion from GBP currency) per cup for a good one here in Scotland.

I would be remiss not to mention the people we have met and visited with all along our journey in this small nation. Of special note are our current hosts here at the Croft Cabin just north of Fort William. The lady who runs the operation, Christine, has been a joy to chat with as well as her father (or brother), Allen, who helped us get into the cabin when the heat of the day caused swelling in the wood and made the lock stick. We had several good chats with friendly exuberance. Christine and Allen blended a small-business venture in such a welcoming way. We also enjoyed the sweetness of Obi, the Bassett hound. Obi was curious, friendly, and wanted to sit on one’s foot while you petted him. I decided to give him a “Star Wars” nickname before we were done: Obi Hound Kenobi. Obi’s tail would wag before he bounded over to get some scratches under his ears. He especially liked a tug at his chin somewhere below the folds of his floppy jowls.

The people here have been generally friendly everywhere we go, including tourists and the locals who will gladly answer a question about this bus route or that or whether the petrol dispenser shuts off automatically when the car’s fuel tank is full like back home in America (it does). Complete strangers can tell when a yank asks an earnest question. Most just smile and help freely. In Edinburgh, more than thrice did complete strangers either give us help on which bus line to take while standing at a bus stop or when to jump off the bus to reach our destination while en route. You learn to appreciate the small stuff when you are so far away from home.

As for our itinerary yesterday, we drove back to Glencoe Village for coffee and then off to a lovely small hike around a small lake that reminded us both of Walden Pond (another special place we have shared south of Concord in Massachusetts). The day was fine, a bit cool in the deep mountain wooded shade, but otherwise perfect. We walked around the lake on a wide flat trail in the park called The Lochan Trail just northeast of the village. The only hiccup was phoning in our parking ticket for the day, but we got past it. The ordeal took 15 minutes of failures before finally getting accepted at a price of 3.20 pounds, but the alternative could have been much worse. The signs said failure to pay could come with a 50-pound fine.

The walk was gentle, mainly because we chose the lighter route. Another more rugged trail takes you to the top where there are presumably some good views, but we stuck to the flat encirclement around the small loch. The park was full of wild holly and tall conifers and several other deciduous trees that could have been cousins to aspens, which fluttered down yellow or brown leaves in random, lazy patterns. Fall snowflakes fell along a lake with lily pads and moss carpet everywhere. Ducks swam along the shore in packs of one and three. The Lochan Trail Park was a peaceful place with mountains rising in the distance.

After returning to the cabin yesterday, we cooked up our dinner and then took a nice walk in the coolness of the sunset. At the end of the lane we finally found Chirstine’s three Highland Cows (the Scottish call them Hairy Coos) rummaging in the reeds and grass near the southern fence line. These rangy beasts are larger than I had expected. They are full sized cattle but with the signature long bangs hanging over their brows between the horns—to protect their eyes from insects and the brutal cold of Winter. The cows could have cared less about us and ignored my clicks and whistles. Doubtless they have seen a thousand tourists such as us. But at least we got to see our Highland Cows in person while in Scotland.

The Isle of Skye: Transitions to Another World

And then we drove to the Isle of Skye to find the Skye Coorie Cabin along the shores of the lower decks of Breakish near Broadford along the southeastern wing of the island. That was Friday. Today is Saturday on a fine morning indeed.

Jolly good show, thought the young man looking out the glass panes at the sea making its slow rush into the machair. Just outside, the sunshine slanted into glassy waters as a stork stalked its prey on the banks of the bog and a tall man stood on his paddleboard sliding east. The mountains rise in the soft haze of the horizon. On the far side of the inlet sit rows of ancient stones the size of small steel shipping containers stacked and scraped and sanded by millions of years of tidal flows in and out every day. The young man could see the westward flow of the strong currents coming in on the high tide from the Strait of Minch on the outskirts of the North Atlantic.

When we arrived yesterday midafternoon (today is Saturday), the machair (a boggy marshland) was a broad flat of mud with a tendril of what looked to be a stream running down the middle. I would guess the machair is 400 to 600 yards across, so the expanse of it looked like the lake bottom of Lake Travis back in Austin when the rains have stayed away for months. The most fascinating, if impressive, thing to note about this place is the immense change created by the tides. By the evening, the entire machair was full to the brim all the way up to our back landing as if a flood had arrived that filled the entire channel. Sitting here now just after 9am, the large white Jon boat that was aground when we arrived sways in the strong current against the tie lines, and the tidal flow cuts around the boat with such force that small wavelets fan out to reach for the shore. The suddenness of the inlet flooding during the day is remarkable, almost eerie, to think of a flatland mud channel the width of three football fields filling and rising 18 feet twice per day.

We discovered the sea-facing windowpanes are pointing true north, so all a mate needs to do to check on any aurora activity (I am still trying to see it for the first time since visiting Iceland and now Scotland) is walk to the back window and look outside in the middle of the night. You can see the Big Dipper and North Star right outside the glass. Once again, I am reminded of the constancy of the stars no matter where you are. Today we shall see about driving up the peninsula to see The Storr and do some walking in Portree. We may also take a jaunt southeast to Torrin and Elgol to spy the Black Cuillin Hills from afar.

What else can I tell you about Lower Breakish? As with so many places we have already seen, the setting here along the sea with the 180-degree views of distant mountains is quite rugged with plentiful flora and a beautiful potted garden all around the cabin. The hosts have a dog, two cats, and four chickens, so it is an interesting place to be. Our host Lori says the coastal birds here, as well as chickens and cats and all types of small wildlife, will on occasion make a mad dash up the banks of the machair when a wildlife community alert goes out that a sea eagle is on the hunt in the area. That should be something to watch. The area also has local seals and a lone otter, so the native wildlife lives in equilibrium with the domesticated animals. It is an everyday battle for survival even for the resident cats here, it seems. It is understood that nature will do what she will, and we humans are here to struggle and enjoy it in even measures. I just took a step outside to get another breath of air to be joined by two chickens who seemed unphased by my presence. One of the hens walked up to me and began pecking gently at my shins as if it were eating bugs off the ground. Perhaps a good sign it is time for a shower. I can still hear their beaks pecking away at the wooden decking just outside the door.

I suppose the interactions between canine, feline, and chicken have long since settled into a state of benign hatred or coexistence at the least. Doubtless the ferocity of the chickens is more than a cat wants to take on considering smaller fare chirping in the bushes.

The sea rolled in like a river. The currents came strong with seaweed and flotsam like armies of cold alligators coming into the mud flats to roost or to hunt. On either side of the main flow of seawater coming in from the Minch in the east were gatherings of flotsam islands painting the water near the shore’s edge. Boats moored with strong ropes weaved and bobbed against the current as sunshine lanced in from the tops of the hills where the morning sun rose. They were glad to be home again in their wee cabin on the briny inlet hidden from the rest of the world. Nary an electric light across the morning bay last evening. Nothing could be built there anyway. Just rocks and mud between them and the old mountain ranges off on the horizon. Nothing but pure darkness after nightfall. That is where the land ends and the Milky Way begins, where the Big Dipper points north as a centerpiece to the view. That is where she wanted to live for the rest of her life with her wee child and husband and her four chickens. Two cats and a dog were the guardians of the land. No amount of rain would chase her away, because this was her land and her country. She left the other world in the cities behind to become one with it at last.

Angelica McCree sipped her cup of tea and watched another crocodile swim by. She had worked hard for her degree, but engineering and the bustle of Glascow and Londen had not suited her. The high-tech life was not for her; it was not her DNA, and she was smart and lucky enough to know it early enough to come back home and build a new life and family off the side streets of a one-lane road. This is where the sea inhales and exhales twice a day. Angelica breathed with it now.

Yesterday we made the loop around Trotternish peninsula, and it was a fine day of driving and hiking. Today is Sunday on the Lower Breakish. The sea makes its slow flood across the machair again on a cool sunny morning. On the drive around the peninsula, we saw sights that would have been terrifying to some but were simply breathtaking and beautiful at every turn on the sometimes one-lane roads. One could speak of the agoraphobic panoramas on the edges of cliffsides, but the landscapes here are so grand and the views like soft clay sculptures cut with a putty knife towards the oceans below. On one turn is a mountain range soaring up to your left; on another, the endless views of blue ocean just beyond the hills and islands and cliffs of velvet overlooking basalt rock beaches that glisten in the sun. We stopped at The Storr to hike up part of the way to the iconic rock before my dizziness and unsteady legs told me to turn back. It was no emergency, but one does well to listen to his body’s signals while exercising in a strange land. I was reminded of this on the large metal gates on our way into the hiking trail: It said to call 999 for emergency then ask for the Police to be transferred to Mountain Rescue. That gets your attention.

On our way to the peninsula, we stopped in Portree for a walk around town center and down to the seaport where fishing boats and tour ships depart daily. We had flat white and Americano coffee with breakfast rolls and a bagel at a nice coffee shop in Broadford to start the day. Once again, I had some delicious Lorne sausage on a roll with “brown sauce” and catsup. The former was like barbecue sauce from Texas. And you can never go wrong with catsup on a minced beef square chunk of meat on a bun. I want to get on with our travels, so I shall cut short the journal here for now. Doubtful, but I can fill in the gaps from memory later, perhaps on the long plane flight back home to Texas. As yet, the adventure here is much stronger than the homesickness, though we both miss Stella.

Happy Monday to you on this gray day on Skye, our last planned day to be here. We shall pack out around 11:30am or so to head for the Fairy Pools to the west after checking out at our cabin. We shall hike to the pools on this overcast day, the first cloudy day of mention since coming to Scotland. We saw some stray showers in Edinburgh on the first day but have had almost perfect weather the rest of the way. They say we have been lucky, and at least one local thanked us Texans for bringing good sunshine and “summerlike” days. (Summer here, it should be noted, is celebrated by locals wearing shorts and T-shirts in temperatures ranging between the upper 40s and the lower 60s. More than once on our journey did I have a chat with someone so attired, myself wearing a puffy coat, stocking cap, and gloves.) Before sitting down here to write with a cup of coffee, I watched Mable, the host’s ginger cat hunting for her quarry outside the window. She took a glance at me through the looking glass when I jostled the window handle, then she made her way off to the west through tunnels in the grass to hunt and seek her best fortunes. Stepping out on the back patio to watch the sea tidal flows coming in yet again, I listened to the roosters crowing and the crows cawing nearby. This country is always not too far from the wild, and that is settling for one’s soul. The domesticated animals are just this side of being carried away at any time by an osprey. The people live and commune together to make it through tough times and merry ones.

On our way to the northwest corner of the island, we stopped at Dunvegan Castle, a highlight in the tour guides and a lovely landmark in the distance, but I was more intent on seeing the rugged coast. Fortunately, Joyce decided she wanted to pay the exorbitant ticket fees to go inside and visit this grand historical place. It was my feeling all along during this trip that one part of me had certain things I wanted to see, but this was Joyce’s travel holiday, and I was along for the ride (even as the always chauffeur). So we paid our money and went through the large iron gates into a wonderland I am glad to say we experienced. Our first view of the castle around a bend in the cobblestone trail was a vast vista of the structure with a bright field of wildflowers that could have been Springtime along the hill country roads of Texas. Acres of bright colors and delicate flowers filled the foreground. We were off to a good start. We took the walking tour of the castle, which was filled with great views out of windows and of artifacts, maps, paintings, and old photos of the castle itself as well as the people who had lived there.

We saw royal furniture and instruments of war and high society as well as strange doorways that led off to the lower chambers of the castle where servants lived and cooked the food that was brought up to the royal residents there. We saw a few surprises, like the dark corridor where we walked down a small incline to see an opening above us with a creepy lifelike manikin of a servant standing backlit like a ghost holding an outstretched food tray and looking down at us. That was a bone-chilling feeling. In another compartment of the castle was another even darker stone corridor that led to a small chamber where prisoners were lowered into their dungeon prison (with no way out) by a rope to be fed by lowering food and water. The unfortunate prisoners surely languished here until they had served their term or died in squalor. As another theatrically staged vignette, you could peer down into the dimly lit dungeon through yellowed glass to see another manikin of a prisoner sitting on the stone floor below. It reminded me of the prison chambers at Edinburgh Castle. The times of old were not good ones to be an inmate.

After leaving the castle, we made our way to what turned out to be the best part of the castle grounds—the many different thematic gardens in separate sections across many dozens of acres. There were tree gardens, water gardens, a circle garden, walled gardens, and giant rows and rows of ornate flower gardens with fountains and a cornucopia of colors everywhere as well as manicured shaped sub-gardens within other gardens that reminded me of mazes you might find in a Stephen King novel. We went to every garden, hiked among the trees and flowers of the most exotic and wondrous types. I remarked when we left that I was glad we had gone in. Dunvegan Castle was a memory I shall not soon forget. Next up was a visit to another planet.

Neist Point: Where Heaven Falls Through a Mirror

I want to tell you about Neist Point (pronounced Neest Point by locals), a far-away place at the edge of the world that is even more remote than the remotest places we have driven in the last few days. Remoteness is, in fact, the essence of this attraction. This location is known for its lighthouse at the far end of its peninsula sitting on the sea between the Little Minch Inlet and the Sea of the Hebrides. I wanted to come here and see what it felt like on such a beautiful anvil of rock sitting on the borderline between normalcy and the great beyond. The pictures in the books and on the internet show Neist Point as stark, raw beauty, but guidebooks also warn that the hike is long, much longer than one might think to reach the lighthouse beyond the rising land mass in the middle of the peninsula. I had already decided to forego such a long walk to the lighthouse, especially in the allotted time we had to see this place, but my plan was to walk to the edge of the cliffs about halfway there and take pictures of the grandeur and the lighthouse from the vantage of the anvil. What came to be was an overall mind-bending experience that began with the drive in that ended at a parking lot rising on a plateau with immense, fantastic fairytale cliffs of velour on either side and the sea fading into oblivion straight ahead. More on this place soon, but this jaunt was more about a trip inside the mind as well as the body. The story needs to be told at the proper pace.

For several days, I have been honing my driving skills in Scotland with fewer mishaps and more confidence. We have seen several one-lane roads along the way and experienced the friendly and communal sharing of “passing places” where only one vehicle can get by while the other car pulls over to stop--and the drivers wave (or flash headlights) with a “thank you” and “no problem”. This is another example of how the people here have grown to coexist and thrive by showing patience when it is required. Driving in Scotland is a community effort. The guidebooks show pictures of Neist Point that looks like a gentle postcard whereon you might want to pull off the highway and shoot a photo. The guidebooks tell you to go slow and note that the one-lane roads become more numerous. You drive and drive and somewhere along the way between Dunvegan Castle and the Point you realize even the “highways” themselves have become so remote along vast vistas of hillside desert moors that there are no other humans on Earth except for the other cars you encounter now and then. And this is before the real driving adventure even begins.

Somewhere along the line, the roads become one-lane with the merciful and commonplace small pullouts, but as you keep driving, the vistas continue to fan out on both sides as the country-farm fence lines close in—with more and more stretches of blind hilltops with long alleys among the grass that make you wonder where civilization has gone. On several long stretches, you drive up long slopes with no indication of any pullouts, and you realize that if a car or caravan van comes up over a blind hilltop, you may have to back down this very narrow strip of asphalt for an eighth or a quarter of a mile just to find the passing place you just passed and find your safe spot through the rear-viewing cameras just to let the stranger ahead pass. This driving goes on and on, and you wonder if Neist Point—the pretty postcard picture just off the side of the road—is even there. Of course you know it is there, but now your mind is playing tricks and games as you chug onward up the slopes. For most, such mind games may seem silly, but I am also mindful of the position of the sun in the sky and how much daylight is left to find my way back through this maze of give and take to find our Skye Coorie Cabin again along the Lower Breakish at the sea. But the sunshine and the mental picture of this peninsula at the end of the world still beckons me, so we drive on.

All along the way on both the highways and the one-lane roads are livestock, mostly sheep but also some cows, so the entire drive is idyllic and provincial, a simple farming life of rural nature in harmony away from the bustle of any city. All these factors are with you behind the wheel, and you feel free, unencumbered, with trepidation and the occasional panic attack that looms on a sudden overlook just beyond your car door falling away into faraway vistas of lochs and mountain valleys that rise and fall in all directions. I relay these details so you can know that some places, and especially Neist Point, are not just the being there but the getting there as well. These places are not just an off ramp with a car overlook to stop for a moment to take an Instagram post with your phone. You are off in another world barely in reach of civilization with a cell phone, which is your invisible tether of communication with Mountain Rescue and helicopter flights out if you were needing that. The feeling is a blend of wonder and fear as the landscape slides slowly by and you hit a pothole now and then that you can feel through the floorboards. It’s all good, I tell myself; Neist Point is just ahead.

When we finally arrived, the panoramas were indeed spectacular, so I was feeling a strange mixture of relief and concern about where the sun was lowering toward the sea. The mountains off to the south rose up from the coast like sentry posts, and the nearside slopes of green were speckled with white sheep grazing, standing, lying in the sunshine. The parking lot was nearly full, but we found a good spot and I got out with a feeling of anticipation and dread about how much time we had to take our hike. And then we came around to the west where the guidebook postcard stood before us, and it was grand and perfect and otherworldly and terrifying. I offer these emotions to say that a memory worth holding is not always just about peacefulness and contentment. Sometimes you feel an experience most in the polarity of its extremes, and I was feeling a certain maelstrom of it just then. As with so many experiences while traveling near home or abroad, there is no photograph that even gets close to the actual moment of sensing what is there in front of you. As I looked at the dome of rock that I knew hid the lighthouse beyond, I knew instantly that there was no way we could walk to the lighthouse in the amount of daylight we had. But the more crucial moment was when I was able to consume the reality of how immense the landscape was between our vantage and the cliffside dome itself. This is when the grandeur and the terror comingled for me. At the edge of our vantage was the steps down into what felt like an immense maw that dropped out of view several hundred yards, and the drop off was so intense that I could not even bring myself to go near the entrance to the trail stairs down. The pictures in the books do not show how steep the walkway is to get to the lower trail that you can see on the other side of the chasm like a thin pencil line far below—just to get to the nearside anvil-dome. The perspective of a photograph does not capture the feeling here that the firmament we take for granted every day simply drops away into a deep canyon just the other side of that rim.

It was in that moment that I realized that my unsteady legs and balance--coupled with the anxiety that had built up from the drive and the sudden agoraphobic-acrophobic parallax of the view ahead--would not allow me to go any further than this place of awe and beauty right where I stood. I would not get my view from the velvet dome overlooking the sea on all three sides. I would not see the lighthouse with my naked eyes. For a moment, all I wanted to do was take three pictures and get in my car and head back through the gauntlet of the tiny roads to get back to the comfort of the world we had left behind. It is no fun to admit such meanderings of the mind, but Neist Point is burned indelibly in my brain now as the experience of a lifetime even with the imperfections of my original plan. I could have hiked part way down, but the immensity of the surprising landscape dropping away into a miniaturized view like a floating glass snow globe was just too much for me to comprehend. The views from where we stood were spectacular even as the sheep lay nearby chewing their cud to remind me nature was doing just fine that day. I took my three pictures, none of which were of any real merit (you can find the good photos taken by professional photographers on Instagram or the internet, and I encourage you to find them)--but for me, Neist Point was a place truly at the end of the Earth, and its memories shall bounce around inside my mind and soul for the rest of my days. Neist Point is a three-dimensional hologram that is way beyond the realm of any postcard. Sea and land fade to infinity on the horizon, and the earth drops away into a soft forever. One can only imagine how it might be to hike there to the mossy dome or, better yet, to the jetty end of the road where the lighthouse waits. That memory and unfulfilled fantasy shall linger with me always.

Sometimes you adapt to and change your plans (another strong theme as a subtext to this journey). It is a slate gray and windy and cool morning on our last day--a Tuesday--here in the Lower Breakish on the Isle of Skye. We loved this location, host, and cabin so much that we discarded our prepaid first night’s lodging in Inverness and negotiated another stay with Lori here on the edge of the inlet whose tide is coming in again as I write. We took advantage of the extra time on this island to drive to the Fairy Pools northwest of here and took a nice 2-plus-mile hike along a series of running brooks and waterfalls along a valley that rises into the crotch of several beautiful mountain bases. The trails were mostly flat but sometimes challenging for us. But we had our trusty walking sticks that we have been carrying in the car since the Signal Rock back in Glencoe. I have grown fond of these sticks and have a mind to take them home and shellac them for posterity. That is, of course, ridiculous and overly sentimental, but the impulse and the fondness I have for these wooden relics of the trip are there to be enjoyed for another couple of days. The Fairy Pools afforded several nice views of the valleys sprinkled again with local white sheep running on public lands. When sun broke through the cloud deck, the gradient colors of green, brown, and bronze shone brightly along the mountains. The almost constant roaring or babbling of creeks and waterfalls settling into dark pools was a comfort and joy, and we met many nice people and dogs along the way.

After a quick lunch of Thai green lentil soup and fresh bread and a cuppa flat white coffee, we strapped ourselves in to drive rally-race-car style through the backroads to Elgol via Torrin. The countryside here was some of the most pastoral and idyllic I have ever seen with cows and sheep everywhere along the roads. This area to the southwest on Skye is truly like a time machine to another era with lovely homes and small farms everywhere you looked. At Elgol we had hoped to see a good view of the Black Cuillin Hills, but the wind and rain and low cloud deck blocked another photo shoot. From our vantage, you could see below the rocky coastline of this tiny village sitting a few hundred feet below. On a nicer day, I would have liked to drive down to the beach, but we were cold and wanted to head home before darkness fell. The driving on these one-lane roads suddenly became fun for me, reminding me of the times decades ago when my family and I raced off-road in the desert of west Texas near the Mexican border. Whereas my earlier discomfort driving on the highways took some time to adjust, here I felt an old, familiar joy in driving a bit mad just around corners, relishing the challenge of stopping just in time to let other cars pass, anticipating and shape-shifting road space with the other drivers in a symbiotic give and take—but with confidence now and enjoying the sport of it.

So today ends our four-day stay on the Isle of Skye. Without doubt, this place, this cabin, and seeing all four corners of this tiny, fantastic piece of island mountain glory will be my best memories of this trip. I look forward to seeing Inverness and Loch Ness as well as the Culloden battlefields and put my face into the wind of the North Sea. The next two days should be a fun finish to our holiday.

Inverness and an Ancient Battlefield

Hello Wednesday from the south side of Inverness. When we arrived yesterday, I was quite tired from all the driving in the rain. We set out for the Battlefield of Culloden in cold showers and learned a good piece of history about the last Jacobin uprising that ended here in a boggy place between rock walls, Scotland’s last try for freedom from the crown. I found I knew almost nothing of the uprising led by Prince Charles Stuart other than the casual references to it in the historical docudramas on television. We went to the museum and were lucky enough to find a young fellow employed by the National Trust for Scotland, wearing livery of the times, who gave interested tourists a full and lively history of the political climate of the day in the early 1700s that led to the rebellion. He then told the stories of the give and take between the Jacobites and the British until the decisive defeat of the former in the moors of Culloden just east of Inverness. Then we walked in the cold rain to see the battlefield itself. As I dodged mud puddles to keep my shoes and socks dry, feeling the cool air coat my raincoat, and wearing deerskin gloves and a stocking cap (and still feeling cold), I imagined the fierce and brave soldiers who had stood ankle to knee deep in the mud in this cold, unforgiving place to live or die for something greater than themselves—for freedom from the Hanoveran crown. We walked amongst the small headstones with old inscriptions honoring the clans who had fought and died here. Joyce was particularly moved by the sense of the place and said she would have wanted to come here had she had any clan in her family tree.

I was touched by the presence of the outdoor shrine (though not as much as she) even while thinking I wanted to be warm and dry again. The highlight of the battlefield was for me the living history told with some humor by the aforementioned storyteller who brought all the basic facts along with the nuances of the details of the days of old. I have never been a history buff, but this was fun and interesting to learn. It all came with the fee to enter the museum, but I was glad for the stories and now have a better sense of a fragment of Scotland’s central history and why they still live in the realm of the English royal political structure. Scotland is not a sovereign country even today. The internet tells me that Scotland is one of many “home nations” of the United Kingdom along with Wales, England, and Northern Ireland. I’m not so sure I know what that means for Southern Ireland, but that is likely the stuff of more politics and history to learn another day.

When we left the battlefield to return to our room, we were cold and hungry and spent some time driving around southern Inverness looking for a café, pub, or restaurant to have a light dinner but had no success. So then began a search for grocery stores or convenience marts to pick up a bite and stock up for the rest of our stay. We ricocheted about for some time in the city, sling-shotting our way through roundabouts and dodging other cars until we found a Tesco Supermart where we picked up groceries and headed home for the night. We had our light dinner and then fell on the bed under the top blankets to rest and warm cold bones. I cannot remember a time when I have been so exhausted as last night. I suppose it was all the driving in the country and city in the gray rain, managing our routes and helping Joyce as well. I took a warm shower and fell back on the large comfy bed once again. I think we fell asleep for good just before 10pm.

After awakening, I am still a bit tired, mostly unsteady a bit, and have decided this day will be one of rest, shopping, and a hike or two in a nearby city park--perhaps a walk along the River Ness here in Inverness. Rather than find our way to the northeast to see a coastal beach off the Moray Firth (which runs into the North Sea) or back to the Loch Ness, today is a time for calmer activities, with a nice ending celebrating Joyce’s birthday at an Indian restaurant. Tomorrow we are off for our final destination, Moxy Hotel, near Edinburgh airport. On our way, I hope to stop in Perth to see the Fall colors and fill up the tank and drive my last drive of a fantastic two weeks. Today is time to slow down and smell the leaves and immerse myself a bit in this vibrant city on the sea. Slowness will be the dominant theme of the day.

Good Thursday morning on our last day in Inverness. This will be our last full day of holiday in this fine land. We drive back to drop off the car near Edinburgh airport and shuttle to the hotel nearby. On the way, we shall spend a little time around Perth before jumping on the motorway to take us back to the Edinburgh area. I feel a bit tired, though not near the exhaustion of yesterday. On Wednesday we went shopping in Inverness, perused the Inverness Museum, and visited a nice botanic garden where we saw some wonderful and strange plants from tropical to desert to native. Joyce got many good pictures of plants there. After the botanic gardens, we took a nice hike across the River Ness and felt its power surge beneath our feet as we traversed a white iron foot bridge, then wandered among giant conifers and other deciduous trees along wide paths. All the while, as we walked among pine needles and freshly fallen leaves, we could hear the gentle roar of the river just off to our left. The River Ness is fresh and strong and beautiful.

Another highlight of the hike was just standing together near the north end of Ness Island where the River Ness converged from both sides into the main channel of the river off to our left. The sound of the rushing water was peaceful, though the power of so much river coming to us from the north end of Loch Ness to the southwest was impressive (and humbling). There was no doubt that this mighty river was a force of nature there within a stone’s throw.

In the evening and after several failed attempts at getting ride-sharing cars to come, we found a taxi to take us back downtown Inverness to celebrate a special birthday dinner for Joyce (her birthday is tomorrow) in a Kerala-style south-Indian authentic restaurant that we finally located down a dingy alley just off the main roads. You would have thought this alley was for nothing other than trash haul-outs—and in America, you would likely want to have your side arm walking down the thin street before finding the restaurant. The food was exquisite and delicious and even took Joyce back to the days when she visited Kerala in southern India. The nice lady owner of the restaurant knew we did not feel oriented and volunteered where we could find an ample number of cabs to find our way back just around the corner. True to her word, we found a busy location swarming with taxis just across Academy Drive and were whisked along night streets at speeds and skill that made me glad we had hired a driver to get back that evening. He deftly sped through blind corners at rates of speed I would not have attempted at other than at a crippled snail’s pace.

It is time to wrap up our packing and head south. It is doubtful I will have more time to write today.

Reflections on Coming Home

Well, I skipped a couple days in the home stretch before leaving on a giant airplane over the ocean and find myself back home again here in Texas. We were gone for two weeks, but there were many times in Scotland when the cliché rang true: time stood still—or at the least, it slowed down or felt irrelevant. It is Saturday morning after a nice walk along the neighborhood streets of Austin in the cool Fall air. They say it will be in the mid 90s this afternoon, a reminder that even in Fall, days can be warm here. I am grateful for the transition into Autumn as days grow shorter and the weather falls into its best patterns of the year. Leaves are falling here to match the brown color of the dry grasses. It has been dry while we were away, though the catastrophic floods of Hurricane Helene are still being felt across Florida and the South and even up into the Midwest. The latest weather map shows the post-Cat-4 storm still listed as a post-tropical cyclone along the Ohio River near the tip of Indiana. I have not read the full news reports, but many have died with floods hitting North Carolina and Tennessee and millions without power. This was a big badass storm, which we got to feel ourselves in rough air flying over Michigan and Illinois. The storm required about 30 minutes of no bathroom use and lockdowns in our seats with seat belts on inside the cabin of our oversized Airbus airliner.

My last day of journaling about the Scotland trip deserves some moments of reflection on the highlights and the sense of being there, what it was like to be so far away from home again. Fall had just begun during our two-weeks in the Highlands with some bright oranges and reds and brownish-rust bronze colors here and there, but mostly it was still green from the heavy rains of the Summer as told by many locals during our trip. Scotland was a fine blend of friendly, helpful people, dramatic scenery, and sometimes extreme feelings of remoteness that flipped one’s sensibilities now and then. Sometimes I was grateful for the pastoral edginess of a land far away from anything, other times grasping for the normalcy that you know and feel back in your home country. The holiday was a break from anything routine in my life and gave me time to just be present with a foreign and beautiful place away from the raging politics and bifurcated news reporting in America. In fact, I barely saw any news at all and avoided any contact with it except for an occasional glance at Facebook, Instagram, or X to see a salvo or two fly over before pulling myself back into a pristine state of mind. You can feel the ages of time here in Scotland, reflected in the architecture of the cities and the way homes and small-farm fences in the countryside are built from the rocks of the hills formed millions of years ago. The infrastructure of Scotland was in some ways better than in America, and yet, the purity of a timeless landscape was always there, much more rural and distant from the bustling of urban life.

Driving In Scotland was more challenging than I had anticipated even though I got through the main learning moments of shifting my mind to the left side of the road in the first two days. But I never quite achieved complete autonomic driving experientially; I finally found a compromise between my mental muscle memory and the helpful electronic guidance system that tugged gently on my hands now and then—and I simply let the steering wheel guide us, mindful that I was in control when an oncoming bus or lorry was drifting just a wee bit too far on our side of the road. In those moments, I calmly pulled slightly left and ignored the flashing lights and audible warning bells telling me that I was not perfectly aligned in my lane. You learn to trust your car as well as your instincts. The instincts are still there; you simply drive through it and keep going.

It was good for the mind and soul to get away from the “normal” world for two weeks. I maintained some basic routines, such as my medications and walks and brushing my teeth, but otherwise allowed the rest of our time to float on the breadcrumbs of a basic daily itinerary that we sometimes did not decide until the morning of each day. That method seemed to work well for such a type-A personality as myself; it broke the mold of self-imposed obligations in a free-wheeling way of living and thinking that I hope I can take with me going forward. I certainly learned some things about packing lighter the next time I leave the country. Certain things stuffed away inside my main luggage were never touched, though I was glad I had brought along my puffy warm bubble coat—and I occasionally made good use of items that only a Boy Scout would have packed for such a trip.

Scotland (and especially our Highland journey) was all that I had hoped for and more. I shall never forget our trips along Glencoe Valley; driving for miles along the expanse of Loch Ness; the everlasting views of wonder and sometimes fear along the byways of the Isle of Skye; and the simple life that sauntered just as it had centuries ago along one-lane roads for miles and miles of wondering where the farms ended and the horizons began; where you could see cattle and sheep like Christmas ornaments on hillsides just about wherever you drove or looked; and where people lived their lives far away from the madding world even as a war was being fought not that far from us. You must dodge a pothole here or there or perhaps a cow chewing a mouthful of grass with its face inches from your window, but other than playing friendly pullover chess with other cars, you can forget that the rest of the world is still a dangerous place; you can keep driving and find yourself at any given moment as if the Earth and heavens are giving you the views you can scarcely imagine. You certainly could not have expected that one view just off to the left, whether it drops away onto a basalt-black beach far below or a mountain range so vast and beautiful that you could not have expected it, much less painted or photographed it.

Trying to capture it in any case—by paint, picture, or prose—is a worthy endeavor, but the grandeur of Scotland is as elegant and vast as my memories of Iceland. While my recollections of Iceland were its raw beauty and otherworldliness, Scotland is also that way but more of an adventure inside a time machine with sudden moments of grandeur that reminded me of how the Earth was before time was a concept. While Iceland was primordial, Scotland stands between the eons that you can feel on either side of history and pre-history in the cities and towns and in the rugged terrain from which civilization sprang. On one side is the thumbnail of a castle; the other a vista where dinosaurs walked. Edinburgh itself is such a monument of this phenomenon rising from mountains that are often the foundation of man-made structures. Some of the best and most startling moments often came without warning around the bend of a mountain base: a drop off to a valley or another of a view of a loch sandwiched between two more peaks; a wee cobblestone farm with a sudden view through gray vapors of the mighty Black Cuillin Hills standing starkly above us like the Teton Mountains partially shrouded in fog; the thin, lone road up the hill with a drop-off into a long valley filled with sheep right before the vastness of the Minch ocean opened up at Neist Point; the cold and rainy flashback into time on an ancient battlefield near Culloden; the shimmer of a river or waterfall simply falling out of the black rocks just off to your left, and you didn’t want to look right because that drop-off view was too frightening; and the constant reminders of ancient times visiting museums and castles oozing with history.

Some moments you do well just to keep your hands on the wheel and keep the car between the lines while the landscape of an unworldly place falls off on both sides; other times, you slow down to wave at an old local couple walking with canes at the edge of the lane and to creep by them, let them know you respect their space on the road, wondering what they are thinking as they make it slowly back to their old farmhouse for tea. I suppose you could say that we were the lucky recipients of what every tourist has enjoyed here. I am grateful for the memories that shall generate daydreams for me moving forward. Though the driving experience was sometimes fretful, I am also grateful we chose to rent a car for most of our trip. We saw places few bus tours would ever take you, and the flexibility to go at our own pace to the places we wanted (and notably finding the places by accident we would never have seen) was a prime benefit to the overall flow of the journey.

As a parting shot of driving tips in Scotland, I will give Rick Steves the credit on a suggestion for other adventurers of the open road: stop at a convenience store or gas station soon after picking up your rental car and pay the $7 USD for a set of door magnets with a large green “P” to put on your front hood and back bumper. This is a signal to other experienced drivers that you have a license and know how to drive, but you are probationary at best on UK highways. I am certain that this trick afforded me several instances of patience from other drivers, especially when I made an error of judgment while navigating the roundabouts, not sure which lane I was supposed to be in. The mere fact that we were wearing this badge along congested roadways in curvy places afforded me a little less pressure while keeping the car between the lines.

What money we saved on petrol and basic groceries between meals, we spent on the constant barrage of early-afternoon brunches or numerous stops along the way for local cafes and country kitchens and enjoyed some of the most wonderful foods and drinks on our journey. I will ledger up our entire trip from the bag of receipts soon, many of them from small coffee shops and restaurants, but the food and hot beverages we got to experience were quite delightful and better than one might have expected from what you read in some guidebooks about English-Scottish menus. Of note was the coffee I have previously mentioned. I now have a new favorite coffee to add to the cortado—the flat white. Some were better than others, but the flat whites all along our trip were almost always divine, a smooth robust mix of frothy milk and motor-oil double-blast of espresso, a discovery this coffee nerd will always recall fondly. Also of note were the authentic fish and chips we had one night in Edinburgh with mushy peas; the massive brunch of sausage, eggs, black pudding, haggis, baked beans, buttered toast, and coffee at Jessie’s in Pitlochry; the amazing Kerala Indian food in Inverness, and the often-enjoyed dish along our way called “Lorne sausage” (usually on a toasty buttered roll), a beef burger-like meat I hope to find again here back at home; and the varied pastries and scones that you can find in every shop where there is coffee and tea—and coffee shops seem to dominate the landscape in every town, large or small, wherever you may find a small hiccup of civilization.

If I return to Scotland, I think I would surely plan for at least four more days on the Isle of Skye even though we saw much of it by way of a map. But this is a special place for me indeed, and I would say it was my spirit home among the many areas we drove through or stayed. It is an extreme place of remote beauty, a faraway place in the mind of a homebody who never thought much of traveling. I think I could live there during some times of the year, but the call of its wildness and distance from the everyday world beckons me back. I think I would make another go with Neist Point now that I know what to expect. I would start much earlier in the day and bring my best walking sticks and see how far I could go into that deep chasm that will forever pull me back to its grandeur and ferocious and terrific beauty on the edge of the world. I shall not forget that place, even though I barely stood close enough to those steps near its abyss to say that I was there, but I was.

Speaking of walking sticks, we stopped just outside Edinburgh airport along the motorway as traffic whizzed by to lean our trusty walking sticks against a guardrail that had served us well since finding them in Glencoe. I took a picture of them in lieu of packing them home. The sticks were like comforting friends who had accompanied us on many fine hikes during our journey. I can always find new sticks the next time.

Sadly, though I set my alarm on several nights during the trip to go outside and spy the Northern Lights, I was unsuccessful again—just like my journey to Iceland. I did not see the elusive aurora. Ironically, the only time in my life I have ever seen the aurora with my own eyes was on a strange morning outside our shack in the west Texas desert just after a large solar storm. I shall keep traveling and looking up. One of these days I’ll get lucky again.

Back home again, safe and sound now, Stella the cat lies contentedly next to me on the table. In closing, the trip was a good reminder of what a real holiday can do for the soul and mind to get away from it all (including personal routines). It is also notable to say that only once or twice near the end of our journey did I even think about wanting it to end and come home. That is saying something for a country boy who never really fancied traveling that much. Scotland was cleansing, enchanting, remote, beautiful, and sometimes mind-blowing, and I found a new favorite coffee and an island I shall never forget called Skye. Until I can catch my breath and hopefully find a modified new daily routine, I will bask in it. The passage of time seems different now. I hope to keep fragments of that mindset with me for the rest of my days.