Day 4: The Importance of packing the correct CDs

I was all excited thinking that I was finally near the end of this account but of course this entry here is the penultimate day of our holiday since we made the journey home into an exciting day as well... Oh well. Let's hope I have the stamina to complete this. Since it has been so long since the holiday, I doubt I will be able to remember much which will make it short. Maybe.

Indeed, I can't even remember what we had for breakfast. We didn't really excel with the breakfasts either this day or the day after but we coped. I think we may have had enough for half a bacon sandwich each or possibly this was when biped fried everything in sight and we got fried bread and a solitary tomato and mushroom to divide between us (well, there may have been a few tomatoes and mushrooms). Either way, I supplemented it with a bowl of cocoa pops as some had been left by the previous occupants.

This was the day of incredible driving. Skit was amazing behind the wheel. We set off from the castle at a decent time and promptly realised that we had forgotten skit's CDs including the OMWF CD we really wanted to sing along to (for some insane reason, we were in the mood). Of course that wasn't enough to make her turn back but then we realised that the tickets for our evening's entertainment were with the CDs.

And so we had to turn around and take two, this time singing with gusto along to two Joss Whedon musicals.

The journey was of skit's design. I was quite excited to see Scotland proper and skit seemed eager to show her country off which made for a very long journey across the width from Edinburgh to Fort William, through the Highlands themselves. On the journey, skit kept biped and me informed of our location and the history of the region and alas I fear I will fail any examination in the topics now so this diary entry will be rather sparse of that.

The first stop was a spur of the moment decision as the scenery was getting more breathtakingly beautiful with every second. Skit pulled up into a small scenic area serviced by a van selling snacks (it must be one of the best jobs ever though I can't imagine it is that profitable). We ignored the van and set our sights on a path. A gate barred our way but there was a route around the gate through a large mud puddle. Somehow skit navigated the puddle of almost certain yukkiness but biped and I elected to climb over the gate in a most inelegant fashion.

Muddy disaster averted, we explored what was beyond. The sun was sweet and warm that day. Skit and I found a small stream and then we found biped communing with the heather. In a serene style, we frolicked and cavorted quite content with the stunning views of heather covered hillsides.

Alas, there was more of Scotland to discover and so we moved on and as we moved on (within skit's car of course) we left the sun behind us. At some point, we stopped for lunch and as I remember it being cold but not cagoul-level cold, I will guess that it was after that stop but before the next one. Lunch was at Tyndrum which has a famous (I guess) shop called the “Green Welly Stop”, essentially a family-run service station on the route. We bought lunch (either from this place or one of the businesses near to it, I forget) and I opted to eat it in the warmth of the car as the sun was hiding behind light clouds and there was quite a bitter wind. For some strange reason I seem to recall skit and biped having icecream outside... That surely can't be right, can it? Because if so, they were insane as it was not warm any more. Anyway, it was a brief stop here and then we were moving again.

The clouds sat thickly and stubbornly on the hills, daring us to enter. Which we did. Great amusement was drawn from seeing a car sitting in long grass and bracken by the roadside with no tracks leading in, as if the car had just been air-dropped in there. It isn't a Hobbling excursion without seeing a car in an unlikely place.

In the midst of this bleak and wintry region was another scenic viewpoint. Suckers for punishment, we stopped off and got out of the skitmobile to experience the true Scottish summer. We were pelted with rain and battered by wind and the views were basically clouds across a featureless landscape. Incredible. It's hard to express how amazing a view this was: dark and cloudy and yet full of character and drama (but more on that later).

There was a sign that said “do not feed the deer” and also a deer that you weren't supposed to feed. It was gorgeous and came right up to the little car park where the travellers (not just the three of us- it was a fairly popular stop) went mad for taking photos of the beautiful beast and for getting rather close to it. I let skit be my human shield in this and she got some amazing face-on pictures of it.

The next stop was Rannoch Moor which just screams Shakespeare. It is hard to imagine anyone going to this place and leaving without the urge to write a tragedy full of ansty princes and lots of suicidal verse. It was, however, freezing. The ground was muddy and we had to traverse a bit of the moor by leaping from grassy tuft to grassy tuft. Skit pointed out that Shakespeare was gravely mistaken if he thought witches would choose to gather here when there were much warmer options. Like somewhere indoors near a fire.

It was dark. It was bleak. It was the middle of the day but no one had told Rannoch Moor that it wasn't just turning into night. But you really could fall in love with it.

And then move on of course. Perhaps in search of somewhere slightly warmer and bathed in sunlight. Like Glen Coe. We stopped off for a photo shoot or two. The second little Glen Coe stop was where I realised my memory card was full despite clearing it the previous night. I furiously started to delete my many photos of cloud-shrouded landscape and from that point on I had to become more thrifty with my photographs. There was a fantastic waterfall here. In fact, we had been seeing waterfalls all over the place (putting Yosemite to shame I feel) as the incredibly wet summer was resulting in a lot of run-off.

The next stop at Glen Coe was our longest stop as we needed to sample a bit more of the Scottish air than what was available at the roadside. We picked a path in the valley that took us towards a waterfall but we never made the distance. We took the path across small streams and up rocky slopes and watched skit pretend to be a bird soaring on the wind... and biped be a penguin quite hysterically. I think it was at this moment that I made peace with the Czech mimes of the night before as who could bear a grudge when biped was doing a penguin impression (in a fluorescent yellow coat)?

Our wander here came to an end. Skit asked us whether we wanted to turn back... or go on. It was getting quite late and yet the route via Fort William didn't look considerably longer given that it let us take faster roads back to Edinburgh, so we went on. This was the Best Decision because we saw lochs. Land lochs and sea lochs and the sun was shining again and we were warm and in a wonderful little town that screamed summer holidays as much as any English seaside town but with more class.

This return journey is poorly represented in my photographs (thanks to filling up the memory card despite my vicious deletion of photographs at Glen Coe) but it involved three things: biped asleep in the back of the car, radio 4 comedy in the form of ISIHAC and Just a Minute and lots and lots of castles. Some of the castles really looked like they belonged in a fantasy tale.

Looking back on it, it is hard to believe that we did so much (well, that skit did so much). So much ground was covered in a morning and afternoon. We got into Edinburgh around 7 or so which feels far too early given that we were in Fort William quite late in the afternoon. We should possibly take a moment here to hail skit.

Done? Okay then. We had tickets to see one final show in Edinburgh- “The Third Condiment”. Prior to the show, we popped into a Turkish (I think) cafe and grabbed some food. I actually quite liked our quick and cheap meal and I had some wonderful honey and lemon tea.

The show was a comedy play complete with a reasonably large cast and props and scene changes and everything. Quite prosaic compared to everything else. The performance was utterly likable and on occasion utterly hysterical. The funniest scene was alas the very first scene and it was slightly downhill from that point but essentially it was a really solid show and a great one with which to say farewell to Edinburgh and the fringe (in 2008).

We left the show and I gave Mike a call. I forget why it was left to me to do this as I am the last person that should be left in charge of arranging a final meet-up but that was how it happened. Mike gave me instructions for how to find a bar where we could sit and chat and somehow I managed to listen to the directions and not have them fly out of my head as soon as the phonecall was ended. Skit and I hooked arms and skipped along to the meeting place (leaving biped to slouch behind us with a cigarette as her friend) which turned out to be a fantastic little wine bar/ classy drinks place and not a noisy pub as I imagined.

We sat and drank (I had a White Russian) and chatted with Mike and Madeleine about where we had been and what we had seen. I was shattered (and I have no idea how skit was upright) but it felt comfortable and friendly and when Mike and Madeleine invited us back to their place for tea, I was happy to go along.

Their flat was not exactly as I expected. I confess I thought that “grown-ups” lived quite differently but here was a flat that only differed from flats of students (or people my own age... I perhaps should convince myself that I am not a student any longer) in the size of the book collection. I was in awe of the room given over to books (not that it was a surprise to learn that Mike had a lot of books of course) and shocked by how few I had ever seen let alone read myself. The only books I saw that I knew were Jonathan Carroll books. But I am getting ahead of myself since this perusal of the books came after having some tea and criticising Madeleine on her dvd of the film Pi... I am sorry, I cannot help it. “Pi” is of course a bit of a shared joke within my college friends. Anyway, Mike showed us some of his tapir collection that had made it onto flickr and we talked and talked until I was dropping off where I sat.

We thanked Mike and Madeleine (or at least I hope we did) and left. It was definitely past midnight, possibly more like 1 when we got to the castle. Needless to say, it was straight to bed.


edit: Oh, I worked out the mystery of the right arm, by the way. We had both pulled muscles or at least made them sore by skipping stones.