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Oh This Sweet Land
Nov. 22nd, 2013 11:38 amWe landed in Glasgow shortly before noon, and even though I'd been awake for almost 26 hours and traveling throughout the majority of that time, I was feeling a manic sort of energy coursing through me. I was doing what I loved with the person I loved and was finally in the country I loved most. It was like feeling completely alive for the first time in ages.
It took time to get the luggage and meet up with our friend, John, but we finally got the rental car and loaded everything up. I felt this need to keep moving, even though I had things to organize and prep before hitting the road: the gps, phone charger, an mp3 plug (which was useless since the car didn't have an auxiliary port). It's always like that, the moment I'm getting in the car after a long flight. I want to be smart and sensible about it but my soul is crying out to get moving, to get out there, to soar across the landscape and suck it all inside of me.
Finally we got settled and were on the road. I had the minor complication of forcing my body to get back into long unused movements, handling a stick shift with the left hand. Ironically, the last time I used a stick shift was in France in 2009, just after spending a week driving on the right side of the car in Scotland. The stick shift itself is an easy transition: It really is like riding a bike, once you've done it a while it's programmed into your muscle memory. But shifting with the left hand is a little like writing with your left hand. Your muscles just don't want to work that way.
I got lucky in that all I had to do was get myself onto their version of the freeway and then we curved largely around the city rather than through. No need to deal with much city traffic and in no time at all we were in the countryside, driving up into mountains (as Scotland has them, anyway).
I'd last been on that road in 2007. That time it had been after dark and I'd had a terrible cold but the road is curvy and narrow, a constant source of endorphins filling you up because of the sharp curves, odd angles and queer uncertainty that comes with driving on the opposite side of the road that you're used to. It looked so different in the daytime and yet it was so familiar.
We had a two and a half hour drive to the small town of Ft. William in the shadow of Scotland's greatest mountain, Ben Nevis. The landscape changes immediately from the flat farmland of Scotland around and to the south of Glasgow to ridges and hills and trees, with occasional open hillsides. Lochs can be seen as one drives past them, and there's a point where all civilization drops away and there's just hills and mountains. We stopped there in 2007 to watch it snow for a time and we stopped again on a clear blue day on this trip to enjoy the cold push of the wind and the wildness of the scenery.
We arrived in Ft. William pretty much as expected, found our B&B on the main road just across from a loch and settled into our rooms after a warm welcome from the male owner whose name escapes me. After we took a few minutes to unload our things and change into clothes we hadn't been wearing for almost thirty hours we walked into town.
I like Ft. William because it's sort of the quintessential mountain town and yet is completely different from the kind of mountain town you find in the U.S. It's quiet (or at least it was on this Friday afternoon), giving the sense that it's been emptied out due to the end of tourist season. There was a long street heading slightly upward with shops and restaurants and pubs on each side. We stopped at a restaurant called the Ben Nevis and got various kinds of warm Scottish meals: I had a lamb pie in red wine sauce that was delicious. After a couple of drinks we headed out and up the road slightly to a pub called The Grog and Gruel and I had another pint and my first dram of whiskey.
By the time we'd had dinner I was starting to feel the exhaustion replacing the elation which was represented by a sudden inability to remember the pin number for my atm card. I managed to work it out at The Grog and Gruel but after finishing our drinks and taking the walk back to the pub I was ready to put the day to rest. Tired as I was, it felt so good to lie down on a Scottish bed with its warm duvet, knowing that the highlands waited for me just beyond the window. There is nothing in the world like the beginning of a trip in a much beloved land with days left to travel yet before you.
It took time to get the luggage and meet up with our friend, John, but we finally got the rental car and loaded everything up. I felt this need to keep moving, even though I had things to organize and prep before hitting the road: the gps, phone charger, an mp3 plug (which was useless since the car didn't have an auxiliary port). It's always like that, the moment I'm getting in the car after a long flight. I want to be smart and sensible about it but my soul is crying out to get moving, to get out there, to soar across the landscape and suck it all inside of me.
Finally we got settled and were on the road. I had the minor complication of forcing my body to get back into long unused movements, handling a stick shift with the left hand. Ironically, the last time I used a stick shift was in France in 2009, just after spending a week driving on the right side of the car in Scotland. The stick shift itself is an easy transition: It really is like riding a bike, once you've done it a while it's programmed into your muscle memory. But shifting with the left hand is a little like writing with your left hand. Your muscles just don't want to work that way.
I got lucky in that all I had to do was get myself onto their version of the freeway and then we curved largely around the city rather than through. No need to deal with much city traffic and in no time at all we were in the countryside, driving up into mountains (as Scotland has them, anyway).
I'd last been on that road in 2007. That time it had been after dark and I'd had a terrible cold but the road is curvy and narrow, a constant source of endorphins filling you up because of the sharp curves, odd angles and queer uncertainty that comes with driving on the opposite side of the road that you're used to. It looked so different in the daytime and yet it was so familiar.
We had a two and a half hour drive to the small town of Ft. William in the shadow of Scotland's greatest mountain, Ben Nevis. The landscape changes immediately from the flat farmland of Scotland around and to the south of Glasgow to ridges and hills and trees, with occasional open hillsides. Lochs can be seen as one drives past them, and there's a point where all civilization drops away and there's just hills and mountains. We stopped there in 2007 to watch it snow for a time and we stopped again on a clear blue day on this trip to enjoy the cold push of the wind and the wildness of the scenery.
We arrived in Ft. William pretty much as expected, found our B&B on the main road just across from a loch and settled into our rooms after a warm welcome from the male owner whose name escapes me. After we took a few minutes to unload our things and change into clothes we hadn't been wearing for almost thirty hours we walked into town.
I like Ft. William because it's sort of the quintessential mountain town and yet is completely different from the kind of mountain town you find in the U.S. It's quiet (or at least it was on this Friday afternoon), giving the sense that it's been emptied out due to the end of tourist season. There was a long street heading slightly upward with shops and restaurants and pubs on each side. We stopped at a restaurant called the Ben Nevis and got various kinds of warm Scottish meals: I had a lamb pie in red wine sauce that was delicious. After a couple of drinks we headed out and up the road slightly to a pub called The Grog and Gruel and I had another pint and my first dram of whiskey.
By the time we'd had dinner I was starting to feel the exhaustion replacing the elation which was represented by a sudden inability to remember the pin number for my atm card. I managed to work it out at The Grog and Gruel but after finishing our drinks and taking the walk back to the pub I was ready to put the day to rest. Tired as I was, it felt so good to lie down on a Scottish bed with its warm duvet, knowing that the highlands waited for me just beyond the window. There is nothing in the world like the beginning of a trip in a much beloved land with days left to travel yet before you.
