13 April 2017 Keiss, Scotland
Well, it looks like it might be slightly less windy today, but only slightly. We shall see. On the bright side, my skin feels as smooth as a baby’s butt. Today we are going to head over to Thurso, which is actually near the most northern point of mainland Scotland. I got it wrong yesterday. Oopsie.
Also on the agenda are a few “housekeeping” and “planning” items. I’m writing them here in the hopes that I don’t forget to do them, since they are kind of important:
- Taxes
- Figure out where we will be staying when we arrive in France in less than a week.
That’s it so far. Walk and administrative stuff. Pretty exciting. Let’s all hope the internet works!!
Thurso – Scrabster – Holborn Head
Drove to Thurso so we could explore that area. There are a number of walks here, but some might be a bit beyond our tolerance for “bog factor”. So we decided to take the easy short walk to Scrabster (that’s the real name, I can’t make this shit up) and then up and around the cliffs to Holborn Head.
So Thurso and Scrabster are not places I’d ever care to return to. Thurso is a pretty large town, but not exactly interesting or pretty or even cute. It’s just dull. And Scrabster? Yeah, it’s about how it sounds. It’s tiny and mainly dedicated to fish processing and one of the ferries to the Orkney Islands. Industrial small town.
But we walked beyond the boring towns and up the bluff to Holborn Head. Wow wow wow! I’d post pictures, but the internet is barely functioning. This was one of those places that elicits the spontaneous “ooohhhoooohhhh” from me. It was incredible. Just amazing. Takes your breath away. And you want to get closer to the edge, but know it won’t be a good idea. So you don’t. Because you’d probably fall to your death. But it’s so tempting because of what you might be able to see! Anyways, we stayed a reasonable distance from the edges and saw a lot of cool stacked rocks (not literally stacked… well, actually maybe quite literally). And the waves were blasting the rocks, which was really cool. And the wind wasn’t too bad. Still pretty windy, but not exfoliating awful. And the “bog factor” wasn’t too bad. Except…
Then Nature Kneecapped Me… AGAIN
I’m getting really sick and tired of nature. I mean, I like it… it’s nice to look at and be outside in the fresh air (yes, even in the wind and rain), but what I really fucking hate is falling down. We had to cross a lot of little streams (maybe smaller than streams? I don’t know the technical terms). Anyway, one was lined with the flat rocks we’d been seeing stacked up all day. So I started across and realized my line was a little too wet, so I turned to move up a bit and BAM… my feet went out from under me and I face-planted on the rock in the fucking water. My first thought after “you fucking, bitch, nature, again? Are you kidding me?” was “get up, get up fast before you get totally soaked.” So I did… and I was covered in disgusting algae and slime and mud and probably sheep poo. And I cut my finger a little bit. And I was really pissed off for a while. And I’m pretty sure I shouted at the top of my lungs, “I fucking hate Scotland, this fucking country can suck balls.” or something like that. I was really mad. And wet. And now cold. But I wasn’t seriously hurt or anything, so we continued on because I like to finish what I’ve started (sometimes). It’s so aggravating. So I made Husband take a picture of me a little further on, giving nature the big finger. Of course, I’d also like to give the Internet a big finger too because I can’t upload the photo right now.
Anyway, we finished the walk and headed back to the car. Then we stopped at the store for provisions (read: hotel room picnic) and back to our B&B.
Oh and regarding the “to do” list from today, I got the taxes sorted, mostly. We still have no fucking clue what we are going to do in France. I guess I should probably start working on that now. I will try and add some photos, but I cannot promise a damn thing because this internet is infuriating. Until tomorrow!
