On yonder hill there stands a coo...

Click on as many as the images as you can - the bigger versions are MUCH better!

Aye, this place feels like home, or it was a home or something... so familiar it is. Scotland was my first ever overseas trip. As a high schooler in a pipe-band we set of for that fair country on a tour of competitions and spent about a month there. It was so compelling to me then just as it is now, in the same kind of way you'd feel if you returned to an old and beloved home after being away for a really long time. Somehow it is a place I have always loved.

We left the zeleny dům at a more leisurely pace than we did for the Italy trip - there were no early morning temptings of heart failure or screaming protests from sleeping children, the trash was taken out etc etc... mainly thanks to Hayley who seems to be the only one capable of getting the rest of us uprooted and out the door!

The UK is only a 2 hour flight away, but after all the various connections, drivings and things, we were in motion for about 9 hours but it was a lovely relaxed trip. Driving on the left hand side of the road again turned out to be a lot less stressing than I thought it would be, it seems rather like riding a bike, you never really forget... still I was found groping for the gear lever in the door panel a few times and looking out the window for the rearview mirror...

We found our guest house easily and settled in for the first of 2 nights in Edinburgh. We stayed at The Sandaig, an excellent B&B close to the city center with the hugest breakfast I have ever encountered - on Wednesday morning, I said confidently to the waitron "I'll have the full breakfast please" (except the black pudding - tastes great, but it's harder on the mind than it is one the tongue) and about a third of the rest of it went back to the kitchen uneaten. I've never been beaten by a breakfast before, so this was a first - respek to the Sandaig breakfast long may it live... (Haggis on your first mornings breakfast plate is the way to get into the Scottish swing of things!)

Edinburgh on Wednesday was a simple affair, we started off at the castle and spent the rest of the day on the Royal Mile and the evening in the gardens on Princes St. Edinburgh castle is one of the most imposing from the outside that you can hope to find. Its built on the remains of an old volcanic plug, (crag and tail) perched atop sheer cliffs and is a marvel from the ground. Up top, there's a lot of intrigue and history, but not as much grandeur as some other places we've seen, still absolutely lovely. As we arrived there were workmen busy packing up the temporary arena that is constructed each year for the Edinburgh Tattoo, so sad we missed it this year. We've made a pact though - to come back and see the Edinburgh festival and the tattoo next year in August.

We explored the castle for the morning and waited for the 1 O' Clock gun about which the girls were at once excited and nervous. This is the chap that lets the city know its 13:00 - not one of the antiques unfortunately - that would have been something else.
Here are the girls with the very serious dude who shoots a dirty great hole in the sky every day at one.

This is what Edinburgh looks like from the gun battlements:

These are the old girls that look out over the city... (and I don't mean the Japanese tourists...)

This old gun - Mons Meg, was a gift to James II and is only a 6 ton, 22 inch caliber pea shooter! (I see your nine mil and raise you 21.5 inches! Put that in your pipe and smoke it) Still, it's only really practical for a guy like Arnie, who could hold this baby in one hand - the rest of us would need to use both (or a crane)

In her day she could throw a 180Kg gun stone about 2 miles. The last time she was fired though the barrel burst - here's Saz being loaded.

The Royal Mile runs from the castle down to the palace of Holyrood House. Fortunately we decided to start at the top in the morning and walk down as the kids were a bit sluggish by the time we got to the bottom despite stopping for some refreshments on the way - one pub has even innovated Haggis Pizza!

Just down from the castle there is a shop that has a bunch of looms in the basement weaving Tartan so we went in for a look. Its an intricate operation with the Tartan for each weave being prepared according to a specific pattern, boring to read about, but interesting to see - you'll have to go have a look for yourself...

We caught the bus back up to the top and spent the evening before dinner in the gardens on Princes Street - obviously the girls went nuts in the garden and we had to look for them to find them on occasion. These are the self same gardens that Paul Craven, Brian Berkhout and I got asked to leave by some very polite Edinburgh coppers on the aforementioned band tour coz we were buskin in a no buskin zone! We had a little sign set up - saying something like "Churchill School Pipe Band from Zimbabwe" I think it was the novelty of us coming from Zimbabwe that saved us (and made the stint in the gardens so profitable).

Me retrieving the babies from one of their walk-abouts - check out the castle!

The family Wood was here!

Rome is the city of a billion scooters, Edinburgh is the city of a zillion busses... there's scarcely a car on the road!

We wanted to sup on some genuine Scots fare, but there's this odd practice they have - there are very few places that will take kids after 8 in the evenings, so we had to slum it at a Pizza Hut, but this is what we got when we came out - the castle lit up by night. It was raining and the wind was blowing hard, but I still managed to get a shot or 2 in.

Next day (Thursday 13th) we loaded up the car and headed off in the general direction of Arbroath, a small fishing town on the east coast near Dundee, and chosen for its remoteness.

The day was to be spent seeing things on the way there as there's not a lot to do in Arbroath. First en route was the Wallace Monument and then Stirling Castle. It was during this part of the trip that Hayley developed a habit of gasping and exclaiming in pleasurable ways that was to last for the remainder of the trip. Unfortunately the only involvement I had in the cause was to be driving through what must be some of the most beautiful scenery on earth. She had the camera on her lap and was shooting out of the window when it wasn't raining, through the windshield when it was. Can't say I blame her though, particularly the highlands - there is just nothing that can prepare one for how magnificent they are.
There is this quality about majesty that defies capture by the mind, words, memory, film or any other thing. One can stand and look at it endlessly, one can contemplate it or use up thousands of photographs in an attempt to record its essence, of which it so generously gives. Yet somehow it remains too big, or lies beyond the capability of the ordinary senses or their extensions to completely assess.
If you'd like to hear mountains speak, go to the highlands, and having heard them you will find that the only appropriate response is silence.

The Wallace Monument was built to commemorate Sir William Wallace who was appointed a guardian of Scotland, had this burning passion for Scottish freedom (you know the braveheart story) and gave the English 9 flavours of trouble until he was betrayed, captured and... well... executed.

This is the view of the monument from Stirling Castle, in the mid ground you can see the field where Wallace beat the stuffing out of the English as the battle of Stirling Bridge. And if you make the picture bigger you can see the old stone bridge that also played a crucial role in the strategy of the day.

This is the view in the opposite direction, from the monument towards the castle, same field in view. The wind was blowing an absolute gale when we were on top of the monument - great because there were no other tourists to spoil the view, but the changes in pressure from the wind took your breath away. (Castle is on the hill-top in the top right hand corner)

The monument has exhibits of Wallace's life, his sword (which is frikkin enormous), hall of Scottish heroes, a dramatization of the trial (without Mel Gibson) all fascinating stuff - they were a different breed back then.

Stirling Castle, the second (to Edinburgh) most important castle in Scotland was next on the menu. We took a guided tour here with one of the best guides we've encountered, the whole talk was ad-lib and brilliant, he definitely has a passion for the subject and just came across fresh.
Mary Queen of Scots grew up here and was crowned in the chapel in 1543

A view from the gun battlements out over the valley

And... a convenient graveyard to put all the bits 'n pieces of the folks on the business-end of the guns..

This main buildings here - kings house is the yellow one in back - apparently this color is called "Kings Gold" and only the king was allowed to use it. There's one for trivial pursuit...

Queen Anne's (I think) garden... always loved the contrast 'tween raw rock and manicured gardens...
The girls just love gardens and if they were left to their own devices would pick every bloom in sight.

Looking back at the castle from the bottom of the garden

Remnants of the kings garden below - used to be kept stocked with wild beasties for his royalness to hunt.

2 little babies twixt the trees...

and mom's arms.

Babies on duty...

and running horsie to the gate

That folks is the end of the castle!

We drove on to Arbroath and when we got to "Harbour Nights" our stop for the nite, this was the sunset view from the bedroom window...

And I got to watch ZA pummel them poms here too! Doesn't get a lot better than this methinks.

Next morning, we took a walk around the harbour... our guest house is the blue chap in the middle...

We had a lot of driving to do this day with the night to be spent up north in Inverness, so we set about the morning with the Arbroath attractions, an old (very ruined) abbey and a lighthouse museum (they have some kind of special lighthouse here, not being that interested in lighthouses I don't think I could tell you much, but in case you're excited about exceptional lighthouses take a look here.)

The visit to the abbey was nice - something like this just gets the imagination going... well for me anyway ;)

See all the pillar bases - Mich, what's the architectural term for this?

Some of the old foundations have been market out here, to see what the Abbey used to look like have a gander here

Who's that tasty little number down there?

After quite a long visit and some morning tea we set off again. We wanted to stop by Glamis Castle and we're glad we did.

Still the home of the Earl of Strathmore, the castle was the childhood home of the Queen Mother. As an aside - it must be a real drag having to open up part of your home to the public, letting bits of it out for weddings and so on when you're still living there. The family were apparently forced to do it because the cost of maintaining the place was understandably getting out of hand. Still, not everyone has these kinds of problems!

Check it out...

The approach is what I'd have if I ever had a castle - 1500m long driveway leading up to the castle. Not too shabby Nige!

Ok, its a crappy photo coz its raining, but remember this is Scotland, they have rain delivered according to a 20 minute schedule... and this shot is from about half way down the drive.

Apparently they were getting ready for some huge doo, hence all the marquees and things

Not a bad little country home...

No photos allowed inside and only guided tours, so sadly nothing to report photographically, but we got to see a large part of the place, photo's or paintings of the Queen mum sitting on that particular couch or playing on this piano... you had to be there

This night we stopped in Inverness, on the river Ness, view of the castle (not from the room) but nice anyhow. We didn't get to see the castle from the inside - the Nessie call was high on the girls minds...

This was the long awaited day when we would all look unblinking at the waters of Loch Ness in the hope of spotting that elusive monster!

The girls have been gradually psyching up for the moment asking questions like "is she friendly?" "will she bite and does she kill people?" To which we reply, "no, no, Nessie is a friendly monster, she won't bite etc etc."

They expected to see her, there's no doubt about it and I think were a little let down when she didn't show up. Amber and Saz both know that they aren't regular kids, and that the rules that apply to the rest of the human race are only applicable to them when it's convenient and therefore the scarcity of a scarce monster on the day that they're visiting is just not on.

Loch Ness up close for the first time - there she is! (Turned out to be some rocks on the shore - Amber didn't think Nessie was very big by the looks of it.)

Hmmm, maybe a little further on and we'll spot her...

Man! Where is she??

Perhaps we'll find her if we go out on the water...

Dude! There's nothing out here!

Oh well, at least someone made a model for us...

So we took a cruise on the Loch, past Urquhart Castle...

This is it from the water

This is it from the road...

War makes you do weird things - the castle changed hands (control) many times during its lifetime, but the last controller William of Orange (I think) ordered it destroyed in 1689 so that no one else would have the strategic benefit of occupying it.

We had lunch at the visitor center when we got back from the cruise and then headed off to the Nessie Museum down the road - I didn't realise how much effort has gone into the search for the monster, but I gotta tell you it's significant. They have done all manner of surveillance, trawled the waters with a team of boats spanning the width of the loch using sonar and all kinds of things, investigated thousands of reported sightings and really tried to find the ones that don't have other rational explanations. Based on what we saw there, there is close to zero chance that nessie is a reality, but heck, some people have had really up close and personal encounters with something, and not all of them in the water either, a couple of the major sightings were on land! And there are still people who live here with the sole objective of finding her.

I usually love open roads, no traffic q's, no waiting up behind slow moving vehicles and the like, but the trip from Inverness to Fort William where we were sleeping on the 16th was on a small, slow road and I was probably the slowest driver on it. The scerenery!

We're spending 2 nights in Fort William so that we can get to Skye for a full day, the guest house (called "The Neuk" I half expected to find a reactor there...) was basic, but the hospitality was great and we bumped into our second set of South Africans on this trip there. Super stuff being able to praat 'n bietjie.

Anyway, I would say this was one of the most spectacular days of the trip. Our first stop was Glenfinnan where Bonnie Prince Charlie raised his standard in 1745 beginning the Jacobite rising of '45. Actually the monument is at the head of Loch Shiel and the raising of the standard took place on a small hillock just above where the monument stands - where I took these photos... (This one you have to enlarge!)

This place is just...

If ye turrrrn aboot from this fair spot ye'll see the Harry Potter express takin 'im off tae that magickal school ae his - yip this was one of the locations for one of the Harry Potters - I've only seen one (and that was enough) the first one I think.

This is us at the bottom of the Glenfinnan Monument

Panoramic from the foot of the monument

Here's the monument complete with a Sazzabee...

Ok, so now off to Mallaig to get the fffferry to Skye...

Here are just a few examples of what happens outside your window for free when you drive from Glenfinnan to Mallaig... (expand them for the full effect)

Those of you with narrowband connections are cursing me now I know, but I can't bring myself to a partial truth, and there's more on our web albums...

So we get to Mallaig and what do you know, all the crossings so far today have been canceled coz the wind is too high, but come back at 13:00 and we'll let you know if the 13:30 will sail... so we waited the 30mins or so and jackpot - they sailed!

This is the tub we went over on...

From atop the ferry - Skye in the background

Mid crossing and a lovely little view into some of the Scottish Isles...

Notice the variability in the sky, for example, the sky in the shot of the ferry 2 above and then one the ferry and then in mid crossing, all different, and will be back to cloudy 20 mins from now - welcome to Scotland.

On Skye now and a little way on looking back at the mainland

Ok, so they're dodgy shots out the window of a moving car, but will you look at them mountains!

In case you hadn't picked up how much I love this place yet and thought it couldn't get any better... well it does. Scotland is obviously the home of the greatest whiskies on the planet and in many of the blends you will find a dram from Talisker mixed in there - the only distillery on the Isle of Skye. Naturally we made a point of stopping oer for a visit and as we arrived there was a rainbow out over the water in front of the distillery (must have been a sign).

This is the view from the parking lot of Talisker...

This is the other view from the parking lot of Talisker!

I have to admit, I missed the Bond Brothers especially when we got here, as so freshly in memory is the evening spent at Carlos and Christina's with Nic and Natalie, where the Tallies flowed like honey and the night, filled with the Eagles, live in concert, was just not long enough. Here's to my brothers!

This the view just to the right of the cashier with all of the awards "Worlds best single malt whisky 2007" ... ok, I'll stop now :)

A bottle of their 1957 cask strength (51%) will set you back a mere 750 quid - that's 10,480 naughty little Rands for a bottle.

So we procured a gift set of three of the more in-reach varieties and we will be sipping on them with great delight thinking of all the fronds, I mean friendsh...

When we arrived it was raining, when we left it wasn't. If you look left from Talisker this is the view - no wonder the stuff they make here tastes like it was made in heaven!

Hi ho, Hi ho... its down the road we go - not a shabby little spot to live what?

We made it to Dunvegan Castle that afternoon and had a wander about - take a look.

The front door

Look right from here and you get...

The verandah dahling - I'll take tea on the verandah!

and then there are the gardens - man o man.

There are natural streams running through the gardens to the Loch in front of the castle and so you get this for free...

Nothing old Sol Kersner could do to copy this mate, the place is littered with them, all you can hear as you walk around this part of the gardens is the sound of rushing waters.

For a long time the castle wasn't accessible by land - you had to get to it from the water. The grounds go on and on with complete themed gardens. But this is another one of those "you had to be there" kinda ones so I'll cut it short.

From here we had a pub supper in a cozy little country establishment, piled the babies into the car and set off for the long drive back to Fort William. On the route back we took the bridge and got home with snoozing babies and just enough energy to fall into bed and go comatose. What a day!

We're on our last day now... all that's left is the drive to Glasgow, and the stops along that route and then its back to Newcastle at sparrow on Tuesday to get the plane back home.

Glencoe is a tiny little dot on the map, but is situated in really pretty surrounds. Example number one - this little forest we came upon accidentally - this looks like it should be in a fantasy movie or something

And then out of the town you get the mountains again.

We passed this scene, the camera shutter glowing red under the demanding pressings of the wife and decided to turn back, pull into one of the stops and take a moment to absorb it all.

The bugz...

We drove slowly on just in awe of the countryside, I recon when we come back next year we're either going to walk a lot more, cycle or just take a great many more days to do what we did in a week.

Loch Lomond was the last pause before we hit Glasgow, the weather was grim though and when we were passing some of the prettiest parts of the Loch it was pouring outside. By the time we had driven the length of it the rain had eased to a drizzle and we stopped of at a big center at the end of the loch.

There was nothing going on and so we packed up and went on to Glasgow.

That's it from me for now...

Slangivar!

Hayley: You'll notice that Glasgow did not get any air time from Colin above - and just in case you are wondering, let me fill in the blanks...

After arriving in Glasgow late in the afternoon, we found our hotel and were very tempted to say "thanks, but no thanks" and push on to find something en-route to Newcastle. But, considering the lateness of the hour and the unlikelihood of finding a 4 sleeper with an en-suite bathroom, we decided to "take the chance"... Needless to say, there is not much to report about Glasgow! We did at least find a really fancy shwank restaurant just down the road and decided to treat ourselves. The restaurant was in an old converted church so it was really unusual. The next morning, we were up at 5 to hit the road and get to the airport on time.