Today we embarked on the first of our three-day tour of greater Scotland and its Highlands. The weather could have been a bit more agreeable, but our guides made the day fun nonetheless. Graham and Tony certainly have interesting senses of humor and enjoy punishing the stragglers when we’re running late.
First stop was Stirling for the Wallace Monument, and additionally the ugly Wallace statue at its base (it literally has to be caged up every night so the locals cannot deface it). Yeah, it’s that bad. It looks just like Mel Gibson, but angrier. The monument itself is really just a giant phallus, which seemed oddly appropriate. We also had a wonderful view of Stirling Castle from the hill, although we probably should have opted for the free tram instead of hoofin’ it.
Then, we visited the sexiest animal in Scotland, Hamish the furry cow. He’s big and orange and hairy and loved our carrots and pears. Katie needed an emergency hand-washing after a toxic slobber incident, but Jen had fun petting the beautiful beast. Next we headed to Glencoe, which is just plain gorgeous. We learned about the Massacre and why the Campbell clan are still hated throughout much of Scotland.
From there, we cruised on into the Highlands and got lots of great pics of mountains (bens) and lakes (lochs). We saw Ben Nevis and Fort Williams on our way to Fort Augustus at the mouth of Loch Ness and the location of Morag’s Lodge. It was definitely the nicest hostel so far, and an excellent contender for the the best of the trip.
We settled in with an interesting baked potato extravaganza dinner, where we tried haggis for the first time and Jen was force-fed an extra heaping bowl of chili— with a huge spoon no less. Here’s why: we had just finished supper when the guides came out with nice bowls of chili; Jen asked “How come we didn’t get bowls for our chili? I want a bowl for my chili!” Tony, our driver. was so upset by such an injustice that he threw his bowl in front of her and told her to eat the whole thing with a large serving spoon. Long story short, she started having trouble and he resorted to the spoon-as-airplane technique to make her finish, which she did.
After all the excitement, Tony convinced us to come on the Loch Ness boat tour. We were quite lucky to discover one of the ‘creatures’ via sonar 65 meters under the boat. We were almost convinced by the seemingly-knowledgeable ‘scientist’ on board, but then he started spouting a few curious ‘facts’ about Nessie and her friends. Like that she lives by a 48-week calendar to avoid human contact. And all his 150 photos of Nessie are too copyrighted for even him to view them. Hmm. . .
Finally, we sat around the lodge for a while, listening to Davey Somebody play some Scottish folk songs in the other room. The tour has some cool people on it and we had a good time visiting too.
