Castles and Wine

I learned today that there are few places on earth that are more beautiful than the Scottish Highlands. 

I have arrived in Thurso, after an eight-hour train ride, and three transfers from Falkirk.  My last couple of days have been well, and I always find it awkward to update on more then one day-per-post, but I have been extremely preoccupied with other things, and there was no wifi at Bryan's, so if I wanted to update, I'd have to plug into his hardwire, and well...I was too lazy.  Simply put.

Anyhow. This is the accumulation of posts I've written offline, and new things I'm adding today, so it may seem a little choppy, but I'm going to do my best to integrate it the best I can.  I left Edinburgh early Wednesday morning, after some friendly goodbyes with my hostel-mates, and a promise to mail some Kraft Dinner, Kraft Peanut Butter, and Aunt Jemima pancake syrup to Josie at the hostel, a fellow Canadian. 

Met Bryan in Falkirk at the train station, and bussed home to his house in Bonnybridge.  Dropped my baggage off (which is much heavier due to excess amounts of alcohol) and met his parents, who are nice.  I was not the most comfortable at first, because I’m nervous about being a guest in someone’s house, but I was fine by the end of my stay. 

We went to Callendar House in Falkirk, which is somewhat of a museum about the area, followed by a walk through the forest to William Forbes Maloseum, who was the owner of Callendar House.   I don’t really feel like that was an important tidbit of information to share, but the walk was nice anyhow. 

 

  

Then, we walked back into town, hopped another bus to the Falkirk Wheel.  We didn’t go on it; we really just looked at it.  Apparently, it allows passage to little boats traveling along the canal.  We walked all the way from here, back to Bonnybridge, through a forest, where we passed the Antonine Wall – a wall created by the Romans in the 140’s to separate England from Scotland.  You can still somewhat see where the wall used to stand, even though it’s not there anymore.

 

OH! I saw a deer! I didn’t have time to snap a photo, but that’s okay.  I was beginning to question whether anything larger than squirrels and pigeons lived in the UK. 

Bryan's house was nice, but I found it to be a little different than what I'm used to.  I guess it's just a different way of living, I suppose.  For example, I had a bath for the first time in over a year because they haven’t a shower installed, there was no wireless internet, they reuse cooking oil, instead of using new oil each time (I'm sorry, this is still bizarre).  I’m not complaining, it’s just...different.  Baths, really.  Who bathes these days?

And they have a one year old border collie named Spots.  He likes to smell me.  It drives me crazy, and even though he’s adorable, it reminds me why I am a cat person.  (Cat PERSON.  Not cat LADY.  There is a difference, thank you very much.)

On Thursday, we went into Stirling.  It took quite some time to get there, and I was EXHAUSTED from the previous day(s), but the day was gorgeous, and really - what more could I ask for, other than good company, and good weather?

We walked to the Wallace Monument, which was actually really amazing.  I mean, the tourist aspect of the monument was a little lacking, but the walk to the hiking trail, and then the hiking trail up, and the building itself was fantastic.  I'm a happy little Canadian whenever the sun is shining and I get to hike.  We walked up all 246 steps to the top of the building, and I even got to see William Wallace's sword!  After that, we walked back down, and to a pub to meet a friend of Bryan's.

His name is Ben, and I convinced him to come to Stirling Castle with us - so the three of us spent the afternoon together.  Stirling Castle disappointed me a little because it was fairly expensive, and many of the rooms of the castle were actually closed to the public, I couldn't walk along the walkpaths because they were closed, and there wasn't really much to look at, to be honest.  I did, however, get to see a tapestry weaver at work, which was nothing short of amazing in itself.  The patience required to weave tapestries far surpasses any inkling of patience that I could ever muster.  Even if I tried really, really hard.

After that, we headed back to Bonnybridge and bought flowers for a friend of ours that's been sick, and dropped them off at her house.  She really liked them, and was quite excited to meet me (we had only spoken online, previously).  We didn't stay long, because her little brother had the flu, but I'm glad that I got to meet Kim anyhow. 

We ended the day the best way possible: with a couple bottles of wine, some cheese, and some pancakes - because I had brought Bryan some maple syrup from Canada as a gift.

I wouldn't trade the last couple of days for anything in the world.