I mentioned before that I was considering a few interesting things to do before I left Scotland, and with all the negative feedback Glasgow was getting I decided while I was in Edinburgh to hedge my bets and use one of the days in Glasgow to do a tour up through the Scottish Highlands. The trip was quite a bit cheaper than the one I did in England, was much more interesting to me, and had a much smaller bus/van with an awesome driver.
Our driver James kept up a running commentary through the entire 12 or so hours of the trip. He seemed to have an anecdote for each little village we went through and inn we drove past, and the rest of the time he'd talk about everything from the Scottish wars of indepdence to whisky distilling to the background of the national anthem, etc. He also would regularly play songs in the bus that related to stories he told or places we were. A few of the interesting things I learned:
Unlike England (and most other places), Scotland courts don't decide guilty or not guilty. They decide guilty, innocent, or unprovable. Unprovable means they still think you did it, but can't prove it - and it stays on your record permanently. Also, there is no double jeopardy rule in Scotland.
Scottish universities are free to Scottish nationals
Hill climbing is a popular hobby in Scotland. Any hill/mountain that's over 3000 feet is labelled a Munro (I won't get into why, but you can google it), and people will make lists of these and tick each one off the list as they climb it. There are 283 Munros in Scotland. (A future goal, perhaps?)
Scotland has over 31,000 lochs. This huge number is because there isn't really a definition of what makes a loch, and even small ponds get the label. Meanwhile, Scotland only has 6 cities. This is because (like the rest of the UK) being granted city status is a lot more formal than in North America. The rules are more complicated now, but the major requirements to be classified as a city in the UK is that you must have a university and a cathedral.
I'm not going to get into all the individual little stories and anecdotes, as they would take forever to write, but you get the idea - very informative trip.
We started by heading up the eastern side of Scotland, stopping in the town of Pitlochry. None of the places we stopped at have more than a population of 10,000, and most of them had much, much less. For the most part they are tiny places that smell of pine needles and woodsmoke, and a nice change from all the big cities I've been to. In Pitlochry, as with most of our stops, as everybody else headed to the washrooms or the cafes and shops, I headed straight out of town to see the mountains and farms. Pitlochry was a favourite of Queen Victoria - so much so that she had a railway built to it just so she could visit it more easily.
The further we got from Glasgow the higher the mountains got. I took quite a few pictures from the bus, but it turned out that compared to the west coast the east was pretty dull, so I won't put them up here. We eventually turned west onto a military road that connects the main road up the eastern side of the country with the main road up the western side. The story behind the military road is that for hundreds of years it was only for military use. They eventually decided to open it up for public use, but because it is designated as a military road in their constitution its designation can't change, and because of that designation it must close down for the public one day a year and be restricted to military. Also, even though it has a posted speed limit, because it's a military road that speed limit can't be enforced legally. Strange UK.
Once we hit the western road we continued further north, and this is where the landscapes really started to get interesting. We stopped at a WW2 memorial which had a great view.
At these brief stops away from the villages I also hunted out animals to take pictures of, since it's pretty much impossible to get any good ones from inside a moving bus. Two of the more traditional Scottish animals - the Scottish Blackface sheep and Highland cattle:
Our trek continued further north to Fort Augustus on the southern tip of Loch Ness - the deepest loch in Scotland - and famous for that other stuff. They had a boat trip into the loch that most of our group went on, but I wasn't too keen on it, and enjoyed walking along the town instead. I walked along the shore of the loch for awhile, and there was a very strong, cold wind that eventually included heavy hail. I did manage a picture of a mysterious creature swimming in the loch before retreating from the weather!
Now to cover the trip back south in Part 2.
2 comments:
Ha hah, your comment about the loch pic got me smirking.
I kinda like the idea of having that third category in the legal system. I'd have to research it more to see how it's implemented to say for sure. It does make some sense that in order to definitively say "innocent" or "guilty" evidence is required. For those cases where there's some circumstantial evidence or perhaps some evidence is inadmissible because it was gathered unlawfully it's nice to have a grey area.
That military road is neat too. I'd be interested to see if people take their sports cars their for some speed testing knowing that the speeding laws cannot be enforced.
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