To match my sunny disposition I had a wonderful, clear day with mild temperature, the likes of which the poor Scotts had not seen all winter. I started before 7 am, so I could beat the rush hour traffic out of Edinburgh (it almost worked out), and by 8 am I was crossing the estuary of the Forth River using a super-modern bridge of futuristic design. The estuary is wide, so the bridge has three beautiful suspension spans.
Once I got to the other side I found myself in the Kingdom of Fife … now, that name rings a bell … the Kingdom of Fife … where have I heard that name before? Well, I am sure it will come to me once it is too late to do anything about it. I was enjoying my trip over the Lowlands, enjoying the suggestive names along the road, such as Aberdeen, Perth, and Saint Andrews, when it suddenly came to me: Saint Andrews was the birthplace of golf! In 1552 the Archbishop recognized the right of the town folks to take a ball and a stick to the links for a bit of fun, and since then generations of golfers, caddies, and instructors have made this the Mecca of golf. Not that I play golf, mind you, but thinking on Dave and DJ I felt obliged to take the 25 mile detour to tromp through the most famous links in the world: The Old Course. I always though playing golf on a flat green with gale force wind was kind of nutty, so imagine my shock when I saw, at 9 am in the morning, hundreds of golfers distributed over an area of maybe a square mile parallel to the shore, putting, driving, or moving in small groups from one drive to the next (there must be a dozen or more courses of 22 holes - actually, that was before the game was modified to only go for 18 holes and the pub). Dave, there is a very nice hotel here, so maybe you should hold the Ashby Invitational for one last time at Saint Andrews.
A traffic jam in the highway gave me the opportunity to detour through the valleys of the Tay and Tummel Rivers, both of which are the delight of fly anglers. To judge from the scoop net one of them was carrying, the salmon here must be the size of small dolphins. Dennis, take notice because the fishing must be really good here. Besides the fishing, the detours brought me into some of the prettiest mountain landscapes, and tested my ability of driving in roads that are very narrow and twisty indeed.
I was getting a bit stiff with driving, so I took the opportunity to walk for a bit in the Cairngorms National Park, which is an impressive mountain massif down of which tumble many streams (loaded with salmon) in so many beautiful waterfalls. I was the ultimate car tourist, but stopped at Blair Atholl and Bruar, had a lunch of Haddock and Chips, and then walked up a mile or so to the Falls of Bruar.
I kept going up the Highlands, a little disappointed that the higher I went the browner the landscape became. Clearly these slopes were covered with snow until just a few weeks ago, and the vegetation has not had a chance to wake up. Lots of small solifluction lobes on the slopes.
I was getting a little drowsy by that time (jet lag was catching up with me), so I decided to stop by the side of the road and take a little snooze, which in fact became my customary half hour nap. It is tough becoming old, but let me tell you that naps are wonderful things.
Tired of the highway I took to the small roads, trusting my general sense of direction, and an hour later reached my Booking.com accommodation, in a suburban community of Inverness. It is a nice room in a house that the landlord has turned into a hostel, and I have access to a kitchen! So I went to the store and bought a nice prepared dish of Haggis with Neeps & Tatties. Haggis is, of course, the national dish (plus blood pudding, I think), and is done by stuffing a lamb stomach with finely chopped lamb offal, and then cooking it in an oven until all the delicious flavors and spices blend together. I think we can do this Chico! We can use Faby’s instant pot to cook it, or we can roast it in the ataud. Yumm! What are Neeps & Tatties, you ask? Neeps are turnips and Tatties are potatoes, mashed and served as a side dish.
The afternoon was still young, so I drove down to Loch Ness, and spent a few happy hours looking for Nessie. The lake fills the valley formed by the Great Glen fault, Scotland’s own version of the San Andreas fault. The fault brings in contact terrains in Northern Scotland that are up to 400 million years old, so the fault has to be younger than that age. In fact, it looks geologically young, so maybe one of these days it will give our tartan-wearing friends a scare. Loch Ness is a beautiful body of water, and with Inverness at one end greatly reminds me of Lake Geneva. I think I would like to become a Physical Limnologist so I could spend my time sounding and sampling beautiful lakes, but I may need to wait until my next incarnation to get that done.
Tomorrow I plan to head for the Isle of Skye, which is
another of the shrines of geology.
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