Scotland: The Road Trip, Part 1

Hi All,

We left Edinburgh to experience the Scottish countryside, hike in the bonnie highlands, visit Loch Lommond and The Isle of Mull.

This was our proposed route to Tobermory which is on the Isle of Mull.

The numbers refer to the various places that we got lost on the way except for number 3 which is where we got a flat tire or as we referred to it: “the incident” occurred.  There were many more times where we got a little lost, but I didn’t include them because it would have been impossible to see the map.

 

And this was the route back from Tobermory to the Edinburgh Airport

Once again, the numbers refer to where we got lost.  Number 8 was especially bad since Angus, the voice of the GPS wanted to take us one way and the police closed that road because of a rock concert.  The GPS could not figure out another way to go and neither could we.  We finally had to call the hotel.

To get to these areas, we had to do what in Jill’s opinion was the unthinkable: we had to rent a car and drive.  In Jill’s defense you may recall our rather close encounters with death when we drove (on the left or wrong side of the road) to York and the Lake District in England several years ago. And I confess that I have also had other experiences driving on the left side of the road that did not work out well.

But first a brief explanation for those of you who are unacquainted with motoring on the left side of the road.  Firstly, the driver (me) is sitting on the right side of the car (where the steering wheel is located…duh!), and the passenger/navigator, Jill, is sitting on the left.  As the driver I can attest to the fact that there is an overwhelming fear that you are going to have a head-on collision with an on-coming vehicle which is driving towards you in the right lane .  Also, there is something akin to an invisible force that seems to pull your car to the left to try to avoid the previously mentioned, and seemingly inevitable, head-on collision.  It was pretty much beyond my control to keep the car where it belongs. That’s what happened in York a few years ago and what occurred in New Zealand about 15 years ago when I rented a car at the Auckland airport and drove 20 minutes to our hotel.  I pulled up at the front entrance, hit the left front and rear tires on the steps leading up to the hotel and both instantly both tires went flat. The car entirely blocked the main entrance to the hotel and was immobilized. Although I suggested to the manager of the hotel that guests could slide through the car to enter the hotel, he opted to post a sign suggesting a side entrance.  He was not pleased.  I had to call the car rental company to repair the tires so the car could be moved.

I wondered if my “wrong side of the road” driving ability had improved since that calamitous event.  Happily, this time, as you will shortly learn when I discuss “the incident,”  I only destroyed one tire; so I guess it had, but more about that a bit later in this Scottish saga.

After renting a car from Hertz which was a block from our hotel in
Edinburgh, Jill and I drove back to pick up our luggage; all the time reciting the two survival mantras of driving on the left: “left turns are easy, right turns are hard” and “turn left into the round-a-bout.”

In retrospect, our Scottish road trip may have been a tad overambitious.

We made it out of the city of Edinburgh with only one wrong turn which required an illegal u-turn and a short trip going the wrong way on a one way street. But we did it; we were heading to St. Andrews with stops in Pittenweem and Anstruther.  We followed the map and the disembodied male voice with a severe Scottish accent on the cars guidance system.  I was driving very carefully repeating the mantras and attempting to stay as far away from the advancing large trucks, buses, and cars in the right lane that were hurtling dangerously close towards our car threatening a deadly head-on collision.

Jill was in the navigator/passenger seat on the left where she had a perfect view of how close the car was to either hitting some object on that side of the car (like a stone fence) or going off the road-something about which she reminded me every minute or two.  In fact, most of our in-car conversations, involved several key phrases from Jill: “You’re going too fast!”  “Slow Down!” “You’re too close on the left!” “You’re drifting left, AGAIN!” There were also several: “Second left in the round-a-bout.”  “The exit is coming up. Slow down!”  I, on the other hand, explained that if I didn’t move to the left, we were going to crash into an on-coming car or, even worse, a truck or bus.

Somehow we made it to Pittenweem in one piece.

It didn’t look all that new to us.

Many of you are probably asking, “Why stop in Pittenweem?” Good question and one that Jill continuously asked me when she realized that we were not going to St. Andrews in the most direct possible way.  This meant that she was going to have to experience my driving for longer than was absolutely necessary.  I don’t think she understood the concept of road trip.

Several guide books mentioned Pittenweem as a photographer-friendly and picturesque little fishing village on the eastern coast of Scotland.

The houses are adorable.

It turned out Jill really liked walking around there (or it could have been that she was thankful not to be in the car).

From there we went just down the road to Anstruther, another small town, where we ate at the famous Anstruther Fish Bar. Who knew that fish drank alcohol?

It seems to be where people from all over Scotland came for fish and chips.  We ate there but didn’t see any fish drinking beer.

 

It was a very charming town

 

I practically had to drag Jill back into the car, and after a short drive we arrived in St. Andrews, the place where golf was invented.

We elected not to play the Old Course, opting instead for a younger more vigorous course

 

I had always thought that St. Andrews was a pretty exclusive place but…

there were dogs on the course and people sitting on the grass

and they let me play.

We played the younger, Jubilee Course.  Here I am posing with my wedgie (my woody isn’t visible)

 

I didn’t want to hire a caddy, so I elected to use my three-way utility club.  In that way, I didn’t have to carry an entire golf bag of clubs.

I frankly thought my game was a little off, below par.

I don’t want you to think that Jill wasn’t playing so here’s a picture of her teeing off on the 16th hole.

She was on the green in two (340 yards)

 

Aside from a very attractive beach and the University (USA-University of St. Andrews),

Attractive beach

virtually everything in St. Andrews involves golf.

I’m sorry to repeat myself, but since this was the major topic of my part of the conversation during the “road trip,” I want to reemphasize two important facts:

• Most of the non-major roads are VERY, VERY narrow, often barely enough room for two cars to pass with more than inches between them
• Most drivers don’t really care about “thing 1”above and never slow down regardless of the how inadequate the space is between the two cars.

this is the potential result and was what I thought about while driving which is the reason that I tended to stay towards the left side of the road.  This did not happen to us.

From St. Andrews we drove to Pitlochry.

Spoiler alert-we made it (but not without considerable stress), and here’s the view from our hotel room in Pitlochry

Fortunately, we had a GPS system in the car we rented; unfortunately, the disembodied voice had a Scottish accent and used Scottish road jargon.  Not only was it difficult to understand, but even when we did, we didn’t know what some of the words meant.  As we drove across the bridge over the Firth of Tay going North toward Dundee (this is #2 on the map above-the second place that we got lost), the GPS, whom we named Angus, said, “Take the slip road to A-90.” There were several problems with that particular instruction; first, it was difficult to understand what old Angus had just said.  One thing is true, we can assure you that it definitely did not sound like: “Take the slip road to A-90;” second, we had no idea what a slip road was; and third, A-90 has a northern route and a western route from where the bridge ended and we had no idea which one to take. I had to make a lightening decision as we were rapidly approaching the point of no return.  We went straight.  WRONG !!

Angus immediately gave us instructions on how to correct our mistake.  He (excuse me for anthropomorphizing the GPS) suggested that we make a giant loop of left turns (easier than rights) and were lead back over the bridge that we had just crossed, apparently to try again.  We were happy that he didn’t make us go all the way back to St. Andrews as punishment.  So after a 25 minute diversion, we were back on the correct road to Pitlochry.  Why did we get lost?  Remember I was doing the driving and Jill and Angus were navigating.  Draw you own conclusions.  Mine was that Angus is a is a bit of a ditz, but likeable.

Until the next exciting episode of our Scottish road trip…

Richard and Jill

Jill, as always, read and edited this.  She told me that I had to be truthful (I do tend to exaggerate sometimes for effect).  So I admit that I did overstate that Jill was on the green of the 16th hole (340 yards) in two.  She actually had to chip the third shot onto the green, and it ever so slowly rolled right into the hole.  It was a sight to behold.   She birdied the hole.