Scottish Adventurrres 8 - Last Night With New Friends

The previous night's meal had been barbecue. To accomplish this noble task, we needed to buy disposable barbecues! None of the Canadians or Australians had ever heard of such a thing. I suspect this is because we all have proper barbecues.

The upshot of this is that someone suggested that we should have s'mores. Only the Canadians knew what s'mores were!

So tonight we picked up all the ingredients to make s'mores. We had to substitute the Graham Crackers with digestive biscuits as they seem to be non-existent in Scotland.

They were a huge success. We've done our small part in exporting Canadian culture to the rest of the world. Wherever someone melts chocolate to cookies with a molten marshmallow, we'll be there in spirit.

All was not golden at Strome Ferry though - we had inadvertently brought blood-sucking parasites with us. Somewhere during our travels, three of the girls picked up ticks. A quick look on the internet (Strome Ferry had open wifi) told us the correct way of dealing with them. It's a good thing too because our original suggestions for dealing with ticks were dead wrong.

Ickiness dealt with, the evening continued into the wee hours with chatting and drinking. Incidentally, I think I've drank more this trip then the rest of my life. I've only gotten past "tipsy" into "drunk" once though.

It was a good evening, but there was a slight tinge of melancholy. The tour was half over and we we're losing new found friends the next day.

Scottish Adventurrres 9 - Saying Goodbye, Part 1

( Tuesday, June 12 – Time for a spot of monster hunting on Loch Ness this morning then it is an emotional visit to tragic Culloden battlefield (Bonnie Prince Charlie’s last stand). As we head southwards we will enjoy some nice forest walks at the Hermitage and pop into a wee distillery for a taste of the good stuff! It's then a short hop to spend the next two nights in real style – in a 16th Century castle near Stirling... )

Scottish Adventurrres 10 - Another Missed Opportunity

I met an adorable Aussie girl on the first part of the tour. She was cute, smart and ever so slightly exotic. She was one of those ugly-duckling types who have no idea just how attractive they really are. Conversations with her revealed that she was single.

I think she liked me as I was trying as hard as I could to not be creepy (thought this has the drawback of making me seem stiff and square).

We went our separate ways, but there was the chance that we would both be in London in a few days.

I should have asked her out.

Scottish Adventurrres 11 - Castle Death!

That night we went to Plane castle.

When I heard I was going to be staying at a castle, I thought of every medieval cliche I'd ever seen in a movie. That is to say, dank walls, straw beds and sparse to non-existence comforts. I was willing to do this for the adventure and the stories I'd tell about the experience.

I'm happy to say I was completely wrong about the castle - it was warm, inviting and very well appointed. How Wild-in-Scotland could afford I'm not sure. I suspect the only time they can get the castle at all is the low season, which is why the Monster Castle tour is only offered then (the time I took it was the last time of the year, and normally it stops running a month earlier). Normally it's a four day Skye and Highlands tour.

The owner of the castle gave us a little history of the place, and it was revealed that the castle was orginally built be the Baron d'eth. Spelling being idiocincratic back then, I've taken to calling him Baron Death - so we were staying in Castle of Baron Death! How cool is that?

The castle is haunted too (but then aren't they all - especially the ones with tourists). JO and LF where both getting the heebie-jeebies over that. MT and RX took advantage of this to scare LF (I think they knew better then to mess with JO - especially since RX and JO share a bed). Her scream was heard throughout the castle, followed closely by RX and MT laughing their asses off.

But LF was a good sport about it, which set her up for the next day.