Today was an early morning to make the tour bus. There turned out to be 29 people on the bus! It was crazy full. I ended up sitting next to Andy, from D.C. and Stacey and Robin from Toronto. I know that maybe I should have made some more international friends, but it was really nice to talk with people who have similar cultural experiences and accents.
The tours here are a lot different than the tours at home. The tours I’m used to are you ride there in a bus, nothing really going on, and when you get there the guide tells you about everything and takes you around and then you get back on the bus and rest until you get to the next stop. Here, the tour guides talked and tell you about what you’re seeing or they tell you about the history or lore so Scotland while you’re on the bus and then when you get off the bus it’s like ‘Ok, go take pictures, see you back here in 30 minutes!’ And while they’re talking on the bus you’re expected to pay attention and not talk. A couple of girls really got in trouble for talking. It was pretty rude of them as other people were trying to listen.
We learned a ton, a lot of which I don’t remember, but we started on the bridge. We didn’t talk too much about the actual bridge we crossed, but rather about a bridge to the north. Created by a Mr. Botch in the 1800s, he built the pylons under water by dropping big copper tubs to the bottom of the river, used pumps to push out all the water and crate a vacuum, and then pumped in air so that men could go down and build the bases of the bridges. It was a really good bridge, but unfortunately it was hit by a storm (the scale of which hasn’t been seen since) and additionally, a train was traveling across it. The second car had no passengers and lifted off the tracks in the massive winds. This caused the destruction of both bridge and train, on which his own daughter-in-law was travelling. The public was outraged with him (even though it wasn’t really his fault) and he died a month later (some say from a broken heart).
We stopped in the town of Dunkeld for a quick look at the cathedral and some coffee (there are lots of pictures of the historical stuff) before we pushed on. We passed through a lot of beautiful scenery and I did my best to capture it through the bus windows and at our frequent photo stops at scenic pull-overs and sometimes just when we’d stop at the side of the road and our guide, Ewan, would say something like ‘take ten minutes and clamber about an get some pictures’. Ewan MacCloud was our guide and he was hilarious. He’d be in the middle of telling us history or folk -ore or what have you and all of a sudden he’d start off in a tangent about the guy walking down the street with his coffee or the pretty girls riding by on bikes or something equally random and crazy. Dirty old Scot for sure! But completely adorable. He had a bit of help from our guide in training, Craig, too. Our next prolonged stop was Loch (means lake) Ness! We didn’t see any monsters and I forgot to splash in the water, but it was really beautiful. It’s 24 miles long and almost a mile wide in some parts. Very pretty. I also tried Irn Bru – Scotland’s highest selling soft drink. It kind of tastes like a melted creamsicle and cough syrup mixed together. Not my favorite, but it was interesting.
Our next stop was at the roadside monument to Robert MacKenzie, the man who with his dying breath fooled the British soldiers into thinking he was Bonnie Prince Charlie and thus confusing them enough to take his head back to Edinburgh for identification. They discovered it wasn’t Prince Charlie but it took long enough for the Prince to make good his escape. I also took some pictures of bluebells, the Scot’s national flower and tried to avoid the midges. We call these may flies or ‘noseeums’. Here, they’re called midges (pronounced mid-geeeeees) and a cloud of them (as we frequently walked into) was referred to as ‘midge-death’. The sneaky little bastards that weren’t a part of a cloud but snuck up on you and bit you unawares were referred to as ‘ninja-midges’ and I met my fair share of those too. Yuck.
The last stop before we got to Skye was the castle Eileen Donnan. Back in the 1300s the castle had been built on the ruins of an Abbey. By the 1700s it had been burnt down and the ruins just left. There were no plans that survived of the castle’s original layout. Then, in the early 1900s, the clan chief had a dream that he took a golden crucifix and saw a plan to rebuild the castle. Not having any money, he married a rich American woman and used her money to build the castle he had seen in his dream. They started in 1912 and finished in 1932, using techniques that would have been used in the 14th century. Well, in the late 20th century, a fire broke out in Edinburgh Castle that burnt down a previously hidden room, blocked by a wooden door. Inside the room in a trunk, they discovered several blue prints, including one of Eileen Donnan Castle. It turns out that the chief had re-built the castle to almost the exact specifications on the blue print. So neat! The family still owns the castle and the owners don’t allow photos inside, but it’s very neat! They still use it for clan gatherings and weekend visits. Most recently, the castle was used in the filming of the movie “Made of Honor.”
We made a quick stop at a grocery before we crossed Skye Bridge and went to our hostel. It was a guest house and we filled all of it. It was like a big family reunion kind of thing. Not wanting to cook, a lot of us went out to the pub where I tried Haggis, Fruit Pudding, and Blood Pudding. It didn’t really agree with me, but they all tasted pretty good. We had some drinks and then sang a lot of karaoke before heading home at 11:30 (it was still light!) and to bed. All in all, a grand first day.
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