Scotland2005: Hello from the Highlands

We are up in the small west coast town of Oban right now -- and as I feared, there is only one place with very limited Internet access, and this is likely the last entry we'll be able to do before getting back to Glasgow on Thursday.

Last night after a Mexican dinner that was served to us by a young Iranian waiter who'd been in Scotland for a year but already had a charming Scottish accent with some Iranian overtones, (how's that for multicultural) Tony writes: Gary was totally flirting with this guy and I think he would have brought him back to Seatttle as our houseboy if I'd let him -- which I wouldn't. we decided to take in a movie. Apparently the largest theatre in the UK is in Glasgow -- it's 20 screens spread out over 18 floors! They even had a monthly all you can watch pass for £10. Puts the googleplex concept to shame. We saw a British comedy called "Kinky Boots", which was absolutely hilarious. I don't know if it will make it to the states, but if it does, it's a must see. It's set in a shoe factory in central England, it's going under and is saved when the owner decides to go into the niche market of ladies shoes that men can wear, thus tapping into the under served drag queen market. It's done by the same guys that did the movie Calendar Girls.


This morning we got up early and caught an 8am train up here to Oban -- a small coastal town which is where the ferries out to the Hebredies Islands depart. It's deep in the Highlands, and the countryside is stunning. If you recall the scenes in Braveheart where Mel Gibson is running along the ridgelines and the mountains rising up around him, it looks just like that. It's fall, the leaves are yellow and orange, and it has been a gray and misty morning.

The train is a slow moving one, it winds up through the country, and calls out for US style dome passenger cars. Instead the train consists of self-propelled diesel driven passenger cars, and at best I figure we hit 40 mph a couple of times. The trip took over three hours, but who's counting. We had a bit of a delay getting out of Glasgow with some signal problems that shut down the entire rail line for about an hour.

After leaving Glasgow it's a single track line, with no signals. The train has to stop and get a "token" at every junction to move to the next junction. It's very sparsely populated with only a few people on the train. Tony is still feeling a tad under the weather and spent much of the trip sleeping while I watched the Highland scenery go by.

We picked up a very very small rental car (I think it's a Ford "Spek", but Tony say's its a Festiva) which we'll have for three days, and set out to explore some of the countryside. There were two castle ruins we wanted to see up near here, but first stopped for some fish and chips to eat on the road. One cannot eat fish and chips, drive a left hand stick shift with a right hand drive on twisty Scottish roads very easily. However, I think I did pretty good driving -- only cutting through one round about, and thinking I was on a one-way road when I wasn't -- but other than that I did OK, and Tony doesn't need to change his drawers. (Tony writes: The people honking at us from behind was a good reminder to Gary that he was doing something wrong -- in addition to me freaking out)



We decided to eat in the parking lot at Dunstaffnage Castle before touring it. This is a cool, very large castle, built in the 1200s. The grounds are kept nice and trim by a flock of sheep -- who also poop all over the law they just trimmed. It makes for interesting walking.

We then drove 20 miles up the road to one of the most picturesque castles in all of Scotland -- Kilchurn. It's at the head of Loch Awe, and unfortunately is now closed for the season, but we could view it from the road in a couple of spots. We'll try and return before heading south again in a few days to get some postcard style pictures with the fall leaves in the background -- better than the one at the beginning of this post.

Tomorrow we'll take the car on the ferry to the Isle of Mull, drive across the Island and take another ferry to the Iona, where the first Christian settlers landed sometime around 580AD. Then on Wednseday we go up to Ft. William to take the Harry Potter train. The one Internet cafe closes at 5p so we'll not be able to make any posts tomorrow or Wednesday, so we'll have a lot of catching up to do on Thursday.

From Oban
Gary and Tony