Scotland in Depth.

Well our day at the Highland Games was extremely interesting. The Highland Games in Nth Berwick are an annual International Games competition and there were at least 3 bands from Australia - Blacktown City and Bankstown and another from Queensland. We presume they are over here in this part of Scotland participating in the Edinburgh Tattoo which is currently running and only about 30 miles away. To be honest though, we both thought that the Bundanoon gathering in the Southern Highlands of NSW are better - they have more of the physical events than we saw yesterday. Still it was a lovely day out. After the days judging at about 6pm all the bands marched through the narrow street of the small village of Nth Berwick. We gave that a miss as we had already walked our little legs of in the village earlier. It was the quaintest place, one street called, what else but, "The High Street". All the shops were very tiny even the supermarket. We did a little shopping there then walked th!
e 2 1/2 miles back to the C.P.
Sunday morning and we hit the road again, bypassing the central area of Edinburgh as we have been there previously, up past St. Andrews to Dundee where we stopped for a while and had lunch beside the River Tay. Then on to Aberdeen, had a good look around - much bigger than we had imagined, then on to the small settlement of Kintore where we booked into a lovely little park run by the friendliest couple. One thing that strikes us is that the local caravan community do not appear to be as outgoing and friendly as their counterparts in Austalia. At best you sometimes get a one syllable response to a friendly hello.
Another peculiar thing we can't help but notice is the absence of an inbuilt fresh water tank on all caravans, no matter how large. They have a small barrel with two solid rubber tyres around its circumference and a removal handle that clips onto each end of the barrel. This 40 litre container is wheeled to the nearest tap (like a lawn roller), filled with water then wheeled back and connected to a water inlet point on the caravan. A 12 volt pump in the van then sucks up the water on demand. I was told that none of the European or British caravans sold here have water tanks - it is too much extra weight. That sort of explains why you see quite small four cylinder cars (like a Holden Astra) pulling medium sized vans. The other strange thing concerns their waste water. They have another plastic gizmo on wheels which looks a bit like an old fashioned barrel vacuum cleaner. It slides under the van and the flexible waste pipe simply pops into it. To empty it they wheel it away to!
a sullage point. It strikes us that caravan Paks here in the UK would be much cheaper to setup than at home as there are no individual fresh water taps or sullage drains on each "pitch" or site. One other observation (we do a lot of this) in caravan parks is that they all seem to take their dirty dishes etc. to the camp kitchen troughs to wash up. From all of this we can only concluded that perhaps they don't have a sink or washbasin etc in their vans either. I intend to get an answer to this before very long - if I can find an English speaking one who is prepared to get into conversation and speak more than one syllable.
From Kintore we pressed on to Inverness via Elgin and Culloden. We simply had to visit Culloden as friends of ours Ken & Heather gave us a CD some time again with a very haunting song entitled "The Ghosts Of Culloden". We now know that the "Ghosts" are an historical fact, foremost in the minds of most Scots today.
Now for those of you (like us) who did not know, Culloden is famous in British history as the place where in 1746 the Highlanders of Scotland took on the English in one of the bloodiest batles in British history - and the battle itself lasted less than one hour. But it was the aftermath that went down as one of the ugliest chapters in British history. The English slaughtered indiscriminately not only the fleeing clansmen, but innocent bystanders including women and children in their homes. The Culloden Battlefield is classified by the Scottish National Trust and as such is administered by them. Guided tours are available. The number of daily visitors to the site is huge. It is obviously still a place of great solitude to the Scots.
It's funny how a simple song can draw you to a place which in turn expands your general knowledge. Here endeth todays history lesson.
We then moved south west following the shores of Loch Nes for about 25 miles, then west towards Kyle Of Lochalsh and another nice caravan park. "Freebie" spots here are like hens teeth. Tuesday morning we crossed over the "Skye Bridge" to the Isle Of Skye. The weather has taken a turn for the worse, so most of the day touring around the Island Of Skye was in misty wet conditions - still that's how it probably is most of the time. The misty conditions actually added to the magnificent scenery, moors, glens, waterfalls and very quaint villages with fascinating names like; Sligachan, Dunvegan, Uig and Portree. After covering about 120 miles on the Isle Of Skye we crossed back to the mainland and started moving south, our destination Fort William and the magnificent Ben Nevis, the highest mountain in Btitian at 1,344 metres. Our caravan park here is simply the best - right at the foot of Ben Nevis and on the banks of the River Nevis. Glen Nevis is reputed to be one of the most p!
icturesque glens in Scotland, so we are hoping for finer weather tomorrow so that we can take a walk through part of this dramatic glen and maybe also get a peek at the summit of Ben Nevis.
Kevin & Gail.
www.alaska-20 06.blogspot.com

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