Our Grand Tour of Europe

Saturday, July 24

Today was the longest driving day of our time in Great Britain—we drove over 350 miles from North Yorkshire to the Highlands of Scotland, the northernmost destination of our entire trip. I set the alarm for 6:00 am to shower and finish packing—Charley was not far behind me, and we got Kelly up at 7:00 am.

About 7:45 I heard Rosie drive in, which created a greater sense of urgency for Kelly, and she hurried out to help with the horses one last time. I tagged along behind them to the field and took a couple of photos. When we got to the field two horses (including Kelly’s favorite, McIvor) were lying down in the grass and the third horse was standing up. Rosie said that all three would never lie down at the same time… one will always stand guard. I was impressed with Kelly—she very confidently went to McIvor and put his bridle on with just a little help from Rosie and then led him down to the stables. She had an apple as a final treat for each horse. Rosie and the horses have been a very special part of our stay here for Kelly—she’s really enjoyed the chance to be around horses and help with their care. Rosie has been very kind to Kelly and good to include her and help her learn. Hillary, the Birstwith Hall housekeeper and our next-door neighbor, also came over to say goodbye. We were a bit delayed by the time with the horses, but left not much later than we had planned… about 8:15 am. We really enjoyed staying here.

We wound our way to the A1 (almost back to Thirsk where we had been the day before), then headed north. About 20 miles up the highway we probably passed the spot where we’ll cross over (or under) the A1 near the end of our Coast-to-Coast walk in just a few weeks. We’re beginning to get apprehensive about walking 190 miles!

Today’s route took us up by Newcastle Upon Tyne, where our friends the Grants live. They are an English family with two daughters—David is the brother of a former neighbor in Ethans Glen… an Englishwoman named Judith that we liked a lot. The Grants had stayed several weeks in Judith’s home two summers ago. Kelly really connected with Rosie, the younger daughter, who even went to summer camp with her one week. In fact, we had connected with the entire family. We hoped to see them during our time in northern England, but they ended up going to America on vacation during the time we could have met up.

From Newcastle we drove north to the Scottish border. As we approached the border, the terrain got more rugged and mountainous, and we felt we were headed someplace truly different. There was an overlook at the border, and we stopped and took some photos. A big rock marked the border with “England” on one side and “Scotland” on the other side. Our guidebook emphasized that we should never refer to Scotland as if it is part of England—there is a strong sense of Scottish culture, as we would definitely experience. The view at the border was amazing—mountains rolling one upon another. We were excited to be in Scotland for the first time.

Outside of Edinburgh, just before we crossed the Forth Bridge, we stopped for lunch… at a very modern Burger King. I couldn’t believe our first meal in Scotland was Burger King, but it was important for Kelly and didn’t make sense to stop twice. Our lunch cost 11 pounds something (about $20) for three combo meals. We did, however, get unlimited drink refills… first time we’ve had that in Great Britain.

We caught a glimpse of the “Firth of Forth,” the big bay that runs into the North Sea, as we crossed the bridge. There are actually two bridges—a modern automobile bridge and an old Victorian-era railroad bridge that’s quite famous. The railroad bridge was built in 1870 and took seven years to build. It’s painted a bright red color and supposedly it’s always being painted. The road bridge is much newer (1964) and for some time was the longest suspension bridge in Europe. We will be back this way in just a week, staying not too far from the northern end of the bridges.

From Edinburgh we drove near Perth and then father north into the Highlands. The scenery was spectacular and the weather quite cold. At our point our car thermometer said 8 degrees C—less than 40 degrees F!

Just before we reached Inverness, we stopped at a Tourist Information Center to pick up some brochures and buy some maps. We also bought a container of “midge repellent.” Midges are microscopic little flies prevalent in the western boggy part of Scotland that apparently can bite and create quite a bother—we thought we better be prepared!

We got tangled up a bit with the road directions in Inverness. This is the largest city (perhaps a big town?) in the Highlands—the guidebook said 38,000 people. It felt larger, though, and we spotted a big Safeway. We are staying about 18 miles west of Inverness just outside the village of Foyers—right on Loch Ness, one of the most famous lakes in the world. Loch Ness is a long lake—24 miles long and one mile wide. It is one of three lochs (the Scottish word for lake) that cut across northern Scotland and are connected by a canal system called the Caledonian Canal. The canal was first opened in 1822 to enable boats to get from one side of Scotland to the other without having to go up and around the most northern part of the islands. The locks are too small for today’s commercial boats, so the canal system is used mainly for pleasure boating.

Our first view of the famous Loch Ness was exciting for all of us—we had not expected it to be so big, and we hadn’t realized that mountains surround it on almost all sides. Foyers is on the southern side of Loch Ness, the less commercial side of the loch, mainly because the road is just one lane with occasional passing places much of the way. The northern side of the loch has a couple of villages and more activities for tourists…. and has a regular road with one lane going each way. On the southern side the road runs right along the loch most of the way with beautiful views of the opposite side.

It took over half an hour to make the 18 mile trip from Inverness to our house, though we did stop a few times to admire the loch and take pictures. We spotted our house immediately—it looked just like the photos on the website. The house is right on the tiny main road, which just a mile or two before had climbed up from the loch to run along the side of a small mountain. From the house there’s a beautiful view of the loch and the opposite shore and mountains. Before we went in, we drove up the road to see where the village was—and what it was. There’s a lower village… some buildings around a little bay off the Loch, and then an upper village with a post office/store, café, school, church, and police station. The neighborhood also includes a couple of B&Bs and a hotel. There’s a famous waterfall in Foyers that we’re looking forward to seeing.

Our instructions said the house would be unlocked and to just go on in… the owner would come and greet us as soon as she could. It felt a bit odd to just open the door and go in, but that’s what we did. The owner—Mrs. MacDougall (Buddy is her first name) came up not long afterwards. She’s an extremely nice older lady—maybe in her late 60’s—a widow who lives on the lower floor of the house. Buddy and her husband used to own the Foyers Hotel just across the street. The hotel is no longer in operation and there are now some self-catering apartments there. Long ago, our house was the coach house for the hotel. Buddy’s husband renovated the Coach House, and they rented out the top floor as a self-catering unit while they still had the hotel. They had lived in part of the hotel and when they sold the hotel, they moved across the street to the lower level. The visitor’s book went back as far as 1980!

Buddy’s daughter Jean (about my age) and 6-1/2 year old granddaughter are visiting from Lausanne, Switzerland… the little girl’s name is Tennessee, of all things. They had been looking forward to meeting us because they knew where we are from—Kelly was actually wearing a “Tennessee” t-shirt when she went downstairs to meet Jean and Tennessee. The little girl Tennessee is named after Tennessee Williams though, not our state. Her primary language is French. The MacDougalls were very excited to see Kelly (a playmate for the little girl!), and Kelly and Tennessee went immediately out to play in the yard—with the little Skye terrier named Rumour—while Charley and I unloaded and unpacked. I went ahead and did all Kelly’s unpacking this time—easier just to do it myself.

Our “apartment” is just great—highlighted by a big floor-to-ceiling picture window… maybe 10 feet wide—looking right out to a beautiful view of Loch Ness. We have the entire top floor of The Coach House… very spacious. We are up in the eaves, so there are slanted ceilings—it’s beautifully and comfortably decorated… even better than the website. It felt almost instantly like home. (We have found that we naturally call wherever we are staying “home,” and when we talk about our house in Ethans Glen in America, we sometimes call it “home home.” I guess this proves that home really is more than a physical place.)

This is the best equipped place we have stayed—perhaps since Buddy’s been renting it out so long, she’s thought of everything. She left a beautiful fresh flower arrangement and a bottle of wine to welcome us. We have our own entrance downstairs—a little foyer filled with interesting antiques—a grandfather clock, old hockey sticks, books, hanging pegs for our coats. Steps lead upstairs to our living area. There’s a landing at the top of the stairs with a desk. The bathroom is just off this landing. To the left is Kelly’s room, a good size room with two twin beds. To the right of the landing is a big great room—the width of the house. Charley says this the largest living space we’ve had. The living area has a big comfortable couch facing the view of Loch Ness, two very comfortable chairs, an electric fireplace (nice!!—and needed in the mornings), and a TV. There are lots of magazines, books and brochures. The U-shape kitchen (with pass-through bar) and dining area are behind the living area. The dining room has a nice wooden table and seats six. Beyond the great room is a very small bedroom with two twin beds. Charley will use this for his “closet.” The master bedroom is on the other end, also the width of the house and with a little balcony. The closets are huge, though there isn’t a chest-of-drawers in the master bedroom—I’ve folded clothes on shelves in a wardrobe.

We are mesmerized by the view of the loch. I lived for 3-1/2 years right on a lake (with my own dock and boat), but Loch Ness… this is somehow different. Perhaps it’s the mountains that surround the lake on the other side—bare at the top with just some very low scrub, rising up beyond a road we can vaguely see. We are conscious too of the mystery of the “monster.” The loch is strangely dark and a bit mysterious… one of the books Buddy has left us presents a convincing case for the possibility of large sea creatures in its depths. Charley asked Buddy if she had seen the monster… she had a story to tell about her own possible personal sighting. She seems actually to believe. I had thought the whole Loch Ness monster thing was a bit of a joke… after talking with Buddy and looking at the books here in our house, I find myself strangely open-minded that maybe there really is something.

Buddy has pretty flowers all around the outside of the house, then a very pretty garden up a bath behind the house. Kelly’s room has a nice view of this flower garden, surrounded by a high wire deer fence and accessed through an old-fashioned garden gate. The deer would apparently eat the garden if they weren’t kept out. Buddy also owns a garden area across the little main road from the house… a little green lawn, some flowers, a couple of trees. There’s a picnic table and a wooden bench from which to contemplate the view of Loch Ness and the imposing mountain on the other side.

We didn’t have groceries and would have to go back to Inverness (18 miles) or down the loch to the village of Fort Augustus (14 miles) to do any grocery shopping, so we decided to postpone our shopping until Sunday. Buddy first suggested the Dores Inn (about ten miles back toward Inverness), but she called for us and they were fully booked. Then she recommended the Craigdarroch House in Foyers, about a mile from our house, and they did have a table available for us in the conservatory where we could order “bar meals.” The Craigdarroch House turned out to be a very elegant country hotel with another fabulous view of Loch Ness. We ate in the sunny conservatory… not at all the “pub” we were expecting for our “bar meals”—perhaps more of a café environment. The hotel also has an elegant restaurant and a small bar with over 100 kinds of Scottish malt whiskey.

Charley was very adventurous and ordered haggis, the most famous dish of Scotland. According to my guidebook, oatmeal is added to lamb offal (heart, lights and liver), and this is then cooked in the lining of a sheep’s stomach. Charley’s meal looked like a heap of ground beef and if the lining of a sheep’s stomach was involved in the preparation, it was not served on his plate. He also got side dishes of tatties (mashed potatoes) and neeps (mashed turnips). I did try a taste, but he ate his whole meal, claiming that it was quite good. I had a good cottage pie, and Kelly (surprise!) had plain grilled chicken with chips.

We came on back to our house for a relaxing evening… reading information about Scotland and savoring the view of Loch Ness. This far north, it didn’t get dark till well after 10 pm… or so Charley reported. I went to bed early.

Sunday, July 25

As has become our new Sunday “tradition,” we didn’t set the alarm for this morning, but I found myself wide awake about 7:00 am, well before Charley stirred. I could tell it would be a sunny day and enjoyed watching morning spread over the loch. I organized the photos from Yorkshire and read more information about the Loch Ness monster. The lake is extremely deep with terrible visibility… the book called it a giant peat bog.

Charley drove up to the little post office/shop at 10:00 am to get a loaf of bread and a Sunday paper. While I read the paper, he went on a little walk down toward the loch. He came back with a story about his own possible monster sighting. Hmmmmm….. We finally had to wake Kelly up. We had one of our days where we just couldn’t seem to get going. I had been up so early and had planned an adventure, so it was frustrating to me that we were so slow. I had to revise my plan for the day to ensure we could get to Safeway before a possible early Sunday closing, and we ended up doing some backtracking around the loch, which meant we didn’t use our time all that well. At least we are here for a week and not just a few days.

We decided to go ahead and do our shopping first, driving back up to Inverness on the tiny road to the Safeway. We were surprised at how busy Inverness was on a Sunday afternoon. The Safeway was a big new one, just adjacent to the downtown area. We had to pay 2 GBP to park for up to two hours, but then got our money back when we paid at the register. If the grocery store parking was free in an urban area like this, everyone would use it for other downtown shopping.

This Safeway was big and clean and seemed very new. We have liked Safeway the best of the three main chains we have patronized (though we’ve liked Sainsbury and Tesco too)—probably because they custom-make fresh pizzas for you! I think their house brands are very good, and there seem to be more sale items. However, we have learned that “2 for 1” means that you must take two items to get one free… if you take only one, you don’t get it for half price. At home in America I had thought Safeway was a dying brand—here it seems a very modern, visible player.

We split up for shopping, each with our list… went together to look at pizzas and also ground beef (called minced beef here) for spaghetti sauce. Charley is quite fussy about meat… cuts off anything remotely looking like fat and when cooking, presses every drop of fat out. He orders steak “well done” and bacon “burned”—I like my steak “medium rare” and prefer my bacon “wiggly.” I couldn’t really understand why Charley was so concerned about the selection of minced beef for spaghetti sauce… it’s not like we are going to make hamburgers from it!

We hope we bought the right provisions for the entire week, since the grocery store is so far away. We also know we need to get our supplies down to almost nothing over the next two weeks, as we won’t be able to carry any food or staples with us on our walk. We did well price-wise today—66 GBP.

Although I’d originally hoped we could incorporate our grocery store trip into a journey around the lake, we had to get our groceries back to the house—especially our good Safeway ice cream. So we drove the 30 minutes back to the Coach House on the little road. The ice cream was 2 for 1, but I hadn’t realized the freezer wasn’t big enough to hold the ice cream container. Charley managed to cram one in, but we ended up having the other container of ice cream to start our lunch—Kelly thought it was pretty neat to have big bowls of chocolate ice cream for lunch! We had sandwiches for our second course, and Charley had some pate he bought at Safeway.

After lunch we decided to go ahead and drive all the way around Loch Ness—about 70 miles—and headed south to the village of Fort Augustus at the southern end of Loch Ness. From Foyers, the road cut inland, then up into some mountains. We passed a beautiful old bridge at Whitebridge and then stopped at a wonderful overlook called Suidhe Chuimein—mountains in literally all directions.

Fort Augustus was a busy village with a lot of tourists—a very international mix of people and a lot of bikers and backpackers. We haven’t seen such a diversity of people since we were in London. The Caledonian Canal connects with Loch Ness at Fort Augustus, and there’s an interesting series of five or six locks right in the village. We watched six boats work their way through two of the locks. You definitely need to be laid back—not in a hurry—to enjoy a boat trip that involves traveling through locks like this.

We walked around Fort Augustus for a while—there are several shops and restaurants. Then we drove up the north side of Loch Ness… a better road and more activity. One large village—Drumnadrochit—is really the center for the Loch Ness Monster-related commercial activities… there are two different exhibitions. Just before the village we pulled off to look at the beautiful ruins of Urquhart Castle, one of the most photographed spots in Scotland. We decided to come back later in the week.

We had a coupon for a discount on gas at Safeway and decided to stop back in Inverness on our way around the loch to fill up. We’ll be doing a lot of driving here and the nearest gas station is to our house is in Fort Augustus… about 15 miles away.

When we got home, we fixed our Safeway pizzas and then just relaxed. Kelly played downstairs with Tennessee. Charley went down to bring her back up and ended up visiting with Buddy and her daughter Jean. They invited us to come down and for a glass of wine after dinner tomorrow. We’re looking forward to an opportunity to socialize… we haven’t really sat down with anyone since Wendy and Richard in Mousehole.

Monday, July 26

We had a really great day today—a walking day. Charley got a map for me from the Foyers store that showed all the trails in the area around Foyers… there’s a little network of local trails, perhaps some 15 miles of walking. The trails were very well marked. I had bought an ordinance map, but it didn’t show any of these trails, so we really needed this other map.

We left our house about 10:00 am in our hiking gear. It was quite cool when we started, and Kelly and I needed our fleeces. Charley had packed a lunch. One of the trails set off just a few yards across the street from our house, so we took that trail down to the loch and Foyers Bay (really just a cove off of Loch Ness). The trail was quite steep with a lot of roots. There’s a little residential area—Lower Foyers—down at the loch with some houses, a pier, a fish farm, a shinty pitch (some kind of sports field), a big power station, and an old aluminum factory (now closed). Our house is actually just above all this, but fortunately we can’t see Lower Foyers through the trees at the base of the steep cliff. It was half a mile from our house to the pier. The trail cut along the shore of the bay (Loch Ness), and we could see how dark the water is. I was stupidly trying to read the map while walking, tripped over a root and fell on my face, headed downhill. I hurt my leg… even skinned it in one place. This is a warning to be careful and not try to multi-task while walking in uneven terrain.

We crossed the Foyers River on two different bridges down in Lower Foyers, and then took a steep path up to the viewing areas for the Falls of Foyers. We heard the falls before we saw them. The river comes down through a dramatic rock gorge. There are some falls at the bottom, but the “famous” falls are at the top—a 100-foot cascade with two viewing areas. The guidebook said this had been quite an attraction in the Victorian area, and it still draws some tourists to this side of the loch today. Robert Burns even wrote a poem about the falls. We found a place to eat on some sunny rocks a way off the path to the falls… we ate to the music of the falls.

Charley had accidentally put his mustard on Kelly’s chicken sandwich, so they had to swap some sandwich parts around and Kelly didn’t end up with much of a sandwich. (She couldn’t possibly eat anything that had once touched mustard!) It will take Charley a while to make this up to her!

The path led up just a short ways to the Foyers shop, where we bought our newspaper for the day. For some reason, the papers aren’t delivered out here till 11:00 am on Mondays. On our first day Charley asked if they could hold a Times for us every day. There’s a little café—serves only lunch—next to the shop with some picnic tables out front. We saw a couple with a long-haired dachshund that we’d seen down by the falls—well worn Scottish people… looked in their early 60’s, but who knows—could be my age! We visited with them while Kelly petted and played with their dog. The man knew about the Coast-to-Coast walk and was impressed with what we’re going to do. They live near Edinburgh and told us to be sure to dress warmly for the Tattoo next Friday night.

We set off on another path from the shop, leading up above the main road… past the school and church and up into the woods on a track. It wasn’t a particularly scenic route. After quite a long ways we came to a big shaft in the side of the mountain. We later learned from Buddy that there is some power-generating scheme that involves pumping water up into the mountains—Charley seemed to understand all this… I didn’t. Not long after the shaft, the path cut steeply up from the track. We had to climb a bit on the rocks and were rewarded with an absolutely beautiful view of the loch and the mountains on the other side of the loch. On the other side of the path, there was an equally beautiful view of the mountains behind us. We took our packs off and sat for about 20 minutes… Kelly even got out her sketchbook.

I really enjoy being outdoors and have been outside more in the past six-and-a-half weeks that I probably have in the past year—or two. Many days I walked in my office building a bit after 7 am and with in-house lunch meetings, didn’t emerge outdoors until after 7 pm. On weekends, I was sometimes back at the office or working on the computer at home. I feel better being outside and really like getting some meaningful exercise.

The walk down from the rocks was pretty also… through the forest and then out of the woods and through a meadow… lots of colorful wildflowers. We came to the main road about a mile or so toward Inverness from our house and hiked along another trail down by the loch again. The trail came back to the main road just down from our house by the old Foyers Hotel. Other than my fall and Kelly’s sandwich, this was a really good hike.

Kelly and Charley went across the street to sketch at the picnic table—they were over there working diligently for over an hour. I had a long, leisurely shower (decent shower here, though the best one so far was at Birstwith Hall) and started dinner… pasta with meat sauce. It wasn’t quite up to the standards of the Ristorante Bari in York based on Kelly’s reaction. We did have a good loaf of bread from Safeway.

Buddy had invited us to come down at 8:00 pm, so we were there freshly scrubbed with the bottle of wine she had left us as a welcome present. I took our Grand Tour book, as Buddy and Jean were both interested in knowing about our trip. We stayed about two hours—probably could have stayed longer, but didn’t want to overstay—and thoroughly enjoyed our conversation. Buddy served some good homemade shortbread. Buddy and her daughter Jean have both led interesting lives. Buddy’s husband was a tea planter (how exotic sounding!), and they had lived in Rhodesia and what’s now Bangladesh before moving to Loch Ness and buying the Foyers Hotel. She’s originally from Scotland, though, with an appealing Scottish brogue. Jean went to boarding school for part of the time while her parents were living abroad, and was at art school when her parents moved to Foyers. She went to Switzerland initially as an au pair and then fell in love with someone there. I’m not sure what her situation is… she seems to be a single parent and works part-time with a franchise of the Body Shop in Lausanne. Buddy lent us a couple of photo albums about their old hotel and also the restoration of the Coach House. Jean was especially interested in our trip and perhaps we will be able to connect with her and Tennessee somehow along the way.

Kelly had a fun time playing with Tennessee and the little dog Rumour. Tennessee is a very tiny girl. Although she’s almost four years younger than Kelly, they seem to have a good time playing together. I heard them playing a game that involved some French words. We left Kelly downstairs finishing a drawing game of some kind with Jean and Tennessee. When she came back up, Buddy had sent another bottle of wine with her.

Tuesday, July 27

We didn’t have a particularly exciting day, impacted partly by drizzling weather in the afternoon.

We took a different route to Inverness today… further south up in the mountains, where there’s a different loch… really very scenic. We planned to look around Inverness a bit, use the internet, and run a few errands—a few hours for “taking care of business.”

Although Inverness is a relatively-small place and we even had a map of the town, we had a hard time finding the parking lot we were looking for near the library… we ended up in a small lot right by the train station—an expensive “pay and display” lot. It costs 1 GBP for up to one hour or 4 GBP for up to six hours. Charley gave Kelly 3 GBP to put in the machine and before I could speak up, Kelly had pushed the green button. “Pay and display” machines don’t give any change—and so we paid 3 GBP to get 1 hour, and ended up putting in 4 GBP more so we could stay more than an hour. Ouch!!!

We were disappointed in the internet access at the Inverness library—or spoiled by what we’ve encountered in other places. We had to fill out a form and it was free, but a visitor only could use the computers for two 15-minute blocks of time a day and Kelly wasn’t allowed her own registration. Their policies also didn’t provide any way for Kelly to check out a book. The librarian told us, “This is a very busy library.” She did allow us to do our two blocks back-to-back. They had an elaborate system where you registered on a computerized waiting list to use a PC and then watched a screen to tell you when it was your turn and which computer to use. I had 60 new messages (20 were spam… though not the porno ones I used to get!) and ended up feeling very stressed in my 30 minutes. Charley shared his turn with Kelly, and she didn’t have enough time either.

For all the backpackers and tourists we saw in Inverness, I’m surprised there aren’t more extensive internet facilities. The librarian had suggested a Mailbox Etc. next to the train station where there were two PCs. It was quite expensive (4 GBP an hour), but the connection was fast. Kelly used it the computer first for fifteen minutes, then she and Charley ran errands while I finished up my work. Kelly needed some socks, and they also got a battery charger for her camera.

When I came out of the little Mailbox shop, it was gray and drizzling… not a pretty day in Inverness, which isn’t too pretty of a place anyway. We talked about going on home and eating our picnic lunch there, but it was such a long way back, it would be complicated to go anywhere else afterwards. We decided to go on a drive through the “Black Isle”—an area across the river and northeast of Inverness. It isn’t an island at all. Buddy had recommended this as a scenic area that she enjoyed, but we didn’t find anything very special—maybe it was the weather. We ate at a little point with a lighthouse, looking out the Moray Firth toward the North Sea—quite cold, but we did have a picnic table.

We did a long drive all around the coastline of the Black Isle… on the Cromarty Firth we saw a number of oil rigs in the water. I later read that these rigs are assembled there. We drove up through Muir of Or (neat name for a village) and Beauly and stopped at a “Made in Scotland” shop—cashmere socks for 42 GBP! This would have been a good place to shop if we were on a two-week vacation. We asked if we could buy some of the tartan ribbon they were using to wrap packages… the woman said she wasn’t allowed to sell it, but she gave Kelly some leftover scraps—more than we would have tried to buy.

I found another even more scenic route back to Foyers… a tiny road through beautiful farmlands and lochs… rugged mountains… sheep wandering on the road. We saw very few cars. I absolutely loved it—this was by far the best part of the day and one of the best drives I’ve ever been on. Kelly napped in the back and missed most of it…

We got back to our house and relaxed a while. Kelly played with Tennessee and showed her some games on her laptop. Kelly is very sweet with a younger girl—hard to believe that she can be a babysitter when we get home! She will be a good one too.

I fixed Cajun chicken for Charley and I, and managed to make it teriyaki chicken for Kelly… I felt like a short-order cook! Charley found a radio station that is broadcasting the BBC Proms concerts, a series of nightly classical concerts from Albert Hall in London that goes on for several weeks this time of year. After dinner we listened to the concert, read and did computer work, then decided to go to bed at 10:00 pm. We are hoping to get into a new routine in preparation for our walk (early to bed and early to rise…).

Wednesday, July 28

Today was another one of our great days—great weather and a great destination. We left at 8:45 am to go to the Isle of Skye, one of Scotland’s western islands and about 100 miles away. We drove west down our little road to the scenic overlook in the mountains—this time we crossed the stile and walked quite a ways toward the top. The view was wonderful.

We stopped at Fort Augustus for some shopping—Kelly hit the jackpot. She has excellent powers of persuasion. She got a Scotland t-shirt, a Nessie key chain, a small stuffed Nessie, and a stuffed badger. The badger was more I wanted to spend, but we agreed this would be in lieu of her “allowance” for the rest of our time in the UK. There was a darling stuffed hedgehog also that would have been a great addition to her hedgehog collection, but we could not have both the badger and the hedgehog and since she’s been unsuccessful in seeing a real badger so far, Kelly chose the badger. We didn’t bring Kelly’s lifelong “sleeping things” with us on this trip—we sadly left behind two blankets “blanky school” and “blanky white”) along with “little pillow” (the first pillow used in her crib), though we did bring Barley, my old battered childhood bear that is now Kelly’s. It was probably time to put the sleeping things away, but I know it gives her a sense of stability and she has mentioned “little pillow” a couple of times. I expect the badger will now join Barley in the sleeping line-up. Kelly’s grown up in many ways, but is still a little girl in others.

I really would have liked to buy a coffee table book about the Highlands in Fort Augustus, but they were all too expensive and also too heavy. My “collection” on this trip is paperback guidebooks that will at least provide a supplemental memory of all that we’ve seen. Perhaps when we get home I can order a couple of coffee table-type books about a few of the places that we’ve most loved. This would be one of them, I think.

From Fort Augustus we headed on a new road, by several lochs and through several glens, including Glengarry. There were a lot of people at the overlook above Loch Garry. When we got out of the car, we realized they were all watching an older Scotsman in a kilt playing the bagpipes. Like everyone else, we took a few photos and left him a few coins. Later we found a postcard of him—or his alternate—playing in that same spot.

We decided to take the small ferry to Skye—from Glenelg to Kylerkea across the Sound of Sleat… it seemed an appropriate way to arrive at one of the western islands. The road over the mountains to the ferry launch was absolutely breathtaking—both for the scenery and the somewhat harrowing driving on the steep single-track road. We did meet another car a few times, and the maneuvering for one of the cars to get to a passing place on the steep road was quite interesting. We stopped at an overlook with a few tables to eat an early picnic lunch… we all sat on the same side of the table to look out over the five peaks called the Five Sisters. These are all “munros,” the name given to Scottish mountains over 3,000 feet. (They were identified by Sir Hugh Munro… and there are 284 of them.) We were alone on the peak for a while, then an older couple parked their green car by us to take some photos and we talked for a few minutes. They were from the Midlands (the area around Sheffield and Nottingham we’d driven through on the way to Yorkshire), spending five weeks on a caravan trip around Scotland. They had left the caravan at a campsite for their daytrip to Skye. He nicely took our photo, and then they headed away.

After our picnic, we continued up the tiny road and then down to the ferry dock. We could see the Isle of Skye just a very short distance away—you could probably swim over from this point of the mainland, though it wouldn’t be a pleasant swim due to all the jellyfish. The ferry held just six cars and the last car for this trip was just pulling on as we arrived. A few cyclists crammed in the remaining space and then the cute ferry dog jumped on to join the short ride across. We waited about 30 minutes for the ferry to cross and return and were the first car on… only four cars on our trip and no bikes. Kelly asked the ferry driver about the dog, and he whistled for the dog to come on board for our trip too. After the car next to us pulled in, we decided to make the short trip outside the car, where we could better see our approach to Skye. Our cars were so close that I couldn’t get out my door—I had to climb into the backseat to get out the other side. The last car on our ferry was the couple from the Midlands who had taken our photo at the overlook… they arrived just in time for the ride.

The road leading away from the ferry launch on the Skye side was very small as well… we were on the magical Isle of Skye. I loved the name, but the surroundings were also somehow different—many stark mountains, rivers, and small lakes. Skye is a fairly large island… about 500,000 acres with a wild, jagged coastline. It was already after 1:00 pm when we arrived… we knew we would not have much time and decided to stick on the southern end of the island. The closest village (and there are just a few) was Broadford… not much to it… a church, a post office, a couple of shops including a big co-op building and gas station. We stopped at Tourist Information—I had been interested in a boat trip that went out from Elgol to a hidden loch called Loch Coruisk. Unfortunately, the boat left only once a day at 10:45 am, so that wasn’t an option today. We decided to drive down to Elgol anyway… I had read it was a pretty drive and it really was. We drove around a loch surrounded by mountains… very little vegetation other than scrub and purple heather. We saw lots of cyclists—this seems a great place for cycling and also walking… we also saw lots of well-marked walking trails. Charley and I would have liked to do a walk, but we decided we’d rather see more of the island on our one afternoon there. Skye would be a wonderful place for a walking vacation… but I think you’d really have to enjoy walking or cycling (or reading!) to want to spend a whole week here. I wondered if Sherpa does a walking tour here… I would absolutely love to come back.

Our drive to Elgol was about 12 miles… very slow miles on a single lane road. We saw very few houses and only limited farming. The road ended at Elgol—we saw some activity down at the docks, though we didn’t go down. It seemed like a fishing village… just a tea shop and a post office/shop and community hall at the top of the hill. We looked in the post office/shop and decided to have a snack at the tea shop where there were picnic tables outside looking over the little harbor. A friendly gray-haired man with a long ponytail served us… beer for me, coffee for Charley and diet coke for Kelly. Charley had a scone, I had shortbread, and Kelly had a poppyseed cake that the man highly recommended. She didn’t like it, but we thought it was scrumptious. The man was the owner of the shop along with his wife and lived next door…. he said it was a great place to live but very tough in the winter. I can imagine! We really would have liked to talk with him more about life on the Isle of Skye, but he was serving several tables. When we walked down to the parking lot—there was the couple from the Midlands again!

We took the same little road back to Broadford… it always seems faster going back. Kelly slept on the way and didn’t even wake up when I stopped to go in a couple of shops to get some postcards. I bought her a Greyfriars Bobby book that I found at a good price. We stopped at the co-op store… about ten different businesses operating in the same metal-frame building.

We left Skye over the bridge—a beautiful viewpoint from the mainland near Kyle of Lochalsh. The bridge was only build in 1995 and was quite controversial then, as it still is today. Many people felt that it made Skye less of an independent island and more a part of mainland Scotland. Certainly it made it more accessible for tourists… which can be good for the economy but not so good for those who want a certain kind of environment. We stopped at Loch Duich to take some photos of the Eilean Donan castle, another one of Scotland’s truly beautiful castles.

Somewhere on the drive back—must have been on the top of a mountain—we stopped at a pullover place where there was a large cairn… a stack of rocks that people add to and build little towers as they pass by. We got out and each added our own little rock stack… Kelly had a great time and we had a hard time getting her to leave her rock creation.

We didn’t get back to the Coach House till after 7:00, and I quickly made Chinese chicken stir fry for dinner. Tennessee came up to play with Kelly afterwards and then Jean came up for visit with us for a while. They’re leaving in the morning. We exchanged contact information and hope to see each other in Provence or Lausanne over the next year.

Thursday, July 29

We decided to do a long walk today. When we were downstairs earlier in the week, Buddy had told Charley about a walk on the other side of Loch Ness. She told him it was “just a walk, not a climb” and that there were beautiful views.

We left a bit before 9:00 am—we went downstairs to say a quick goodbye to Jean and Tennessee. They have been in Scotland for 20 days and will be back in Switzerland for dinner. We also left two bags of laundry with Buddy—our place doesn’t have its own washing machine, and the arrangement here is that she will do some laundry for visitors. We felt a little uncomfortable about this, but she had asked us a couple of times and we really did need some laundry done.

It takes almost an hour to drive from Foyers to Drumnadrochit on the other side of the loch… the drive is slow on the south side of the loch due to the single-lane road, then speeds up after Fort Augustus with the other road. I get nervous on these roads when a car that wants to go fast decides to pass… we have seen a couple of near misses. I don’t like it when Charley decides to pass, unless there is very clear visibility for a long way. We stopped to use the restroom in Invermoriston, and I took a photo of two Highland cattle that I had seen in a field near the parking lot.

I hadn’t been in the conversation with Buddy about the walk, so I didn’t totally understand the directions. We first went up the wrong road from Drumnadrochit. We had to wait on a single lane road near a farm… an old man with a bad limp asked us to wait so they could bring a large flock of sheep down the road from the pasture to the farm. I hopped out to get some photos, and he told me the sheep were coming in for shearing. Suddenly, the big crowd of sheep came running down the road… almost a stampede of sheep. There were two herding dogs, another man, and a young boy on some type of farm vehicle carrying a lamb…. worth waiting for!

The wrong road had another benefit… there was a parking lot at the end (what had led me astray on the map) and a short trail that led from the lot to Divach Falls, a 100-foot waterfall… scenically prettier than Foyers but not as powerful.

We drove back down the little Divach Falls road and turned on another road, which did turn out to be the right road—we took it up a ways into the mountains where there was a small parking area. The Great Glen Way (a 73 mile long-distance cycling and walking trail that runs from Inverness to Fort William, south of Fort Augustus) passed along the road, then veered off in another direction. It was about 12:15 pm at this point and there was one picnic table in a not-so-scenic spot by the parking lot. Kelly was ready to eat immediately, but we decided to walk until we found a more interesting place. We stopped about 20 minutes later and ate just along the side of a stream, then headed on our way. We walked through woods and then a bit of a meadow… and then we saw our destination—the towering hump of Meall Fuar-Mhonaidh, at 696 meters (2284 feet) the highest peak right along the loch. This was the mountain that we gazed at from our window on the other side of Loch Ness. (And I couldn’t possibly pronounce the name or tell anyone what it means!) As we looked at it from mid-way up the mountain, it seemed (and was!) so far away.

We walked through more woods and then suddenly the trees came to an end—we had reached the tree line. We continued along through a meadow and came to a big fence with a very tall ladder stile and a DANGER sign. The danger was that from the end of August until the end of February there was deer culling (shooting) by the authorities… in other words, hike past here in the fall and winter at your own risk! We never did see any deer—they must have read the sign and fled for their lives.

At this point the walk got tough. We could clearly see the peak we were striving for. The walk was steep and at times very muddy. The ground in places was surprisingly spongy… boggy… and we often had to pick our way around the “path” because the mud was so bad. Other walkers had done this too, so even the path around the main path was muddy. Kelly became quickly discouraged and was very insistent that she would wait on a rock for us while we went to the top. (She would have waited a couple of hours—no way!) I have to say that I’m a bit nervous about this attitude as it relates to the long walk—we can’t deal with this every day for 18 days. We had to threaten, cajole and finally bribe her to go on. The bribe was that we would not walk the next day as we had originally planned. (Actually, I didn’t want to walk the next day either at this point!)

The walk did turn into a climb in some places, as we had to use our hands to reach above and help ourselves up the very steep and rocky places. At one point Charley even suggested turning back because the top still seemed so far away. We had a reservation for dinner at 7:30 and he didn’t think we’d be back in time to clean up and go. I insisted that we could get to the top by 3 pm and would have plenty of time to make the dinner. I also didn’t want to come so far and not make it all the way. We decided to go on, even if we missed the dinner. Kelly had a burst of energy and enthusiasm—she charged right on ahead to take the lead.

We passed just three sets of people (all going down as we went up). The last pair was a German couple—she was in a turquoise tracksuit and limping badly… said she had hurt herself the day before. The man said it was maybe 20 minutes to the top. We were almost there! Finally we reached the top—or so we thought. There was a cairn (a heap of rocks with little rock towers left by other walkers) at the peak. Kelly began to dance saying “I made it! I made it!” and we took pictures. Then Charley looked over to the right and saw that we weren’t at the very top—we were at a peak, but not the very top. There was a higher point a bit further on—and up. So we hiked up another ten minutes and arrived at the top and another cairn—only to see yet a higher spot. We left our packs behind this time and trudged up through more mud to finally do our true victory dance. It was very windy on the top, but we could see miles and miles in all directions, including a loch to the north of Loch Ness. We could even just barely pick out a bit of white that was the Coach House across the loch and through the trees, sitting high above the pier at Foyers. It was a truly great feeling to have made it—this was the hardest walk we’ve ever done. We got to the top about 3:15 pm, so I wasn’t far off.

It only took us about an hour and a half to go down, moving fast but still having to work hard to get down rocks and pick our way around the muddy spots. We really had to pay attention or we could have easily twisted an ankle. We saw the German couple not far in front of us and eventually passed them as they were sitting in the meadow nursing her injury. We think the total walk was about eight miles, maybe a bit more—we will do much more on the longest days of our C2C walk (15 miles), though hopefully not quite as challenging.

We got back to the car and headed back around the lake, arriving at the Coach House at 6:15 pm… plenty of time for all three of us to shower and even relax a few minutes. Charley saw Buddy outside and she showed him where our laundry was hanging out behind the house on the “whirlygig” clothesline. It seemed funny to see our clothes blowing in the breeze. Once in our house we kept looking out the window at “our” mountain—we had actually climbed up there… all that way! If we looked closely enough we thought we could even see the cairn on the top. While Charley was in the shower, it started to rain. Kelly and I ran downstairs and around the side of the house to get our clothes off the line. We put them all around our living room on drying racks that we found in the closet. When I was very young, I remember my mother hanging clothes out to dry in the backyard… today everyone I know uses a clothes dryer. I realized I have considered a clothes dryer a life necessity! Buddy doesn’t even own one… maybe because there isn’t room in her small kitchen or possibly it’s the expense of the electricity, I don’t know. In Britain I think many families don’t have a clothes dryer.

We went to dinner again at the Craigdarroch House because I had read in the community newsletter (of which Buddy is an editor) that there was a ceildah (pronounced kay-lee) there this evening. A ceildah is a Scottish tradition—in its truest sense an informal evening of music… various instruments, singing, even dancing. We had attended a ceildah (more of a commercial production) when we were in Prince Edward Island a couple of years ago and really enjoyed it. I had a brochure on a similar program in Inverness, but after we learned there would an alternative less than a mile away, we decided not to spend the $60 (excluding dinner) and then have to drive thirty minutes down the little road each way. At least at the Craigdarroch we could spend the money and get a meal too… When we got there we realized that the Craigdarroch also had a perfect view of Meall Fuar-Mhonaidh —we couldn’t seem to stop looking at it!

This turned out to be an interesting evening and a lot of fun, though we weren’t sure at first. The little musical group was set up in the conservatory, the same place where we’d had dinner on Saturday night… in fact we were seated at the same table… and I also ordered the exact same entrée. Charley ordered Cajun chicken and Kelly decided to try something new—lasagna. When it came she didn’t like it and wonderful Charley switched with her. He didn’t like the lasagna either—not quite the same in the Scottish Highlands as we know it at home. The menu of bar meals was somewhat limited and the food was good, but not great.

The musical group for the evening consisted of four people—a 15 year old girl playing a fiddle, a 16 year old girl playing some type of small Scottish harp, an older man (the leader) playing the accordion, and another older man on the guitar. The leader explained that this was a special program funded by various grants to help develop young musicians in the region so that they could play the traditional music in a ceildah environment. When they first started to play, the only people in the audience were our family, a couple from Denmark and an older couple from somewhere in Scotland who were sitting over on couches. As the evening progressed, the room filled up with quite a varied group of people…. Belgium and Canada are two other places I remember. We enjoyed the music and even clapped and tapped along for a couple of the songs. Kelly really wanted to dance. They played an hour and a half set… at the break the guitar player came over and visited with us. He had recently been to a musical festival in Greensboro, North Carolina and liked it there a lot. We talked about the Highland Festival over at Grandfather Mountain, and he knew about it.

We decided to leave at the break—about 9:30 pm. I think the music would have gone on until 11 or so… probably with a lot more group participation as the evening progressed and the whiskey flowed. We didn’t want to get up and leave while they were playing. I went into the little bar to tell them we were leaving and they seemed genuinely disappointed—they probably expected Kelly to lead the dancing.

The evening was a fun ending to a really great day. We went to bed very tired, but also very proud that we had made it to the top of the mountain.

Friday, July 30

We were very sorry this was our last day at Loch Ness—we like the peaceful environment of this remote and spacious house and especially its view of the loch and “our” mountain beyond.

I was up first and moved the still-damp clothes around on the drying rack by the little electric fireplace… anxious to get them dry and get our pretty view back. We poked around a bit in the morning and had breakfast. I stopped down to chat with Buddy before we left for the day—it turned out that she had never actually done the walk she had recommended to us… she only got as far as the big stile.

We hadn’t finished our touring yesterday since our walk took much longer than we had expected, so we headed back to Drumnadrochit to look around and visit Urquhart Castle. We stopped at the Foyers shop to get a newspaper and some mailer envelopes to send packages home tomorrow, then drove all the way around the lake to Drumnadrochit. We parked and went first to Tourist Information, then walked across the street where there were several cafes. We picked one that seemed to work best for all of us—Kelly had pizza, Charley had a leek and mushroom tart, and then they shared an order of garlic bread. I had breaded haddock and chips, a more refined version of fish and chips. We decided not to go to one of the “monster exhibit” but walked up the hill to some of the other shops. Kelly was especially interested in a tiny shop that did genealogical research and then sold you embroidery of your family coat-of-arms. The woman there spent a little time with us determining the related clans for Wood and Coleman. There is a tiny Wood clan originating somewhere near Edinburgh, and Colman (different spelling than my name) is something called a sept (a related branch) of the Buchanan clan. Our Scottish connection is regrettably weak. Kelly, however, is ready to sign herself up as an official Scot…. maybe one day she’ll marry someone named MacSomething and she can have a family tartan all her own. We went next door to a big Scottish shop that sold kilts and tartans—the full Scottish regalia is quite expensive, but there’s obviously a market for it. (In a Scottish magazine in the house, I noticed that in the wedding photos, all the men were wearing kilts.) Kelly bought some tartan hair ribbons. She really likes the Buchanan tartan and would have loved to have a scarf—I told her that she definitely would feel out of place with a Scottish tartan scarf in Provence this winter. We also went in a shop with literally thousands of stuffed green Nessies in every imaginable size—the commercial take on the Loch Ness monster. We reluctantly didn’t buy another hedgehog—this one with a tamoshanter and bagpipes… and when you pressed his tummy he played a little Scottish song.

After our little tour around Drumnadrochit, we drove about a mile to the ruins of Urquhart Castle, right on Loch Ness. We watched a video about the history of the castle. There’s been some type of castle here since about 500 AD, and the ruins that now remain are from the period 1400-1600. It has been in ruins since 1692, when it was blown up to prevent revolutionaries from making use of it. We walked all through the castle ruins…. the ruins cover quite a bit of land right on Loch Ness. It was quite crowded when we first got there (definitely a tour bus destination)… hard to get a photo that didn’t have lots of sightseers in it. Kelly and I went up the spiral steps to the top of the tallest tower. A young man was playing bagpipes in an open area. The music is so appropriate in a place like this.

Charley and Kelly wanted to do some sketching, so they sat down on a little hill inside the castle ruins to sketch the tower. After a while I decided to go back up and look around the Visitors Center and shop again. Somehow while I was gone, Charley and Kelly got into some kind of a “something” and weren’t talking to each other when they came back up the hill. It was a long drive home in silence… so much togetherness with strong personalities—we still seem to deal with this weekly. When we got home, I went up to Buddy’s flower garden to contemplate life and then visited with her for a few minutes. Fortunately, when I came back down, Charley and Kelly had made up and had started dinner… just soup and sandwiches tonight. We listened to the BBC Proms concert on the radio and read before we went to bed. We will leave at 10:00 in the morning, so we will do all our packing in the morning this time.