Caledonia Calls Again

You guys. After a mere three+ years I’m headed back to the bonnie bonnie banks, glens, cols, beinns, lochs, isles and waterways of Scotland. Last we met it was the fall of 2018 where you provided excellent company on my solo trip. In 2019 I decided to upgrade my house a bit, possibly sensing that I’d be spending quite a lot of time inside its walls in future. As 2020 loomed with its gigantic birthday, I told anyone who would listen that in celebration I’d be saying YES to All The Things. Planned a birthday trip to Paris and another Scotland hiking trip (this one). Yoga retreat in Sedona. Yes yes and yes. And then. Cancel, cancel and cancel, your silly plans matter not. We all lived through the last two years together, and there’s nothing you don’t already know. Enough said.

This trip won’t be solo, but with Danielle, a friend who has accompanied me on many Central Oregon hikes in the Cascades. We are both recovering lawyers, and I think met at a yoga studio years ago. There’s a photo of us in said studio on our backs with our ankles tucked behind our heads and our hands in namasté. Needless to say it’s hilarious and also entirely inappropriate for our purposes here today so I couldn’t possibly post it. Danielle is dating an actual Viking and I still harbor hopes of meeting a Scottish lad with a castle so we remain in men-in-kilts territory. This blog, and Scotland, will continue to abide.

As the trip is growing closer, I’m focusing mostly on driving for the first time in the UK (yikes), and looking forward to hiking in the Cairngorms, the Orkney Islands, Skye, Torridon and Glencoe – and traversing the North Coast 500. I also want to see as many puffins as possible. There will be castles, neolithic ruins, stone circles and Viking stuff. In fact there will be a distillery tour of Highland Park in Kirkwall, which includes a tasting of their “Vikings” series, with special edition, largely cask-strength drams named after Odin, Thor, Freya and Loki. To top things off, I had to postpone my trip home because my intended flight was unceremoniously cancelled, so will be in Inverness solo for an extra day (on my birthday as it happens). On that day a man named Andrew Grant McKenzie (you heard me) a historian who plays the bagpipes and worked at Culloden Battlefield for years will be squiring me on a tour somewhere, honestly it doesn’t really matter where. I believe the chances of him showing up in a kilt are very very high.

So thank you for joining me yet again to explore a wee country the size of South Carolina that somehow contains a vast Universe of history, hiking trails, dazzling terrain, culture, wildlife, wonderful food and very kind and welcoming residents with comforting accents. Scotland is basically Hermione’s bag in the form of a country.