Europe Trip Part 5: Scotland

(Michael)  Before getting to our fun times in Scotland, we should talk a little about our rental car.  

(Amanda) Cute, I know.

We got to the Hertz office in York at the train station and were greeted by two very funny employees.  They had thick accents and gave their commentary about a bunch different things like the hot weather and driving in Ireland.  One of them kept going on and on about how she was terrified of bridges. So that was nice...however they did not have a GPS unit for us to rent (cue foreboding music).

It did take a little while to get used to driving on the other side of the road with a stick shift.  I mostly just made sure Amanda was next to the sidewalk.  It didn't help that we left York around rush hour and I didn't know what some of the squiggly road markings meant.  Once we got to the highway it seemed like everything would be fine...except that it wasn't fine.  I'd thought that the trip from York to Scotland would be a fairly straight shot and that we could manage using the road signs.  We were so young and naive back then.

(Amanda) Let it be known that the only map we had with us was one showing the entire United Kingdom and the main roads connecting each of the cities. As long as we were able to find the main road we were fine, but as soon as we got to our destinations we were on our own. Stupid, I know. Even scarier is the thought that if Marilyn hadn't provided us with that map, we would have had nothing...

(Michael) The first sign that we were hopelessly lost was when we were going around dozens of windy little roads in the middle of some large open fields.  We eventually humbled ourselves and stopped and ask an old man which way we needed to go to get to Edinburgh .  He laughing and asking us how on Earth we got off track, he kindly pointed us in the right direction.  Once we got back on the "motorway" we were able to follow a bunch of signs to the town of Falkirk (where our hotel was).  However, once we got within about five miles the signs became sparse or just confusing with things like Falkirk county one way and Falkirk something or other the other way.  By this time it was getting dark, and so we were forced to humble ourselves even more by stopping and asking the receptionist of a different hotel how to get to our hotel.  The man at the desk gave me a stern "no" at my request for help before breaking into a large smile.  I should have seen it coming because it seemed exactly like something Grandpa McPhie would have done.  He told us that we were really close, but I still think we never would have made it without his help.  I think the whole concept of being really close but totally helpless was sort of a recurring theme of a lot of our travels.

We slept pretty well our first night in Scotland after all the adventure of finding our hotel, so the next day we were primed and ready to explore.  When we were planning our trip, we knew that we just had to go to an authentic highland games so we found one in the town of Blackford that worked with our schedule.  Also, the website started out with "The famous Blackford Highland Games have been held since 1870..." so we knew we had to go there. 

Miraculously, we manage to drive to Blackford without getting lost a single time (this might have been the only time this happened our entire trip).  I liked how we were asked many times between parking and walking to the event if we were there to watch or compete.  I was tempted to ask them if I looked like someone burly enough to be competing...but I'm sure they were just asking because of my genuine scottish demeanor.

We were both surprise with the low-key nature of the whole event.  It seemed more like a high school track meet than a big festival, and in many ways we really enjoyed that aspect about it.

Here is the Highland Fling with a particularly squeaky piper and a gorgeous hilly landscape in the background.

We got some strawberry crepes which weren't probably very authentic, but we saw the locals getting them and we wanted to make sure we fit in.

A very nice dog with a receding hairline.

Also, I think someone said something about cougars as we were walking around.  I just thought it was strange until later when I remembered that Amanda was wearing a BYU Cougars shirt.  Too bad, it would have been fun to chat with someone there about that...except if the conversation was actually about BYU sports because then we would have been useless.

After the games, we decided to go to Edinburgh to do some exploring.  We ended up running short on time so we simply picked up a SD card reader (we had forgot to bring ours and had already maxed out all of the space on our cards) and some smoothies (since it was a pretty warm day).

We wanted to make sure we didn't have a repeat of our last night experience with not finding our hotel, so we gave ourselves some extra time to get to the town of Cumbernauld.  Luckily we managed to get there in a reasonable amount of time, so we were able to drop off our stuff and get to the local Wal-Mart called....

It was pretty fun to look around at all the different foods around the store.  We had to get some food for dinner and the next day, and some things just seemed to jump out at us such as scottish hard rolls and our personal favorite, Loch Ness Jelly.

We eventually figured out that the best way for us to navigate without a GPS or map was to look up the directions on Google Maps with Amanda's iPod Touch and then take pictures of the instructions with our digital camera.  This turned out to be decently effective, at least until we would make a mistake and no longer be able to follow the directions. It did help make sense of the seemingly endless roundabouts, although we would still do at least two rounds before making any final decisions; we had taken way too many wrong exits during our first couple of encounters.

(examples of images we would be trying to look at on our digital camera to find our way around)

What we didn't account for though, was when out camera battery would die, which happened on our way home from Asda. This time was asked some gas station attendants for directions, but between the heavy scottish accent and their oversimplification of roundabouts, we mostly just wandered around till we got back to the hotel.  At least we were able to have some peanut butter and Nessy sandwiches with the scottish hard rolls that night.

The next morning we were off early to get to church in Edinburgh.  Seeing as how we were not very successful with using the map for actual directions, we decided to use it here as a bib while I ate our yogurt and granola breakfast.

We were late, but not as late as the week before in London, so we felt like we were improving.  Not as many talks with scottish accents as we had hoped, but still a nice experience.

Knowing we would not have a lot of time to get to Oban before our ferry left for Colonsay, we risked it and made a quick break to see some things in Edinburgh.  First we tried to get a GPS from the Hertz office in the city, but we were unsuccessful.  It was a really fast walk through the city, but we did get to see a bunch of the cool buildings along the river as well as the Robert Burns Memorial.

We also got to see an authentic bagpiper playing in one of the main squares.  Edinburgh was really neat and I was sad that we didn't get to see as much of it as we wanted. 

Next we drove all the way across the island to try to catch our ferry and saw some really amazing lochs along the way.  One of the nice things about driving, is that it forces you to watch all the scenery and I must say that some of the landscapes were absolutely stunning.  Everything was so lush and seemed almost manicured.  Well we made a valiant effort, but got to the port city of Oban right as the ferry left the harbor.

Will we make it to Colonsay?  Will we get stuck in an endless series of roundabouts?  Will I ever figure out what those squiggles on the road mean?  Stay turned next time for the next chapter of our Scottish adventure....