Scotland

We are going to Scotland in September. As usual, I have put off the little details like reservations, but now I'm seriously checking out B & B's and small hotels and small castles, and I'm calculating mileage and driving times from place to place. Now that July is almost over with and September starts tomorrow, for planning purposes, it is time to Get Serious and start making those reservations. The big Edinburgh Festival ends a few days before we arrive, which means their tourist season will be winding down, which makes it possible to find places to stay in the city even this late. We like to avoid crowds, and I want to drive around with as few other crazy Americans driving on the "wrong side" of the road as possible.

I've been "flying" around Scotland on Google Earth, flying low to see the hills rise up as I cross the country. I've also started reading Kidnapped, one of those books I should have read as a kid but didn't. Near the beginning of the book young David Balfour goes to Edinburgh and sees an "islet" in the middle of the Firth of Forth. On Google Earth, I'm seeing what may have been the island Robert Louis Stevenson was writing about. When we get there, I'll have to drop by to see if he's sitting out in front of the Hawes Inn, or the ghost of him since he's buried on a Pacific Island. If the Hawes Inn was fictional I'm sure some canny Scots have created one. I'll have to buy a drink for old RLS even if his ghost can't pick up the glass.

My ancestors lived in Scotland, somewhere in the vicinity of Loch Lomond, north of Glasgow. They left, one step ahead of the law, and went to Ireland. After getting pounded between the English and the Irish, between Protestants and Catholics, some of them got brave enough or desperate enough to sail to the New World. That was more than eight generations ago, in the 1700's. One of the reservations I've already made is to spend a night in a modest little castle that once belonged to the clan chief, when my clan still had a chief. I don't think I'll buy a drink for the old chief. His ghost can probably pick up the glass and drain it.