Scotland

My friend Tim Hagan during a day hike this summer invited me to Scotland. Tim had attended an university in Edinburgh and had wanted to travel back to Scotland, catch up with some college friends, visit relatives and do some hill walking and touring on some of the islands and in the far north. I decided to spend a couple of weeks visiting a place I had never been to and was excited about hiking some of the high hills so I agreed to meet him in Scotland. I met Tim and his cousin Alison after ten and a half hours of flying via London at the airport and spent two nights at her place (where I tried Haggis, drank a bottle of Cameron Brig scotch, visited the tomb of Robert the Bruce, walked around the old section of Edinburgh and had several pints meeting Tim’s friend Nigel at a great pub on Rose Street) before driving out of Dunfermline in Tim’s cousins car. Driving on the opposite side of the road was a challenge but after a few hours we stopped hitting the side curb with our tires and kept it in the lane. It was hours  of driving through some beautiful countryside to get to the ferry for the island of Islay. The day had cleared and the two hour ferry ride to Islay was wonderful. We had met one of Tim’s college friends on the ferry and the three of us once on Islay drove to the small village of Port Charlotte and the Scottish Youth Hostel where we would spend the next two nights.