Scotland – cornetravel

Living the High(lands) Life

Posted on December 9, 2016December 9, 2016 by cornetravel

A few days after the Hearts/Celtic game in Edinburgh, we made our way to Glasgow. It finally began raining in Scotland. It was in the rain that we got a bit melancholy and could sense our time in Scotland coming to an end. Glasgow was not as near as interesting as Edinburgh, but I think that also had to do with the weather. We went to a couple of museums over the course of a day and a half. The most interesting, the Mackintosh house, was an entire home designed by a couple (Charles Renni Mackintosh and Margaret McDonald Mackintosh). We learned about the couple and their influence on art and architecture. The design aesthetic of the Mackintosh house is like nothing else you have seen, made even more impressive considering their ideas are over 100 years old.

Not the Mackintosh House. We couldn’t take pictures at it so you’ll have to visit it to see.

We happened to be in Glasgow during a live bag-piping competition. If you’ve ever visited Scotland then you know that most all street musicians are bagpipers, but it was still a sight to see actual bag-piping performances.

Bagpipe Performance/Competition

While in town we took a tour of the beautiful city hall which boasts the largest/tallest marble staircase (even beating out the Vatican by an extra half-story).

Bird

Ceiling

Tallest marble staircase in the world

Inside the city hall

Inside the council chambers

Lion

Tilework

Elizabeth asking for something

Elizabeth deciding if she will answer the question she has just asked

Motto of Glasgow

To complete our Glasgow town visit, we toured the Tennent’s brewery took a tour of their city hall (with a marble staircase higher than the Vatican), and visited a brewery that used to put half naked women on their cans for marketing purposes.

Old delivery van

Cans of Lovlies

CANS!

Mr. Tennants

Ads in their own brewery

Beer Flight

Brewery

Classy Cans

Street art

Our only night closed with having Indian curry at our fellow West Calder WWOOFer’s house just outside Glasgow. She invited us over to stay the night and we much appreciated the offer. We had fun talking to her and her fiance while we watched some more Olympics.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA — The statue always wears the headgear. It’s a tradition.

The time at the second farm came to a quick end. A month had flown by in Scotland and we were disappointed to have to go. The weather was everything we ever dreamed of when visiting Scotland. We still had a few days left in Scotland before heading over to Ireland though and were looking forward to checking out the Scottish Highlands.

As we left the farm, we had a lot to do before we went to Ireland. First stop, Hadrian’s Wall. Built in 122 AD, it’s old. The Romans were slowly conquering everywhere and had made their way to Scotland and managed to erect a wall stretching across the entire island. There are a few spots along the way to see Hadrian’s wall and we stopped at a couple of them. The first was a temple devoted to the god Mithras, built around 200 AD. The other stop was the wall itself. We went to the most popular of the stops, the sight of a former fort, and a great place to see the entire countryside.

The temple

Columns

A little info

Statue of Mithra

Rolling hills and wall

Rolling wall and hills

Baths behind us

Bathrooms

Elizabeth and Hadrian

Pasture

I will never grow tired of seeing Roman ruins outside of Italy. It never gets old.

From there we headed over to St. Andrews. We were criss-crossing Scotland, and I was driving the entire way. It was somewhat tricky to navigate a manual vehicle, with the shifter on the wrong side of the car, while driving on the wrong side of the road. Of course, if you’re gonna go see stuff, sometimes it’s tough.

We were headed to St. Andrews for my father. I don’t care a thing for golf, mostly because I’m terrible at it, but he said all he wanted was something from St. Andrews. Of all the places we traveled, he was most interested in a golf course.

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We arrived when the sun was setting. Too late to buy a gift, but just in time for incredible views of the North Sea and the Old Course. I could not believe how beautiful it was. The light was perfect, the temperature too. The only thing missing was decent golfers, because the hacks out there “golfing” left a lot to be desired.

The Clubhouse

The beach

The Old Course

Watering the lawn

The creek

The Old Course

I facetimed my father, hoping he would answer so I could show him around the Old Course. It was getting darker, but I knew he would want to see it. I was able to show him the famous creek and bridge on the 18th hole and had Elizabeth snap a few photos. He was certainly more excited for me than I was. We left early the next day, disappointed that we could not stay in town longer. It’s a lovely little town that needs at a couple of days to enjoy.

Our final full day in Scotland saw us head into the highlands. We weren’t able to drive as far north as what I had hoped to do, but we got awful close. Scotland was probably my favorite place we visited, the biggest reason being the weather and the landscape. Always cool to mild, rainy, green, mountainous, English speaking. I would move there quickly.

We worked our way from the east coast of St. Andrews, to the west coast of Mallaig. We had high tea, walked around the little port town, watched the sun set, and then settled in to some cider while watching the Olympics in a pub. We slept in the car since we couldn’t afford a room in town. We had a great time piddling around upper Scotland.

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This tower is why we do afternoon tea.

Port side art.

Although the sun sets everywhere,

We left Mallaig at the crack of dawn, mostly because once the sun came up, we had no curtains to protect us from daylight. We took a leisurely drive back to Edinburgh, slowly creeping through the highlands still. We took a lot of pictures and tried to take in what I think was the most beautiful area on our long trip.

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We did finally go to a castle in Scotland, stopping off at Stirling Castle. We caught a tour of the grounds and learned a lot about the history of Scotland, a bit about William Wallace, and again how awful the English are. They had an interesting museum covering how those massive tapestries are made, awesome wooden carvings, and other stuff I forgot since I was panicking the entire time, stressed that we were going to miss our flight later that night.

View of Stirling Castle.

Animals

A look at the plebians below.

Everything was green and perfect.

We learned how the famous tapestry of the castle was put together.

Unicorns are the symbol of Scotland.

This is the ceiling. This is a reproduction of the actual ceiling tiles that live in the castle museum.

The famous tapestry it told the story of the “Mystic Hunt for the Unicorn.”

THe original restored ceiling tiles depicting famous people of the time.

Still smiling after sleeping in a car and no showers.

On our way back to the airport, we received a parting gift from Scotland. Off the side of the interstate, we were surprised to see what we had only seen in model size – The Kelpies. IT was THE statue of the mythical horses that we saw in Kirkcudbright. I wish the kids from the first farm could have seen the surprise on our face when we saw them. We had no clue where they were in Scotland, but you can’t miss 100 ft tall horse heads as you’re driving down the highway. But our last glimpse of anything before flying to Dublin that night was the Kelpies. We laughed at the thought.

Farming and Futbolling in Scotchland

Posted on November 29, 2016November 28, 2016 by cornetravel

As we headed over to our next farm, we were unsure what to expect. We had a great time at the first farm, got to see plenty of neat stuff, and did a fair amount of different activities. It was going to be tough to top that.

When we finally arrived at the new place, we realized we’d be doing something completely different, and be doing that for quite a while.

So to make a long two week story short, Elizabeth spent her time “strimming”, which here in the US is called weed-eating. I spent my time watching a WWOOFer cut down trees and then we hauled the logs up a hill.

Home for two weeks.

This backyard showcased the most beautiful sunsets.

Home for two weeks.

Strimming along.

Elizabeth’s coworkers out in the field.

Tree turned fuel for the winter.

The second farm we were working on used wood to heat their homes during the colder months. In Scotland, that’s almost year round. They needed lots of wood. We were adding very little to their total use, but every little bit helped.

We worked with two parts of a family. The matriarch housed us, and told us what she wanted completed. The son, who lived across the berm from his childhood home, helped us figure out what to do day to day. Both families were pleasant, polite, good humored, and enjoyable to be around. We had dinner with the families occasionally. One night, after much discussion about biscuits, Elizabeth took it upon herself to bake proper biscuits for our British host. Not British biscuits of course, which are American cookies, but American biscuits, which are close to scones. Not exactly like a scone, but pretty close.

Felling trees with the other WWOOFer

Gameface ready.

Once the tree is down, it is sliced into manageable logs.

The Great British Bakeoff of West Calder.

One of the magnificent sunsets we witnessed from the window over the kitchen sink.

At this farm, I developed my tea addiction. Having enjoyed high tea back in London and then continuing the tea drinking in Borgue, I decided I might as well enjoy more tea while in West Calder. We drank quite a bit each and every day. It’s a lovely ritual that I have tried to continue even back home.

After our work was completed for the day, we had the chance to enjoy some international fun. We enjoyed the Olympics (aka: one the Elizabeth’s favorite things in life) from a cozy living room in Scotland. It was fun to be in another country and see their commentary. The UK has invested hundreds of millions back into their Olympics programs lately, much of the funds from their lottery. It has paid off considerably. But since we’re American, we spent much of our |BBC viewing trying to catch the US in action. We were fortunate to see live coverage of a few gold medals and the gymnastics team do so well.

On our off days, we made treks to Edinburgh and Glasgow. On our first two off days, we went to Edinburgh. We tried a fair amount of local food, from haggis to black pudding. I’m not sure what the fuss is about either. We thought both were really good and don’t know why people have such an aversion to the delicacies.

Haggis, neeps and tatties in the back. Burger in the front.

“BBQ”

Where Harry Potter began… supposedly.

This is a statue of Greyfriars Bobby, most loyal pup in all of Edinburgh. He is known for guarding his late owners grave for 14 years.

Sir Walter Scott memorial.

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One of the most beautiful streets and also the inspiration of Diagon Alley.

Courtyard that includes the writers museum.

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Now if you were to complain about the bland baked beans they serve with breakfast, that would make sense. Or the whole roasted hog they served at one of the lunch places we visited. The pork was tender, but they don’t smoke it. Not sure why you would cook an entire pig without cooking it over hickory, but whatever. Maybe Scotland can figure it out in a few hundred years.

We also did the usual walking tour in Edinburgh. It consisted mostly of talking about how bad the English treated the Scottish, a not to uncommon theme over there, and would continue when we traveled over to Ireland. We did learn about the literary history of Scotland and also about the significance Scotland, specifically Edinburgh, was in the Harry Potter books.

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Edinburgh Castle also known as the inspiration for Hogwarts

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Climbing atop Arthur’s Seat.

The view from Arthur’s Seat.

We visited a cemetery on the walking tour that included some important Potter related names, none more so than Tom Riddle. It was neat to see locations that were inspirations for such a famous series of books.

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Our guide said the cage was to keep grave robbers out. Elizabeth was certain it was to keep zombies in.

We closed out one of our days with a scotch tasting and then taking some home with us. We are not scotch people. I think it tastes like liquid charcoal, but “when in Rome”. So after a few tastings of varying opinions, we bought a collection of four different scotch samples. I can confirm each tasted different. I can also confirm that not only are we not scotch people, but I think I’ve had my fill of scotch for a decade or two. Long Live Beer.

A few days later, and on a Sunday, we headed off to our second soccer match of our European adventure. Our first, back in March in Spain, left a lot to be desired. After talking to a lot of Europeans, they let us know our experience was an exception, not the rule. I had my doubts, but a local team, the Heart of Midlothian (just called Hearts), were playing in Edinburgh against a big rival from Glasgow, Celtic.

Now Celtic is a big deal in Scottish soccer, not that you or I would know. Hearts are not a big deal. So to give you an idea, the city of Glasgow has two teams that have won about 90% of all championships. The Rangers and the Celtics. The Rangers are Alabama and Celtic is Notre Dame, this analogy will do well since Celtic is the Catholic team in Scotland.

Imagine that the Hearts, the team we are going to cheer for is Mississippi State. Constantly the plucky underdog, hardly ever winning anything ever. No other team besides the Rangers or Celtic has won the regular season since the 80’s, Hearts having not won the regular season since the 1959-60 season. And the Hearts are decidedly not Catholic.

You might be wondering why the whole Catholic thing is being brought up. It’s because when I attempted to buy tickets for this game, I was told it would not be possible. And when I called the soccer headquarters to speak with someone else to get tickets, I was told it would still not be possible.

Why? Because of historical violence between Catholic and Protestant fans at these matches. And since we had never bought tickets before to a Hearts game, they could not confirm that I was not a crazy person determined to start a massive brawl, storm the field attacking players or referees, or cause death and destruction in any other creative ways .

Well this wasn’t going to work for me. I had no interest in being told I couldn’t do something. There is always a way to get what you want, if you work hard enough, bitch enough, or go above someone’s head. I tried one and two. It was on to #3. So I emailed some people in hospitality and suite department of Hearts. I explained that my wife and I are boring Americans, we know nothing about soccer, particularly Scottish soccer, the history of sectarian violence among these two teams, and then linked our blog to the email so they could see I was telling the truth. I told them I just wanted regular tickets, nothing fancy, and was more than willing to pay full price.

I also told them it would be a real shame we couldn’t go to the game, since we had met some Hearts fans back in Spain and they were such nice people. Then I told them it would be a bigger shame because their chief rival in town (Hibernian) played a few days later, and I would hate to spend my money supporting another team in Edinburgh (which also turned out to be the Catholic team).

I got an email back the next day letting me know tickets would be at will call on the day of the game.

So away we went to the game. Our tickets were waiting on us. We bought toboggans. We cheered. We went to a bar where rival fans were not allowed, nor was anyone even wearing the rival team’s color (those colors are not allowed in the bar on match day to ensure a nonviolent atmosphere). We ate meat pies in the bar and at the game. We drank mediocre beer. We saw a police barricade outside the stadium to prevent fans from fighting, and saw a similar occurrence inside the stadium. I even got a hot dog.

And the Hearts lost.

It was an unsurprising finish to a great little day.

Scotland Yard(work)

Posted on November 2, 2016November 3, 2016 by cornetravel

We now enter a less vacationy portion of our trip. We decided that while we were on this adventure we would try lots of new things. Eating camel, beaching nude, drinking Rakia before white water rafting, walking 500 miles, sailing the Mediterranean. Another to add to the list was farming.

We don’t know a thing about farming. We know where fruits and vegetables come from, but other than some rosemary plucked from an herb garden, we do not get our hands dirty. It isn’t because we don’t want to. Elizabeth once had a beautiful tomato plant, but she managed to drown it before it could finish growing a tomato. I had picked squash, okra, and some other vegetables now and again, but it was about 15 years ago.

So we decided to volunteer for a month or so in Scotland. It would give us a way to see a different part of the world, meet actual families, save some money, and extend our trip. Hopefully, we would also learn something about small farming practices which is the primary goal of this volunteer work. We went through an organization called WWOOF, a very popular international outfit that has been around since hippies decided to help the world.

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To get to our first of two farms, we caught a ten hour night bus from London to Glasgow. From there we caught a couple more buses over a couple more hours to a little town called Gatehouse of Fleet, where we met the patriarch of the family and the littlest family member who was only a few months old. Another 20 minutes later and we were near a town called Borgue.

Borgue is barely a town. I would not call it a town. At least not in the sense of a town having stuff and things. Two and a half miles away from our farm was the city center, consisting of a local run hotel/bar, church, and community center. That sums up the town.

As we arrived and got settled, we got to know the family. It was a lovely group of six, four of those ranged in age from a few months to age 9. We learned everyone’s name and also learned that all the children able to talk loved Harry Potter. We didn’t know it was possible but they loved it more than we did, or at least loved talking about it more than we did. The children were constantly throwing curses at everyone, mostly the killing curse.

Our first day was a bit truncated with all the traveling, but we did get a little farming in. We harvested onions and garlic. Having never picked either, we learned the proper way to pick both. We got our hands dirty and it was fun.

Eventually we were called in for tea. Except it wasn’t really tea. It’s what they call dinner. We had hamburgers, sausage, and kebabs. For dessert, we had pudding. Not actual pudding, but that’s what they called it. The actual name of the dessert was called “mess”. It wasn’t a mess though, it was a strawberry shortcake type dish. We always find it interesting to learn that while we speak English, we don’t know everyone’s English.

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We spent two weeks with this family. From 8 AM till noon we worked on the farm. Some days we weeded the garden, mended or added to the raised plant beds, harvested potatoes, made peanut butter, chopped wood, etc. Whatever was needed that day, we worked on it. On Fridays, we spent our time clearing a piece of land. The family clears the land for another family in the town, and in return gets firewood. Our family’s home is heated by firewood in the winter so this is a huge benefit to clearing the land for a few hours each week.

While staying with the family of six we had the opportunity to visit a few areas near Borgue. We visited the Mull of Galloway, Castle Douglas and one weekday we took a family field trip to Kirkcudbright (pronounced “kid-COO-brie”) for Scottish Night.

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Scottish Night was a fun community event where we enjoyed some more fish and chips, bagpipes, traditional dancing and a tug of war contest with the local team. Kirkcudbright’s T.O.W. team has never lost a game. We were volunteered to tug against the champs. As much as I would like to say we crushed them and ended the streak, we were no match for the ferocious and precocious team.

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On Scottish Night we also got our first glance at The Kelpies. A Kelpie, if you are not familiar, is a mythical sea creature from Scottish lore. In Falkirk there is a large statue of two kelpies in the form of horses. Not everyone can make the trek to see the 30 meter high creatures so a smaller model has been traveling around the world. Before the model arrived in Kirkcudbright, the kelpies were on display in NYC. The town was so proud to have these on display.

We also went to the beach one day and visited an long abandoned castle on another. There was always something to do or see in our spare time. Our beach trip involved a cave, a jellyfish, cold water, and the 9 year old completely losing her mind over a sunburn/jellyfish sting. It was extremely eventful. Our trip to the castle involved cows chasing us through the fields because they thought we would be letting them out. They were wrong and we were constantly terrified of begin stampeded (which almost happened).

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We went back to Kirkcudbright during our last weekend with our WWOOF family. The town is known as the artist town. Scotland has a Food Town (Castle Douglas) and a book town (Wigtown) in addition to a artist town. We were lucky enough to be in town during the annual artist festival. People open their homes, gardens, churches, and shops and fill them with all kinds of art. We met a few artists who work textiles, traditional water colors, metals, woodwork oil… you name it they have it. It gave us another chance to walk the lovely town and meet so many locals. We were also lucky enough to pick up a piece of art for ourselves.

We enjoyed our first two weeks WWOOFing, it was a strong departure from the adventuring we had been doing. While WWOOFing, we had two whole weeks of no packing, homecooked meals, and steady work. It has never been so nice staying still. When our two weeks were up in Borgue, we moved on to another farm in West Calder, Scotland. During our time there we were able to go to a few more cities and even to Edinburgh. More on that in our next post.