Megan and Chris

Hi all,
This is what I wrote yesterday, but didn’t have internet to post it.

Happy birthday to me!

We saw a lot of things today. We drove east out of Inverness after breakfast and our first stop was Culloden Battlefield [pronounced Cul-LAW-den by the locals]. By the way, to anyone reading this who hasn’t read Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander series, we highly recommend that you do. Those books have pretty much set the stage for our whole trip to Scotland, especially the visit to Culloden. We toured the interpretive center before heading out to the battlefield, and that made it even easier to imagine what happened at the battle [April 16, 1746, for the record]. The interpretive center had detailed reenactments of the battle and described where each army stood and how they fought. Then we headed out to the battlefield, which turned out to be way bigger than I had even imagined. Of course now it just looks like a field, but it’s not hard to imagine what it would have been like in 1746. Especially since they have red and blue flags marking the front lines of the government and Jacobite armies, respectively.

After Culloden we went to the Clava Cairns, which are the closest thing to the Stonehenge-style standing stones that we’ll find around here. I think there are others [more Diana-Gabaldon-ish] way further north and on some of the more remote islands, but we aren’t going there. We found the gate around the site locked, so we climbed the fence and felt all rebellious until we saw other people come in and realized there was another gate. We took lots of pictures, and even found one split stone. Neither of us heard the humming though, so we didn’t try to time-travel. Having just seen a reenactment of the battle at Culloden, we felt somewhat safer staying in 2008. We also probably didn’t have the appropriate gemstones.

Anyway. After Clava Cairns we visited Cawdor Castle, home of the Thane of Cawdor. Apparently it could not have actually been the home of the real MacBeth, since it was built after his lifetime. It definitely had a bit more modern flair to it [at least, more modern than what I think MacBeth’s castle would have looked like!]. It was very lavishly decorated – lots of tapestries, fancy carpets, china, and furniture from various eras. It was quite a mixture of eras, in fact – there were tapestries from the 16th century [and the castle was originally built in the 14th] but there were also framed photographs of the current Cawdors. They also had ridiculously well-manicured gardens. A lot of gardens. And a maze made of holly and cedar that we weren’t allowed to enter.

Cawdor Castle was followed by a drive out to the Moray Firth and Fort George. Fort George was built just after Culloden to house the government army, who were placed there to ‘subdue the rebellious Scots’. It is still an army barracks. We didn’t go into any of the buildings, since it was close to closing time, but we wandered the ground and saw a handful of people kite-surfing on the Moray Firth. Looked a little chilly to us.

We continued up the road to the town of Nairn, but by the time we got there most of the shops were closed and we didn’t find anywhere that looked appealing for supper. So we returned to Inverness, parked at the B&B and walked down to the river, where we had dinner at a classy little restaurant on the banks of the River Ness. Definitely the best meal I’ve had so far in Scotland – chicken that pretty much melted in my mouth, and tiramisu to top it off [separately – not literally]. Now we’re back at our B&B and pretty ready to fall asleep. We did stop downtown outside McDonald’s to use their free wireless, but I just read a few birthday emails [thank you!] and then we headed for dinner. Hopefully we can find somewhere tomorrow to post this and some more pictures.
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Today [Tuesday] we left Inverness and headed south towards Perth. The road was lovely and wide most of the way – even divided for part of the drive! We were impressed. We made several stops along the way. We made a brief stop at Killiecrankie, site of a battle during the first Jacobite rising. It’s a lovely pass with lots of nature walks and things, but we just visited the interpretive centre and left again. On to Pitlochry, where we visited the smallest whisky distillery in Scotland. We also went to the Heathergems factory and shop. Heathergems are pretty unique, made only in Scotland – basically, they take dead heather stems [the purple flowering plants found everywhere, especially in the Highlands], dye it, press it into multicolored bundles, and cut, shape and polish it into gems. Andrew got me a Heathergems necklace for my birthday last year, and today Mom got herself a necklace too.

We had a nice lunch in Pitlochry, but we were generally a bit disappointed with the town. It was definitely the most touristy place we’ve been to. Specifically, there were giant buses of giant tour groups everywhere. Kind of irritating in such a small place.

After Pitlochry we made a trip down a side road in hopes of seeing another circle of standing stones. We did see it, but didn’t get a chance to get close up, since the stones were in a farmer’s field, surrounded by wire fences. And sheep. So we took some pictures and left again, to be consoled with coffee and chocolate in a town up the road.

We’re in Perth tonight, and have wireless internet in our guest house. Unfortunately Facebook is blocked, so I’m not sure we’ll be able to post our photos. They are here, I promise – just waiting for a chance to be posted so you can all see!

Hope everything is going well at home and wherever you all are!

We made it all the way to Inverness today – about 56 miles, according to Google Maps. It took us about 4 hours, but only because we made a lot of stops on the way. Fort Augustus, just for a quick walk break, and then at a little lookout point where we took pictures of Loch Ness. The weather was much better today than yesterday – we got a decent amount of sun and blue sky. It was even kind of warm.

We continued on to Drumnadrochit, where we went to one of the Loch Ness exhibits – a flashy set of audio-visual presentations about how much time and money people [and research agencies] have spent trying to find the Loch Ness monster. It was well presented, and we are both duly amazed at the research attempts which have pretty much all concluded that there is no Loch Ness monster. Not to dash any of your hopes. Please do go looking for Nessie if you want to. [Hint: You can find her in any of 16 colours at the gift shop.]

On the way out of Drumnadrochit, we finally found a Highland cow COO! Of course we pulled over and took pictures. There was a calf too, as well as a few other boring old normal cows.

Anyway, we eventually made it to Inverness. Now that we’ve got the hang of driving on the ‘main roads’ [I refuse to call them highways], our next step is to figure out the cities. Inverness, definitely not built on a grid. We drove in circles [and, um, about 20 minutes out of the way] for a bit just trying to find the tourist information, and once we found it we did the same again to find a parking spot. We had a bit of time to kill before checking into our B&B, so we wandered the shopping streets a bit. Another bit of driving around before we found our B&B. Once we got there, we thought it was a much better plan just to leave our car there and walk back towards downtown [about a ten-minute walk, even though we got lost again]. We wandered again, and did a bit of a self-led walking tour of some of the main sights [specifically, a lot of churches!]. We chose a pub for dinner based on the fact that it had free wireless internet. And a roast beef dinner, which I just finished. Mmm food. I feel kind of silly sitting here in the restaurant typing on my computer, so I’ll finish up. We’re going to see if we can find a cafe with internet so we can post some of today’s pictures. No promises though; all the stores and a lot of the cafes are closed because it’s Sunday [and it's past 6:30].

Culloden tomorrow!

Hey all,
Since neither Chris nor I actually post here about anything, I figured I might as well use it to update you all on Mom’s and my trip to Scotland. And for those of you who haven’t been to this site before… feel free to come back after this trip because it should [theoretically] be updated with interesting tidbits from Chris and I.

So. Trip. We were flying out of Calgary, so we got there early, parked our van at Ron and Carol’s, and had some supper. We left Andrew with the Alberta Caledonia drummers and didn’t see him again until he got on the plane, as one of the last people to board. The flight itself left at about 6:30 Alberta time and was about 8 hours long. Mom and I didn’t sleep much at all – the seats were not particularly comfortable [are any plane seats comfortable outside of first class?] and the other passengers around us were noisy. So when we got to Glasgow at about 9:30 am local time [Thursday], we were both pretty exhausted. We got out of the airport at about noon, after waiting through customs, luggage and car rental, and then trying to find our car [Glasgow airport is a little low on good signage]. With mom driving and me navigating, we made it through the 5743892 roundabouts and drove about 20 miles north. I still think we should get a gold medal (or at least a gold star) for making it that far at all. We stayed Thursday night in a little town called Balloch, just up the road from Dumbarton. [I'll try to make it clear if anyone wants to follow along on a map or something]. We had about 3 hours to kill before we could check in to our B&B, so we did a cruise of Loch Lomond [which I may have slept through]. We checked in around 5, had a nap and didn’t want to wake up. But we got up and entertained ourselves with a walk and planning the next few days, just so that jet lag wouldn’t get us completely.

Friday we drove about 80 miles north to Fort William. We’re getting much better at the roads – we know where to look for signage, it’s getting a little more natural to be driving on the left side, and there are also way fewer roundabouts in the rural areas than in the cities. [At first we were quite sure that Scotland didn't actually have intersections - just roundabouts]. The roads are still crazy narrow though. There are actually signs before sharp turns that say ‘Oncoming traffic may be in the middle of the road’. We’ve been sticking to the main roads, which are narrow but at least have two lanes – most of the side roads are only single-track.

We stopped in Glen Coe, a lovely mountain/valley area and National Trust site as well as the site of a famous massacre in 1692 [look at me and my history! I'm looking it up as I go...]. We went on a little hike there and took lots of nature pictures.

And on to Fort William. By the time we got there it was about 3 pm and we discovered that accommodation is somewhat scarce by that time, in that area. So we jetted out of Fort William towards the coast, looking for a B&B with a vacancy sign. We found one between Glenfinnan and Mallaig, so we stopped there to check in and then went to the coastal village of Mallaig for the evening. We had lovely fresh fish & chips and wandered the town for a bit. We tried to go to the Isle of Skye, but we would have only had about 10 minutes there, as the last ferry left the island at 6:40 pm. We really seemed to be foiled at every turn, trying to get to the islands. We’d tried earlier in the day to get out to Mull and Iona, but that hadn’t worked either. We’re thinking of going to Arran from Glasgow next week, because it seems to be a bit more difficult than we’d hoped to get out to the more northern islands. We did get to see Skye and Rum from Mallaig though. [The three main, well-known islands south of Skye are called Rum, Eigg and Muck. We really wanted the last one to be called Nog.]

It’s a good thing we took advantage of the nice weather yesterday to explore Mallaig, because today’s weather was exactly what we expected of Scotland – quite cool (11-14 C), lots of rain/mist, and very overcast. We headed back towards Fort William, with a stop at the Glenfinnan Monument. This is where Bonnie Prince Charlie gathered his army and started the Jacobite Rising of 1745. [We've learned quite a lot about the Rising, which is good to supplement what we learned in the Diana Gabaldon series!] After climbing the ridiculously skinny tower, we went back to Fort William to explore it a bit, since we hadn’t really had the chance yesterday. Turns out there’s really not a whole lot to explore in Fort William. We looked in some of the tourist shops, went to the West Highland Museum [lots more Prince Charlie stuff], and asked lots of questions at the Tourist Info. We were going to take the gondola up Ben Nevis, but we wouldn’t have been able to see anything because it was so overcast today. We booked accommodation for the rest of the week [up to Glasgow, which we've had booked since February]. We were originally just going to wander and find somewhere to stay every day, but that took way too much time and energy yesterday so we figured we might as well just book. Less adventurous, but we do like the idea of having a roof over our heads every night.

Tonight we’re staying in an awesome B&B in Spean Bridge, just outside of Fort William. We have internet here! Wireless internet! Hurray! There’s been no indication of internet at all until now, so this is very exciting. Plus, we get to choose our breakfast, which means we can have something other than the traditional full Scottish breakfast. That’s what we’ve had for the last two mornings and it’s a little much for me. Eggs and bacon? Good. Love it. Eggs, bacon, sausage, blood sausage, haggis, fried bread, cereal, toast and a tomato? Overload.

Fun random fact: a lot of parts of the Harry Potter movies were filmed in this part of Scotland. The Hogwarts Express crossed the 21-arch viaduct in Glenfinnan, and Hagrid’s cottage is in Glencoe. This sort of news makes me happy.

I would have liked to link a bunch of pictures into this post, but I don’t really know how. And it’s 10:00 and I’m ready for bed. So I’m just going to put them on Facebook and now that you’ve read all these exciting details, they will all make sense! CLICK HERE FOR PHOTOS!

Love you all!