It was time to get the Scottish extravaganza underway!
I woke up quite early as I had a bad night’s sleep. There was a lot of noise last night as the Edinburgh castle was literally across the road from the hostel, and they have a daily tattoo going on there. There were fireworks, and cannons, and I swear it sounded like they were trying to put down a riot at one stage.
But there were no dead bodies on the streets come morning.
I had a quick shower and a bite to eat, and since it was only about 7.45 at this stage, I went for a wander to try to find me a good coffee. Fortunately, there was a little coffee shop about 100 metres up the road that I was able to get a very nice vanilla latte, made by one of the many Eastern European emigrants that have come across to the UK now that the European Union has an ‘open border’ policy in terms of working.
Makes me wish that I had dual citizenship.
The girls finally got up and had some breakfast, and we checked out while we were waiting for the Highland Lass to come and pick us up.
Given that the Edinburgh festival was on at this time of the year, so many roads were blocked off, and she wasn’t able to come to the front of the hostel to pick us up.
She did manage to find a car park a couple of blocks away and wandered up to meet us, and as we headed back to the car we played “guess our ride”, pointing out the rather large spacious cars or sports cars that she may have rented.
When we saw a kombi van we all yelled with delight… until we realized it was the 5 door Voxhall hatch back. We just managed to fit in bags for 3 of us in the hatch area, and Sparkles’ bag was placed on the middle of the back seat. It was cozy, but we managed to fit.
Then began the epic journey OUT of Edinburgh.
There is a set of major works going on throughout Edinburgh for the introduction of a tram system, and because of this (and the festival) many of the roads were blocked off or had detours. It was probably about 45 minutes before we cleared the edge of the city, including stopping to buy a map for our onwards travels.
As we were driving along the motor way, I was looking out into the forested areas beside the road, and had this primal overwhelming urge to put on a kilt and run through the forest, hunting deer or some-such.
The girls all laughed at this, but to me it felt a bit like a part of Scotland was still buried in my genes amongst the A T C and Gs.
The Highland Lass made many promises of what we would see along the trip, but the one that made Sparkles and Shakira the most excited was the Heighlan Coos. Or Highland Cows to the rest of the world.
Sparkles was our first navigator, and after casting her eyes over the map to plot our course, she started describing where we needed to head, travelling from the east coast to the left coast.
What?
Yep, the left coast. From that point on, we were heading left.
Our first port of call was Fort William, where we sat down to grab a bite to eat for lunch. We stopped into a nice little pub and grabbed some grub, but since we were going to be doing a bit of hiking over the next couple of days, I wanted to take this opportunity to find some hiking boots, and pair of trousers (not to be confused with pants over here in the UK) and a rain coat.
I was going to run across the street to a store that I had seen, until I discovered that there was an outdoor store on the other side of the carpark from the pub.
There were also lots off sale signs there, which normally aren’t a big drawcard for men, but travelling on a budget they caught my eye.
I popped in and started looking at the pairs of hiking boots. They all had a rather nice discount on them. One of the sales staff came over and offered some assistance. I pointed out one pair of boots and asked him if he had them in an 11. He went out the back, and came out shaking his head.
I pointed to another pair, he went out the back, and came out shaking his head.
I pointed to a third pair. He said “Hopefully we will have some luck this time.” But he came back shaking his head.
He then asked if I would fit into a size 10 and a half. I said I would try them. He went on to explain that these boots had been returned because they had some damage to the rubber, but that it was minor.
He returned with these boots, which were the same type as one of the others that I had attempted to find earlier on. He pointed to the mark, and I had to ask him to identify it for me again. It was a very small cut, about 1mm wide by 5mm long by .5mm deep.
He asked if this was an issue.
I responded “I’m going hiking, not to a beauty pageant. These will do fine.”
The boots also fit, which was a boon.
He told me that I didn’t have to buy the boots, as they were returns, but asked me to put a donation into the slot for the local rescue teams. Figuring that I may require their help, I put in a 20 pound note, and also picked up a pair of trousers and a water proof jacket.
I also bought a pair of socks for Shakira… the socks were the most expensive thing I bought, as the trousers and jacket were also heavily discounted.
Score!
I headed back to the car quite chuffed with myself, and we continued our journey left.
We had been driving for another couple of hours, looking at the cows in the paddocks, hoping that they would be Heilan Coos, but we were disappointed every time. The Highland Lass started to get worried that she had made these promises that she couldn’t deliver on, until she slammed on the brakes and pulled the car over to the side of the road, jolting us all. We thought she might have hit a hedgehog, but she pointed out the side of the car and yelled “HEILAN COOS!”
We jumped out of the car excitedly, armed with our cameras to start taking photos of the coos. For those of you who don’t know what a Heilan Coo looks like, if you have seen the meme floating around the internet of the cow with the long fringe (emo cow), THAT is a highland cow. They are like shaggy versions on normal cows, and very cute.
Shakira started trying to communicate with them, mooing loudly, but didn’t get any response from them.
I gave it a shot myself, with more Ms and less Os.
They all turned to look at me, much to the amusement of the girls.
I think they liked me, as the kept on looking at me while I moved along the fence taking photos. Then again, they did have big horns, so they may not have liked me as much as been wondering how the two legged bald one could talk to them.
We jumped back in the car and continued… left.
The terrain in Scotland that we drove past was amazing and epic. There are massive valleys amidst large mountains, all formed during the last ice age by glacial movement. This is also what makes a loch different to a lake. Lochs are the remains of glacial ice melt, which have no means of letting the water run off. Therefore they are extremely cold, and up until recently would freeze over in the winters.
We continued driving, getting very close to Left Scotland now. We drove past a very famous castle near the Isle of Skye, Eliean Donan near the town of Dornie.
As it was about 7pm by this stage, we were unable to go into the castle and have a tour, but we got some very nice photos from the exterior. There was a large pile of rocks that an exuberant tourist was standing on while his girlfriend took photos of him, with the castle in the background, from the safety of the car park.
Shakira and I decided to try this out ourselves, with a bit of a race to get there over the slippery rocks from different points. I did manage to beat her, although in fairness my starting point was closer even though it was steeper. I was feeling a bit like a rock monkey on this day, so I was clambering all over the shop.
We had a few serious and then a few silly pictures taken, and we clambered back to the carpark. I had a bit of rubbish that I needed to dispose of, so I wandered over to the bin to get rid of it.
As I walked back to the car, the Highland Lass (behind the wheel) decided to play the “Ok, I’ll stop here. Oops, I just nudged the accelerator. Ok, I’ll stop. Oops, nudged the accelerator.”
The girls all thought this was hilarious. I decided to give them my blank-face-death-stare, but they seemed to be immune to this.
It wasn’t long before we were travelling through the final town on mainland Scotland, and drove over the arching bridge that took us onto the isle of Skye.
It was a beautiful drive around the island, although I was unaware of just how big the island was, as it took us about another hour or so until we arrived in the town we were going to stay in, Uig.
Yep. Uig.
We were staying in a youth hostel, which was apparently a little bit hard to find. We actually drove past the driveway, as the only description we had was that it was early on as you drove into the town, and that the driveway was not particularly accessible for coaches.
Too right! The driveway extended back from the road on pretty much the same angle as we were driving into the city, and it went up at a 35-40 degree angle, with 2 switchbacks.
You DEFINITELY wouldn’t be able to get a coach up that. Our little Voxhall struggled to make it up.
We parked the car and unloaded the bags before wandering in to check in. It was about 9.15pm at this stage, and we were all pretty bushed.
The lady behind the counter who checked us in was … an interesting lass. She had frizzy blonde hair that went out everywhere, a large pair of spectacles that gave her an owlish look, and an eccentric kooky persona that made me believe that she needed to get out a bit more.
She laughed at the end of every second sentence while giving us the check-in run through, and told us that this hostel was the equivalent of Jetstar, and we would have to pay for all of the bells and whistles that had been included at the other places we had stayed at.
We enquired about whether the local pub was still serving food, and she placed a call for us, only to tell us that they had stopped serving at 9pm.
We decided to put our bags in our room and figure out whether to have a solid or liquid dinner.
The room was a very simple affair, which wasn’t surprising given that it was a hostel, but so simple that there were no power points for us to charge up our electronic devices! What a first world problem!
Shakira and I were hungry, so we decided to explore the behind-the-counter food options, while Sparkles and the Highland Lass headed straight down to the pub.
Shakira and I looked over the very limited selection of meals, and saw that there was a deal where you could get a main meal and a yoghurt or ice cream with it.
As we were going to be heading down to the pub shortly, we opted for the main only. The lady behind the counter told us that the deal was the only way you could get food, and they all came with yoghurt or ice cream. There was no way to get just the main meal.
We both gave her a funny look, and told her that she could have both of our deserts. Both of us grabbed the chicken tikka masala, which was a frozen bag of chicken tikka and a frozen bag of rice.
Yay – a Scottish microwave special!
Shakira and I cooked our meals with exhausted and annoyed looks on our faces, and then decided to head down to the pub to join the other two.
When we arrived, Sparkles and the Highland Lass were out the front laughing quite loudly. They informed us that last drinks had just been called.
We popped in and grabbed a drink each, and decided to sit at one of the tables and have a good chinwag…for about 20 minutes, when we were informed that the pub was going to close shortly.
Sigh.
We ended up heading back to the hostel, and I attempted to log onto the internet.
There was wi-fi at the hostel, but you had to pay for it. This was the first time I had come across this situation in all of the places I had stayed at.
In frustration I offered to sit up to charge the electrical devices for the others in the lounge area, repeatedly typing “and hence. And hence. And hence” into my computer as a means of passing the time.
I then headed to bed at about 12.30, thoroughly under-whelmed by this hostel.
At least it had a bed.
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