We decided to do a week long road trip in Scotland to see some of the highlands and islands of this country neither of us had ever been to before. The prospect of driving on the left was terrifying to me. I know myself and I know I’m not always great under pressure and basically feared for our lives if I was going to drive. So Husband volunteered. (Husband was volunteered – ed.) And we ended up renting a fancy-schmancy Mercedes. For one thing, while we were in Puglia, we had that crappy Fiat 500 which was very uncomfortable on long driving days (translation: my butt got sore). And we knew we were going to have some long driving days in Scotland, so Husband suggested we upgrade. (Husband threatened to unvolunteer himself unless we upgrade. – ed.) Which was the best thing we could have done because it was also an automatic with GPS. Without those two things, it’s likely that either we would have been severely maimed in a car crash or we would have killed each other. Either way, not good for our heroes. So we opted for luxury and the GPS (although I have to admit that the car just came with GPS, a free upgrade I guess).

We took the train from London to Edinburgh. It’s a fairly nice train. A bit wobbly though. Definitely not smooth riding like most of the trains in Italy and other places we’ve been. (But it existed. Unlike highspeed trains in the U.S. – ed.) We arrived in Edinburgh and proceeded to not be able to find the car rental office (which in the UK is car “hire”, which would have been helpful to know in advance). We wandered around the station with our enormous luggage in tow. I finally spotted a sign for Europcar. And we followed it… to a car park a few minutes from the station. And we went inside there and the guy sent us back to the station (It’s near track 2 — also information that would have been useful beforehand) to get the keys to the car. Ugh. I don’t know about you, but every time I rent a car in advance, give them what I think is all the required information, then you get to the office at the airport or wherever, and basically you go through the entire process again. Every time. (Except when I was Avis Preferred… those were the days! Just find your name, get in your car and GO!) True to form, this was basically the “let’s start from scratch” version of a car rental, only in a Scottish accent, so I could only understand about every third word.

After signing up for some kind of roadside assistance insurance plan (probably a good idea, given the circumstances), we got the keys. Reluctantly. I don’t think the guy wanted to give us the Mercedes with the Nav package. He called up the car park guys and asked about other Mercedes. Apparently there weren’t any and so we got the one with the GPS. (Free GPS is best GPS. – ed.) This was when he told us the phone service north of Perth was non-existent, so we might need to use a map. Then he laughed and said “oh, but you do have the GPS.” (By the way, he wasn’t kidding about the lack of phone service in the north. Stay tuned for my next post about Vodafone in the UK entitled “On Edge. Goddammit.” – ed.) So we hauled our crap back to the car park and found the car. Of course the steering wheel was on the wrong side and there was no shift lever, just a big shiny knob, and paddles and buttons everywhere and weird symbols and… and oh holy shit howthehellarewegoingtomakeitthroughthisweek?!?!

Driving out of Edinburgh was interesting. Somehow we didn’t hit any people or cars and managed to stay on the left. Although I did have a few flashbacks of my mom screaming at my dad about him being too close to the stone wall on the small country road in England. (Why the hell are there stone walls right next to all these country roads, and who thought it was a good idea to put a goddamn curb next to a highway, for chrissake?! – driver ed.)                                              

Once we got out on the highway, it wasn’t too bad. But it was a consistent mind fuck for all seven days.

Every time we turned, it was like “OK, you’re going to turn right, which is like turning left. Don’t forget to stay to the left.” And it was pretty much always fine (if not incredibly stressful… my hip was killing me after the first day because of the phantom brake on the passenger side). Things generally fell apart (a little) when we’d get a little lost because then driving instinct kicks in and normally you can get out of any situation with that instinct… except that your instinct puts the car on the right. So, occasionally, I had to scream “LEFT, LEFT!!! (“Occasionally” == “At least once every fifty miles, after most intersections, and during and after nearly every roundabout” – increasingly terrified of driving ed.) If you haven’t driven on the left side of the road and the right side of the car, good for you. That’s how it should be.

We made our way to our first stop for the night in Pitlochry. I picked this place because it seemed to be an actual town with actual places to stay and because it wasn’t too far from Edinburgh, so not too long driving on the wrong side the first day. We found our B&B and checked in. The nice lady gave us a tipple of Edradour cream liqueur. That was delicious! We were off to a good start. We settled into our room and then took a walk into the town to get steps and food. Pitlochry is apparently famous for its theater and fish ladder. We visited the fish ladder. That was kind of neat. We walked over the dam and then around the town. It’s cute. Obviously a resort town for mountaineers, hikers, and probably cyclists. There were a lot of outdoor gear shops in the town. We had a nice dinner at a local place, walked around a little more, then I took a bath in the giant tub. It was a nice tub.

We had Scottish breakfast in the morning, (Black pudding. I ate it. It was delicious. No, I don’t need to be reminded of its ingredients. Shut up.) and walked around town a little more. Found Husband a rain jacket with a hood and we found a woolen hat for me. See, it was freezing. It was June 1st and freezing. I was comfortable in a wool hat and would have loved a puffy coat. But, alas, we had to get to our next stop near Elgin in Speyside (yep, home of some sort of whisky, or something). Again, a fairly short drive up and through the mountains. Very beautiful. Reminded Husband of Alaska. II know this, because he said “Holy crap, this really looks a lot like Alaska” every ten miles or so. It was windy and cold. Probably also rained a little, but not too bad.

We found our B&B, but we were too early for check-in, so we drove into Elgin, found parking, and walked around. This is the point where we realized that having a cell phone with Internet meant jack shit because there was not even 3G. Occasionally, we got GPRS, (whatever that is), but that basically meant that stuff didn’t immediately say “nope, not gonna happen” whenever we wanted something from the internet… but instead it just spun and spun and spun until eventually, nothing happened. Nothing. But mostly we had “no service.” Not sure if this is because we picked Vodafone and EE would have been better? No clue. Some places had wifi, but even that hardly worked. It’s amazing how we’ve gotten used to having internet access. And seriously, not for anything frivolous like Facebook, but for actual useful stuff like Google Maps. Like, how the eff to we get from point A to point B? It’s not like we had a real map, you guys (uh… ok, maybe we did because the rental car guy gave us one, as he laughed at us when we said, “GPS totally works even without a signal, guy”. That might be true, but it really doesn’t matter if you don’t have a little blue line to follow… or any streets on the map… or maybe all you see is a white page with a blue dot.) Yep. No Internet sucks.

Our B&B near Elgin was really nice. It was in an old manor house. We had a huge room with an en-suite and a big dressing room/closet. We stayed here for 3 nights. This place was about 3.5 miles (yeah, miles, you guys. UK still uses miles for distance and it’s confusing because they use grams for food and stones for weight of people… I don’t even know…) from Elgin. I was really hoping we’d be able to walk there (steps… and car avoidance), but nope. It was on a country road with no footpaths (that’s sidewalks for you Americans). This immediately stressed me out. The car was a nightmare. Driving, parking… all of it. But, somehow, we made it work. We visited Elgin a few more times. They have a huge ASDA (WalMart for you Americans) and we bought snacks there. Look, normally, I would never shop at WalMart. I hate that place. I hate that company… but for steps, you gotta do what you gotta do! Alright, moving on.

We also had a lovely picnic from our B&B host in an actual basket with actual teacups! We found a nice park in Forres, spread out the blanket and ate our feast. After lunch, we visited the Benromach distillery that was across the busy street near-ish the park. That was fun. We waited a few minutes for one of the tours. It was just us and this nice oldish guy. He was a rule-breaker. You get a dram of whisky with the tour, but Husband was driving (eventually), so he couldn’t do a full tasting (a dram basically puts you over the legal limit in Scotland), but he got a little sip. And, as we were leaving, the oldish guy ran after us saying “Hey, you didn’t get your dram, so here you go” and handed Husband a mini bottle of the whisky. Nice. He drank it back at the B&B.

After Elgin, we went to Isle of Skye.

Skye is about a 3-4 hour drive from Elgin. Thankfully there is now a bridge from the mainland, so taking a ferry is no longer necessary (I’m not sure how long this bridge has been in place, but from the way the locals talk about it, not all that long). I booked a B&B on the far end of the island because it got great reviews on Trip Advisor and nothing in the little town (biggest, I think, on the whole island) of Portree seemed very nice. That’s a complaint about Skye, incidentally. That there’s no good place to stay. So, I booked a B&B that was on the west side, about 45 minutes or so from Portree. Our B&B host had sent me a letter when I booked with some helpful tips, particularly about driving. I read the note to Husband with a wide grin because in the letter, we were warned of a few things. 1) Driving on Skye is slow. Expect to go only about 40 mph. 2) Use the frequent turnouts in the road to let the locals pass on by (because they are driving 60 or more). 3) Keep an eye out for suicidal sheep in the road. 4) If you happen upon a herd of cows, DON’T STOP. Go slow and they will get out of the way. If you stop, they will stop and I’m sure hilarity ensues.

As we drove across the bridge to Skye, the traffic kind of did slow down. We decided to drive to Portree to find something for lunch (mind you, we still have no internet, so we have no idea where a good place to eat would be). We ate lunch at a seafood place that had been open for about a week (apparently) and served everything on slate roof tiles (“we want plates!!!”) and was “good not great”, and walked around the little town. We were looking for another jacket for Husband because as we were crossing the bridge to Skye, I realized we left the other one behind at the last B&B (the perils of having a huge room with many rooms). We didn’t find anything suitable (nothing really at all in fact) in Portree. So we headed on to the B&B. Naturally, the GPS took us in what would have been the fastest route in distance (and probably speed limit), but actually the slowest because it was a one lane road with “passing places” about every 100 feet. One lane road, driving on the left… (There was no “left”. There was only “lane” or “ditch” or “plunge screaming to our deaths over a cliff while cursing this blighted country and its roads and this stupid GPS.” – ed.) crap. This is insane. Also sheep. Everywhere. And as we are traversing this one lane road, I read about the last 9 miles to the B&B, which is also on a one lane road. So we had quite a long drive to get to our B&B, but we eventually made it. No sheep were harmed in the drive.

The B&B was great and so were the hosts. We had 2 nights here. The first morning, it was pouring rain, but our hosts assured us that the rain would pass and then the wind would kick up. Sounds good. So we drove around in search of a new raincoat. Found one in one of the small towns near the bridge. That was good. Oh yeah! And we had lunch reservations and the fancy place that is actually a few miles down the same one lane road we were staying on, Three Chimneys. It was really good. We finished the meal with something the Scotts call “Tablet.” It’s basically sugar and butter (fudge without the cream). The waiter, who let everyone know he was from Liverpool, said it was the reason the Scotts had such horrible teeth. But the meal was good and the sun started peeking out.

After lunch, we set out to see the Dunvegan (SPELLING???) (Spelling is correct. Weird. But correct. Scottish! -ed) castle. It also wasn’t far from where we were staying. We parked the car and bought our tickets. There is also a lovely garden there, so we figured we’d see that first and get steps. Naturally, the castle was closed by the time we tried to enter. Luckily the gardens were still open, so we didn’t have to climb over the fence to get out. Missing the castle was a bummer. I’m not sure what’s inside the castle and I’m not even sure I would have cared, but it did bug me that the lady who sold the tickets didn’t even mention the closing time (and the closing time printed on the ticket was different). I hate wasting money.

After our failed castle visit, we wandered around Dunvegan for a bit and then headed out to the lighthouse that was down the other one lane (and much scarier) road from our B&B.

We found the lighthouse (and it doesn’t close. Also it doesn’t really get dark in the summer, so we could visit late with no problem), parked the car, and followed the path down. It was pretty far down. Actually you couldn’t even see the lighthouse until you went down the hill and up another hill. But honestly, no one cares about the fucking lighthouse. It’s the cliffs that people go to see. It was windy and freezing. Windy like probably 40-50 mph windy. And we took a bunch of pictures of the water and the beautiful cliffs. This is what I wanted to see on Skye, so I was really happy that we managed to find it and take the hike down. Oh the way back to the B&B, we encountered the cows. So we drove through them slowly and they got out of the way, just like they said they would.

That night was incredibly stormy. The wind was probably gusting around 70 mph or more. The rain was coming in sideways. Oh yeah and keep in mind that it’s early June. The next morning our hosts said it was more like November.

We left fairly early the next morning, as we had a long drive to Oban. It rained most of the day and was grey and dreary. We wandered around Oban, got something to eat and then checked into our B&B. We were only there for one night and had to return the rental car in Edinburgh the next day by 1PM, so we had to get another early start.

Returning the car in Edinburgh. Oh boy… yeah, so driving on the left just sucks. It’s bad the whole time, but it’s much worse in a city. We followed the GPS to the postal code that was supposed to take us right to the Waverley car park, where we were supposed to drop the car. Of course, the street we are supposed to take is closed for construction. There’s a Europcar guy standing there, but it’s too late for our heroes. We’ve already driven by. And Husband is frazzled. We find a place to pull over and try to find an alternate route. Somehow we end up near the car park. He pulls over and gets out and marches down to the car park office and demands that one of the employees just come get the fucking car. I stand there waiting by the illegally parked car with our piles of luggage. A few minutes later, Husband returns with a Europcar employee in tow. He writes something on a form and complains a little about how it will take him 10 minutes to drive the car around to the entrance and Husband is like “Have a nice day! We are going to get a taxi now.” And we head inside the train station and catch a taxi to our apartment for the next two weeks.

So… driving around Scotland. It’s absolutely beautiful and terrifying. I didn’t do any driving, but it’s awful. I think if we ever do something like this again, we may have to just hire a driver because we are just not cut out for driving on the wrong side of the road. (Come onnnn self driving cars!! -ed.) But those parts of Scotland that are not easily reachable by public transportation are the parts that I liked the best. Beautiful landscapes, cute little towns, friendly people. (Sheep. -ed.)

I just wish we didn’t have to have that fucking car.