Scotland: Where English sounds like Gibberish!

So... After WEEKS of toil and hard graft with rubble, fences, flag stones, patios, sheds, tiles, woodstain, sand, cement, gravel, soil, posts, nails, screws, segs, blisters, baths and many many aches... We finally set off for our well deserved holiday in Scotland. The journey up on the first night was certainly 'interesting' with sleet, snow, hail, rain and 80-90 MPH winds just some of the challenges. Still, the intrepid duo of travellers battled on and survived the 212 mile drive on just a small pie and a bag of crisps from our favourite service station; Tebay! We arrived in the heart of Glasgow just in time for a relaxing drink... or perhaps it was two :-)

Next morning I had to work :-( My Glasgow office is only a few minutes from our hotel at the SECC so I strolled in early, and Linda set off on foot to see the sights of a city that she'd never before seen. The weather was still a little unkind and we eventually met up just after lunch and took a stroll around the Necropolis (graveyard) at the Cathedral. What a fascinating place with lots of old decrepid and sadly vandalised statues, tombs, crypts and graves and we even saw a skull and cross-bones on one stone which apparently signifies that the person lying within died from the plague.

The graves all told a family story about who was who, who was married to who and what their maiden name was, who had fathered who, what he or she did for a living or what they may have contributed to Scottish history and in some cases even how they came to be no longer. The highlight for me was the grave of William Miller, who in 1841 wrote the children's poem, "Wee Willie Winkie". Afterwards we had a look inside the Cathedral which was both cavernous and historic and of course, beautiful. Then we headed north through Glasgow to Dumbarton and on to Loch Lomond before getting very slightly lost around Loch Long, and then eventually arriving at our destination, the historic Drovers Inn.

Well... if it was good enough for Rob Roy McGregor..!

The Drovers is a fascinating place, it's more than 300 years old and it's not exactly modernised, or even decorated, I doubt it'll ever have a 'star' or a 'crown' of any sort, and I don't think that even Kim and Aggie would be able to clean the place up BUT..., the quality of the hospitality and the fascination of it's Scottishness and it's absolute uniqueness is truly wonderful!



So, they put us in room 6, the "Haunted Room". Apparently no matter how they heat the place that room NEVER gets warm, we can both now support this theory, well... I can at least having woken up in the wee small hours with NO bed covers as Linda did her best impersonation of a cocoon. It is apparently haunted (in the walls) by the ghost of a young girl who drowned in the nearby loch. Well, that may be so, but Linda and I really enjoyed the roaring fires, the beer, the wine, the food and the £10 a shot whiskey (Well... you have to sometimes don't you?!) to such an extent that the poor girl could have danced around the room all night making Wwwooooohhh noises and throwing the pots around, we would never have noticed :-) "hic..."

Next morning after a full 'Scottish' breakfast we headed up in to the highlands towards Glen Coe and it wasn't long before we felt our shoulders relaxing and our brows unfurrowing as we were met around every corner by beauty...

and nothing quite so beautiful as the gorgeous boy we met at the top of a particularly steep and winding climb...

This handsome chap was standing at the end of a small car park which overlooked a particularly beautiful scene of lochs, glens and snowy mountains. We stopped the car respectfully quite a distance away from him so we could stare and gasp and take some film and photographs of him and his stunning garden. We stayed behind the car and despite several others pulling up to watch and to film him also he stayed for ages just making the occasional polite and gentle low pitched calls. His harem was just out of sight beyond the brow of his hill.

Needless to say he was eventually spooked by some complete idiot with a camera phone who apparently wanted to get close enough to smell his breath, and just for a moment we both wished that he'd provided us with some goring blood sport for us to admire with those impressive antlers, but anyway... at least we'd enjoyed a real moment (about 15 mins actually) of wild Scottish magic and it was to be the first of many for us during the week.

After a lovely drive and a couple of strolls through Glen Coe we had lunch on the banks of Loch Linnhe and eventually arrived at our home for the next three nights just outside of Fort William. The hotel was fine and the location was perfect for our tour. We awoke early the next morning to see a genuine phenomenon (I don't get the chance to use that word too often!) as the tide moved the loch waters from right to left in the view (below) from our bedroom and the fantastic sight of the mist hovering just a few feet above the water, rolling along at exactly the same speed. I've never seen anything quite like it! More Scottish magic and mystique which we watched for ages until the sun burned it all away to reveal the stunning panorama of snow capped mountains and rich deep heathery glens and lochs.

We set off for a day of adventure to Glen Coe. Linda has recently read about the infamous battles between the Campbells and the MacDonalds and the massacre of 1692. So we had to visit some of the historic sites and along the way we were completely stopped in our tracks by how still the waters of Loch Leven were and how perfect the reflections of the sun kissed scenery around us could be. We stopped to look and take some pics and it was utterly magical, so cold, so sunny, so perfect that one had to question it's reality.

Again we were joined by many photographers and admirers of this tranquil scene, well, many being one or two as it's all so quiet up there. We were SO lucky with the weather all week and the last time that I saw such radiant blue skies was in Nothern Cyprus. The most bizzare thing also shared this vision with us... A red Ford Fiesta which was built completely into a shed thing, on stilts, and was being used as a boat pulley, you'd have to see it to believe it! That and the wonderful scenery made this one of those genuine 'life is good' moments.

We took a walk through the forests and rocks and hills and glens at Glen Coe to visit Signal Rock. Which is where the clan Chieftain used to address his followers from and where history has documented that the signal to attack was given on that fateful day nearly 400 years ago when 38 members of the MacDonald clan were so brutally murdered. Here's a picture of Linda (a.k.a. William Wallace) sharing in that history from that very rock... "It's all for nothing if you don't have freedom!"

Our second walk of that day was a much gentler stroll around a man made loch known as "The Lochan". The Glencoe Lochan was created by Lord Strathcona in the nineteenth century to help his Native American wife get over her longing for her home in Canada. We (well... Linda) could see what he was trying to do and hopefully we have captured some of that beauty in this picture below...

The walk around the Lochan was fabulous, every corner turned gave a different view and yet another sharp intake of breath and earned our agreement that we're indeed, in the right place at just the right time. Just below the car park for the Lochan was a very tasteful monument to the massacre where we once again encountered wild Deer and the lovely crystal clear electric blue River Coe running beneath the old stone bridge.

Well... That's a lot of typing and uploading for me and a lot of reading and looking for you so I'll leave it there for now. Let's call this piece Part 1 and I'll promise to write parts 2 - 4 of our Scotland trip over the next couple of weeks.