The Scottish Highlands

The fitness class I witnessed yesterday was taking place outside on the lawn this morning, with the instructor again calling out incomprehensible commands.  "Gorch Mattosh!  Royt!  Five, Six!"  I would have joined them except that all of the participants were women.  And I knew I could not keep up.

We are already on a first-name basis with most of the other travelers, and it has been fun getting to know some of them.  Martha has always been better with names than I am, and I keep whispering to her as we file onto the coach in the morning "Now is that Carol?  What is Anne's husband's name again?"

We left early (as we do every day - this trip is not for late-risers!), driving north on the M90, back through Edinburgh and across the Firth of Forth (which for some silly reason I have always enjoyed saying).  Steve pointed out an older triple bridge on our right crossing the Forth River and told us that it was the first cantilever bridge in the world, constructed in 1882 and now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The countryside here is sparsely populated and very beautiful, with rolling hills and plenty of wind turbines, solar farms, and reforestation projects underway, each tree staked and protected against (I suppose) grazing sheep, which are literally everywhere.  Scotland is in the forefront of those countries leading the way in renewable energy; last year, it powered 88% of Scottish households.

By lunchtime we had arrived in St. Andrews, home of one of the oldest centers of Christianity and also one of the oldest universities.  We walked down its medieval streets toward the sea, enjoying the salty tang.

We walked through the ruins of St. Andrews Cathedral, ca. 1318 and the most important medieval church in Scotland.  These ruined cathedrals have a special kind of dignity; walking down the open nave, gazing at the stone arches, we can imagine how awe-inspiring it was 600 years ago.

We also walked past the North Point Café, which William and Kate – the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge – frequented on their first dates, a sign in the window announcing, "Where Kate Met Wills." 

We passed more than one golf shop in St. Andrews because, of course, it is the home of the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews, the oldest and most prestigious golf club in the world and the “Home of Golf.”  Players – the wealthiest of players, I am sure – were teeing off as we watched.  In the distance you could see Swilcan bridge and its famous 18^th hole.

We continued north from St. Andrews, and I realized that I was beginning to take on the vocabulary of the British.  "I'll meet you back in the car park," I would say, rather than parking lot.  A pull-off is a lay-by.  And of course, a lift is an elevator.  One of the Aussies, I realized, didn't know what I meant when I said the elevator was out of order.  The Aussies have their own peculiar expressions, too, of course:  "Good on ya," instead of "Good for you."  And I know I should be accustomed to driving on the left by now, but when I'm sitting toward the front of the coach and we are coming around a corner and see a truck approaching in the right lane, I am absolutely terrified for a moment or two.

We started to see more and more silver birches in this part of the country, reminiscent of white birches in Vermont, and also plenty of black-faced sheep, and those brown, shaggy-haired Highland cattle unique to Scotland called hairy coos.  Someone would spot one in a field and call out, “Hairy Coo!” but I was invariably too slow to take a photo.  But do not despair, O readers of this blog! – there are some very good photos that will appear in coming days.

Our afternoon stop was Blair Castle in Perthshire, built 750 years ago, and the ancestral home of Clan Murray.  It is a Georgian mansion, in the Scottish Baronial Style, on 145,000 acres, and we enjoyed the better part of the afternoon touring its rooms and grounds.

We had ample time to stroll through the peaceful walled Hercules Gardens, too, complete with an Oriental-style bridge and a white swan on a lake.

Here, too, was an anatomically correct statue of the Roman God himself, resting casually on his pedestal, as if fresh from one of his twelve labors, perhaps slaying the Nemean Lion.

We climbed higher and higher into the countryside, where there did not seem to be very many homes, let alone hotels large enough to accommodate 48 tired and hungry tourists.  So it was a surprise to suddenly stumble on the quaint Nethybridge Hotel, in the middle of nowhere, like something out of another era – creaking uneven floors, glorious fading tapestries on the walls of the dining room , and manicured garden paths.  I would have enjoyed staying in that tower room, too!