Beautiful Scotland

HE SAYS: Absolutely nothing, apparently. He appears to be speechless at the moment.
Or perhaps he's worn out from the walking and too tired to type.

SHE SAYS: Our first six days on the bus: so far, so good. Our tour director, Dylan, is a lot of fun, with a great sense of humour, a real knowledge of the route and the sights, and all kinds of tidbits of history and myth about each place we visit. He and the driver are a great team who make sure everything works smoothly for us all.

Slowly, we’re getting used to the routine: Wake-up call at 6, bags packed and standing by the hotel room door by 7, then breakfast. Those who’ve never been to Britain before got caught the first couple of mornings. They’d head to the cold buffet table and stock up on fresh fruit, juice, cereal with a variety of dried fruit and nut toppings, toast and rolls with butter and jam. When they’d almost finished eating, the waitress would come along to see what they wanted for their hot breakfast. What the heck; they could handle a little more food, so they told her how they wanted their eggs and finished off their cereal while they were waiting. Then the hot food arrived: 2 eggs, back bacon, sausages, fried tomato, fried mushrooms, and sometimes baked beans or fried potatoes. We’d have to roll them out to the bus at 8. Now everyone’s getting smarter and choosing breakfast a little more wisely. Saint Richard usually sticks to cereal and fruit, while I’ve been skipping the stuff that’s good for me and ordering eggs most mornings. Now that we’re in Scotland, though, I’ll start ordering the oatmeal instead.

Luckily, most of the other passengers are old retired people like us, so Dylan knows that a “comfort stop” is always necessary 90 minutes or so after the last coffee. We stop for a break at 9:30 or 10, and everyone rushes to the toilets and then stands in line for another coffee to take on the bus. I do sometimes think it might be wiser to eliminate the middleman or woman and just pour the coffee directly into the toilet, but British coffee has improved a lot since the days when all they served was instant, so I join the others in the coffee line and hope the next break won’t be too far off.

Around noon, there’s another stop in an interesting town along the route, like the university town of Oxford, for example. First, we get another toilet break, and then we’re taken on a 45-60 minute walking tour of the town. We’re given directions and sometimes a map so we’ll know how to get back to the bus, and then we’re left on our own for 2-3 hours to walk around, re-visit the sights we’re most interested in, eat lunch where and when we like, and meet back at the bus at the appointed time to continue the trip. So far, we’ve all made it to the bus on time and Dylan hasn’t lost anyone, something that definitely impresses those of us who were once teachers and remember school field trips that didn’t always run quite so smoothly.

When we get to the town where we’ll be spending the night, we get a coach tour of the place, sometimes a walking tour as well, and then if we like, we’re dropped off to explore on our own with directions to get back to the hotel before the set dinner time. Meanwhile, Neville, the driver, takes our luggage to the hotel and has it delivered to our rooms before we return. At Stratford, we had a chance to visit the house where Shakespeare was born, as well as Anne Hathaway’s cottage. (Funny…all the histories tell us that Shakespeare was forced to marry Anne because she was pregnant. Then he left her behind in Stratford while he went off to London for several years to make a name for himself as an actor and writer. The implication is that he never returned to his wife, but then, the history books tell us, he and Ann had 3 children. Nobody seems to feel the need to explain how that was possible. Yes, he did have a set of twins, but that still leaves one pregnancy unexplained.)

We eat together most evenings, and so far the food has been fabulous. There are always 3 starters, 3 mains, and 3 desserts to choose from, with vegetarian and “meatatarian” options. At the start of the tour, we were given a list of optional excursions we could choose from time to time. We’ve chosen some of them, like boat cruises or special meals, but there were a few touristy evenings with banquets and cabarets and castle dinners, what we’ve decided not to bother with. On those nights, we think it’ll be a lot more fun to explore the town we’re in, visit the local pubs or restaurants and see how the real people live.

After our night in Stratford visiting Shakespeare, we headed for the ancient walled city of York. Of the 40 people on our tour, 5 of us are Canadians, 4 are Americans, and the rest are Aussies. We’re all used to seeing century-old buildings turned into “heritage sites”, so it’s a little overwhelming to visit places like York Minster cathedral, which has been a place of worship for two thousand years! While they were excavating for a shopping mall in York in the 1970’s, workers found evidence of a Viking settlement that existed on the site 2,000 years ago. Excavations revealed that a community of more than 10,000 people had existed there, and thousands of well-preserved artefacts have been uncovered several feet under the modern city. We spent a fascinating hour in the Jorvik museum under the streets of York, touring a beautifully curated reconstruction of the village, showing how the Vikings lived. One fascinating exhibit showed how they have used modern medical techniques on the skeletons they found, including CAT scans, X-rays, and DNA analysis, to identify 6 diseases that we consider to be modern. Later, above ground, we walked along the 500 year old cobbled street called the Shambles, with ancient leaning buildings that used to be butcher shops but which are now trendy boutiques.

The following day, we headed for the beautiful Lake District where we headed for the lovely town of Grasmere to visit Wordsworth’s grave. Since it’s located in Cumberland, Richard and I took the opportunity to eat real Cumberland sausage for lunch. I have to report that it tastes exactly the same as it does at home, but the atmosphere made it seem much more exotic. Then it was off to the borderlands. We crossed into Scotland and made our first stop at Gretna Green, where so many English couples ran off to get married back in the days when girls under 21 had to have parental permission to get married in England. In Scotland, the legal age was 16, and Daddy didn’t have to agree, so couples would cross the border to Gretna, tie the knot and consummate the marriage before Daddy caught up with them. Apparently, any Scottish tradesman could perform a marriage at the time. The closest one to the border happened to be the local blacksmith, so his shop and the "honeymoon suite" above it became the most popular place in town, and still has a place of honour (for tourists, anyhow) in Gretna Green. It’s become such a commercialized spot, with whiskey shops and tartan shops and souvenir shops, that I’m sure no self-respecting local ever bothers to visit the site.

For me, the most striking thing about this day was the constantly changing scenery as we moved further and further north, from the lush, flat green farmland in the York area, to the sheep-dotted fields of the Lake District where the scenery resembles Eastern Ontario, to the beautiful heather-covered rolling hills of Southern Scotland, where it wouldn’t have been much of a shock to see Mel Gibson in a kilt striding towards the bus, waving his sword. As we head towards the highlands, the cities are now getting fewer and farther apart, the land is getting wilder and hillier, the temperature is getting cooler, and the language is getting harder and harder to understand!

We’ve spent the past day and a half exploring Edinburgh. This city is really steeped in history! We’ve had a bus tour around the city, visited the castle, and wandered along the Royal Mile, elbow-to-elbow with thousands of other tourists. Richard wandered around the university while I felt the need for some retail therapy and went to check out the shopping on Princes Street. There seemed to be all kinds of great sales this weekend, but I resisted the urge to buy everything I saw because my suitcase is already too full.

Tomorrow morning bright and early we head across the Firth of Forth to spend a few hours in St. Andrews. The golfers in the group will drool over the golf course, Richard will check out the university, and the rest of us will just enjoy the town (and probably find a place to stand in line for coffee). Then it’s off through the Grampian mountains to the Spey valley, where we’ll spend the night in a highland town called Newtonmore.

After London, York, and Edinburgh, I’m looking forward to getting out of the cities and into more remote areas for a change. For the next few days we’ll be on Scotland’s north coast, visiting the Orkney Islands and Skye.