Day 19 (Part Two): On the bonnie, bonnie banks o' Loch Lomon'

After we finished at Fort Augustus we began heading south, staying in the extremely picturesque western Scotland. We drove past the tallest mountain in Scotland (and in the UK), Ben Nevis, and took a break in the village at its base, Fort William.

Fort William is also one of the endpoints of the 96-mile hiking trail called the West Highland Way that winds through the hills and mountains and along the lochs all the way to just north of Glasgow. You can break it up into different sections, but the scenery for this stretch is absolutely amazing, and if I return to Scotland doing this hike (or at least part of it) is right at the top of my list now (well, that and visiting the Isle of Skye).
Because we were running ahead of schedule a bit, our driver was kind enough to pull over at some particularily gorgeous spots and let us stretch our legs and take some pictures. The harshest and probably most beautiful landscape was in the mountains of Glencoe (which came with another story and sad folk song about the Campbell clan massacring the MacDonald clan).

Despite the occasional intense shower or bit off hail as we drove through low clouds the weather was gorgeous for the most part, and according to our driver having things as clear as they were instead of all foggy is quite rare.

For the last leg of the trip we drove for a long time along the shore of Loch Lomond, which is the largest loch in Scotland. Since it's so close to Glasgow it's apparently a popular weekend and summer retreat for locals, and his information on it included everything from the fishing laws to a permanent nudist colony on one of the islands in the loch (it apparently has an average age of 62).

Well that's a brief summary of things. I'll put the rest of my pictures online in a day or two. They take quite awhile to upload, and since I need to get up in 3 hours I'm going to leave it for now and try to get a couple hours of sleep at least.

Day 19 (Part One): Highlands

It has been a long day, and I have to be up so early tomorrow that it can't really be called morning (and early enough that it's probably not even worth going to sleep), but it has been an awesome day and I want to get these last posts up now and close off Scotland as I move onto the next stage of my trip.
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.

Day 18: Accomplice

I still had no particular agenda for Glasgow, but I had some help in picking a direction from my new buddy Nasir. Nasir is a Pakistani student living in Glasgow that I met on my bus ride from Manchester a week ago. He told me to look him up when I got to Glasgow, so that's what I did. We met up downtown by the bus station, and after a short discussion decided to head through downtown and go to the Kelvingrove Museum and Art Gallery. It's the second most visited museum in the UK, and its surrounded by some nice parks. Despite living in Glasgow, Nasir had never been there either, so to me it seemed like a pretty obvious choice. The weather was pretty overcast, but as we wandered our way to Kelvingrove it cleared up a lot.

(Nasir in front of Kelvingrove)

The gallery was pretty impressive, and as usual I was a big fan of many of the statues. Much of the museum section was similar to the other museums I've been too, but it did include a pretty amazing exhibit on warfare and combat that had the largest collection of swords, pikes, armor and other old weapons I've seen.

(Bust of William Wallace)

The museum was right across from the Glasgow University. As we were leaving I took this picture of the school, with the Glasgow bowling green in the foreground.

We then headed for lunch, which I offered to pay for as thanks for his showing me around - and which he then insisted he pay for as I was his guest in the city. Ultimately his insistence won out, but if he ever comes to visit Canada I owe him one.
He had to work in the afternoon, so we headed to the river and worked our way down it towards his place. The riverside had some particularily interesting architecture and bridges.

(The Glasgow Conference Center on the right, Scotland BBC on the left)

On the other side he headed home and I started walking back up along the opposite side of the river, stopping on my way home to pick up a cheap alarm clock I'll be needing in the coming days.

Day 17: Glasgow

Ever since starting this trip, when I was talking to other travellers about my plans for Scotland, it went something like this:
"I'm heading to Edinburgh first..."
"Oh, Edinburgh is such a lovely city, you'll love it!"
"..and then going to Glasgow for a few days."
*silent head shake of pity*
There seems to be a pretty universal dislike of Glasgow from all travellers that have been here. Everyone says there is nothing to do, nothing to see, and that it's just a big dull city. I was only planning to spend 2.5 days or so here in the first place, so I wasn't too worried, but the reaction has been so strong that I was getting a bit nervous about what to expect.
After checking into my place and exploring the city center for the afternoon, I can sort of see what they're talking about, but I have to disagree with them. Glasgow certainly doesn't have the old-world feel that a place like Edinburgh does. Instead of cobblestones and castles there are overpasses and shopping malls, but the city still seems to have a lot of character and I think it comes down to appreciating a place for what it is, and not moaning about what it isn't.
On the subject of character though, let me first tell you about my "guest home". From the outside, it looks like a tiny little house on a street of other tiny little attahced houses. From the inside, it quickly becomes apparent that the guest home is actually a warren of these houses attached to each other on the inside - although in ways that makes it obvious this wasn't the original construction. To get to my room from the entrance, I have to navigate a labyrinth of directions along the lines of : take the second left, go down the ramp, go through the door on the right, then go through the door down that hall. Turn right, go through the 3rd door, go up the ramp, turn right again, go up the staircase (spiral!), go through the door on the left at the first landing, go through another door, and then you're in the 2nd door on the left. I was a bit nervous when this was all be explained to me, but luckily in practice if I just keep following the signs indicating ever smaller room ranges I eventually get to my room (or following the "to entrance" ones when trying to escape). The wifi doesn't cover most of the rooms, so right now I'm in dining room #2 (I'm told there's 3 of them in total, but I'm not sure I'm brave enough to explore for the others). We even get the oldschool passkeys - woo.

I'm right near the city center, with one of the most central downtown streets running parallel to the one I'm on a block away. I just walked down the more central streets to see what was going on. There are a lot of pedestrian-only streets in the central core, and as a person who walks everywhere, I quite enjoy them.

Since it was a pretty nice day out, there were also a good number of buskers and street performers around. The one that had drawn the largest crowd was a group of hip-hop dancers. The dancing was decent, if not exceptional, but they were doing a good job of working the crowd.

I stumbled upon the Glasgow Gallery of Modern Art (I seem to keep running into these), but it was only open for another 30 minutes. I did a quick walk through to see if I thought it was worth checking out in greater detail tomorrow - it wasn't. Despite a lack of any Edinburgh-like monuments, there are still plenty of interesting streets and landmarks:
The Argyle Arcade. A two-block covered walkway of bling. Shop after shop of diamonds, jewellry and watches.

A bizarre tower that sits alone in the middle of an interesection.

I should be checking things out in more detail tomorrow, as I have special plans for Friday.

Day 16: Wandering in the Rain

Since I'd seen all the main things I wanted in Edinburgh, I was planning to return to Holyrood for some more hiking today. Unfortunately in the morning it was raining quite hard and 2 degrees out. It was going to be far too muddy and slippering to do hiking, but I didn't want to spend my last full day in the city sitting around, so I headed out in the rain, just wandering aimlessly. These rainy spells often don't last long, so I was hoping I'd walk around for awhile, it would dry up, and then I could decide what to do next. After awhile I found a nice path along the Water of Leith, and followed that for awhile.

Eventually I came to a staircase up through the wooded area with a sign indicating it led to the Scottish Modern Art Gallery. I hadn't really planned to go to this originally, as I wasn't too thrilled with the modern art in London, but since I randomly stumbled upon it, and it was still raining, I figured it was worth a look.

They had an exhibit on sculpture on, which drew my attention more since I really enjoy a lot of statue and sculpture work. No photographs allowed, but two artists I liked enough to bother to remember their names were Eduardo Paolozzi who had some eerie machine-like sculptures and Ron Mueck. The Ron Mueck sculpture was a very detailed and realistic just-born baby that was 10'+ long. Looking up some of his other stuff online he seems to specialize in realistic figures made large. Here is the one he had here (from the internet, since again, no photos allowed):

I got a bit lost trying to get back, and it was still raining hard. By the time I found my way back to the hostel area I'd been out in the cold and rain for around 4 hours, and didn't really want to push things and risk getting sick. It's looking like the sun has finally come out a bit now, so I might try for another walk this evening, but my coat is still wet, so we'll see.

It's a bit hard to see, but that's snow on the hills outside of town. It was green yesterday.

Day 15: Museums and Hostels

Today I transferred to a new hostel (which is why I'm able to use the internet again). The one I'm in now came very highly recommended by multiple people when I was in London, so when I was booking for Edinburugh I made a point to look it up. Unfortunately it was already booked up for Easter, so I booked a different one for the first 3 days. The first one was well organized, but obviously set up to bring in money. The cost was decent, but then they try to suck all these other fees out of you. The internet one obviously annoyed me the most - 5 pounds per day to use the wi-fi. There was also no common room, but a huge bar where they won't let you hang out unless you're buying things. This new one (Caledonian Backpackers, should anybody ever want a good hostel in Edinburgh) just seems like a much more fun place. All the walls have bright murals painted on them, the lounge has pool tables, board games, a wii, and ample leather furniture to just hang out in. The only drawback is that their wifi is horribly slow, making my planning and updating harder than I'd hoped - at least it's free though.

Anyway, comments on hostels aside, today is a bit slower paced. I went to the Scotland National Museum in the morning. It is smaller than the London museums, and is part museum, part natural history, part science center. While a lot of it is built to appeal to kids I still found it was set up nicely and there was a lot of interesting history and information in it.

(The Millenium Clock / Statue)

(Extinct Giant Deer)
And just to top things up to my 5 picture limit:

(A pigeon, duh)

(A Scottish Nerd Store)
Now spending the evening planning out the rest of my time in Scotland. Have a few ideas kicking around, so there might be some interesting surprises - or maybe not. We'll see.

Day 14: The Touristy Bits

This is getting posted a day late, I know. I just didn't want to pay for another 24 hours of internet use so I couldn't post anything last night, but I'm in my new hostel now, so I'll catch up. More on the hostel stuff in the following post.
My morning destination was the Edinburgh Royal Botanical Gardens. The gardens are a few miles away from the city center, so I figured it would be a good way to get out and see a bit of the rest of the city along the way. I took my time getting there, checking out various markets and paths along the way.

No, that's not part of the garden. That's part of my walk to the garden.
Obviously it's a bit early in the year for most of the flowers, but flowers aren't the big draw for me anyway. A few of the big sections of the park were all dug up, probably in preparation for planting annuals. The best looking part of the garden for me was the rock garden, but the most interesting by far was the Scottish Heath garden. In addition to giving the names of the plants, the heath garden also included all the details on what the plant was used for, from eating to making clothes or fences or brooms, etc. The most amusing part is that the end of the list for basically every single tree/bush/grass/other sort of plant was "flavouring for beer/wine" - even the toxic ones. Oh those Scotts.

I wandered back to my home base and after a quick lunch went to the Edinburgh Castle in the afternoon. The weather has been pretty chilly and windy my entire time here so far, and I was wearing shorts, so the castle wasn't the most comfortable. In general, I found it much more impressive from the outside - looking up the sheer cliff faces to the walls - than it was on the inside. The Great Hall was nice, and they had some cheesy but still interesting depictions of the cellars history for holding prisoners. They also had a room with the crown jewels of Scotland and the Corronation Stone/Stone of Scone.

As I was leaving it started to rain pretty hard. I wasn't ready to head back to the hostel, so I worked my way to a cinema I encountered earlier in the day and watched Hunger Games. Not very exotic, I know. At least I got to see English commercials at the start.

Day 13: Bliss

Through the first two weeks of this trip there have been good moments and bad moments, but today was the first with moments of sheer joy and utter contenment. What was this mystery activity from that I alluded to yesterday and had me grinning like a Cheshire cat for much of the morning?

 This:

Holyrood Park is a series of hills and basalt cliffs in the center of Edinburgh, and it was the obvious place for me to begin my explorations of the city. I got started early with a pretty good idea of where to start my hike. My research had indicated that the east side was the "easier" approach. Phew, good thing I learned that, I might have accidently taking the boring way up! Heading straight for the west, I started with the tallest hill: Arthur's Seat. I was a bit worried about my sore leg, but it held up like a champ and only started bothering me hours later when I was just wandering about the city. Sadly, pictures can't really convey the feeling of places like this, but I tried my best. Here are a few of Arthur's Seat and the adjacent Salisbury Crags. I'll be putting the rest on the photo site.

Oh, and the view from the top wasn't too shabby either:

There were quite a few people along the paths and at the top, but I can't really blame them - it sure beats a treadmill. I descended a bit from Arthur's Seat to a steeper, rocky side that had no trails and nobody else on it, and just relaxed there for awhile. Two loose terriers were running around together chasing rabbits but were far too slow and clumsy to catch any (it was very amusing to watch them try though). I then spent awhile going from peak to peak, and eventually walked along the top of the crag before descending the rest of the way.

In the afternoon I visisted the National Gallery, which was alright, but mostly not the style I enjoy the most. I also walked up the much smaller Calton Hill and checked out the monuments there. My understanding is that the city bought the hill about 300 years ago and has just used it as a park and a place to stick monuments whenever they want to put one somewhere. It had a nice view as well (the first picture in the post was from Calton Hill) but it didn't really compare to the earlier ones. I covered more ground walking up The Royal Mile to quickly check out Edinburgh Castle, which I'll probably check out more thoroughly later, and visited a few of the shopping areas just to look around. I'll probably do some more specific targets or local tours for the next couple days, but I wouldn't be surprised if I find my way back to Holyrood for another visit if my leg holds up.

Day 12: Awrite!

Might be a bit brief tonight. The bus rides from Chester -> Manchester -> Glasgow -> Edinburgh went pretty smoothly. I planned to visit the Manchester Art Gallery during my 3 hour wait between buses, but apparently the three holidays it's closed for are Christmas, New Years and Good Friday. I got lunch in nearby Manchester China Town, but as China Towns go it was pretty underwhelming. The bus ride was pretty scenic, but taking pictures through the tinted, dirty bus windows isn't the greatest.

The bus ride also led to an interesting iron in the fire that might come up again later, but more on that in the future. By the time I got to Edinburgh it was starting to get dark, and it took a bit of searching to find the place I'm staying. It is by far the slickest hostel I've been in, but there isn't much space to just hang out, and they charge a pretty hefty fee for internet access, which means that I might not post anything tomorrow if I can't find a more suitable arrangement. Once I dropped off my things I went out for dinner. I've been having this craving for curry for the last few days, and in my search for the hostel saw a place called Curry-in-a-Hurry, so I went there. It was quite delicious.

It started to rain quite hard as I left, so I just came back to the hostel for an early night. I have a good idea of what I want to do tomorrow (those who know me and know Edinburgh can probably figure it out) but it requires at least decent weather. Not sure what I'll do if it's raining, but the city looks amazing so I have no doubt I'll find something.