Och Aye, We’re In Scotland!
We knew it would be an early start this morning and had set the alarm for 5am last night. Somehow the reality of waking at 5am was a lot worse in practice than it was in theory. Tobes had gone all the way through the night…well almost. I think he woke about an hour before our alarm and he was ravenous! He woke me briefly to confirm whether he had indeed slept through dinner and after confirming that “yes” he had, I directed him, through bleary eyes, to the steak Dianne and thick cut chips that awaited him in the fridge. Without blinking, or worrying in the slightest about the convention of eating a steak at 4 in the morning, he tucked into his meal with great enthusiasm. We’d been told to rug up for our day in Edinburgh so we dutifully layered up and even Toby, with a little more persuading, actually wore three whole layers! Today I was eternally grateful for the warm clothes I was able to borrow from generous friends back home. I was kitted out in Mads’ beautiful warm coat and Brenda’s glamorous fur-topped woolly gloves, that make me feel a bit like a cross between Audrey Hepburn and Cruella De Ville. Brenda also lent me a fantastic pink fluffy hat which, although a little bit big for my pin-sized head, is extremely warm and is very Lady Penelope. Pity it didn’t come with Parker. It was pouring with rain in Manchester so we borrowed some golf umbrellas from our hotel and looked like an advertisement for “The Place Apartments” as we wielded these giant mobile shelters, plastered with advertising, to the train station – Manchester Piccadilly. We’ve noticed that the Brits are not very inventive with their street and place names and there’s a lot of recycling going on. For instance, there was a Piccadilly in London, one in Manchester and also one in York. I wonder how many Piccadillys there are in total in Great Britain? We’ve also discovered multiple Oxford Streets, Trafalga Streets and Regent Streets. I imagine it could get quite confusing! The three hour train trip went fairly fast. We decided to have breakfast on the train and saw they were advertising “flapjacks”. The thought of some nice hot pancakes with lemon and sugar made us salivate but we were handed a couple of muesli bars wrapped in plastic! Huh? Who would have known these were actually English flapjacks? It was a bit of a let-down! The train was packed with farmers heading to a farmers’ convention and it was magic just to sit back and listen to the lilt of their accents. It’s almost like they’re singing, with the end of every sentence rising higher and then dropping. They were talking intensely about tractors and their preferences for delivering feed to their livestock. It is so amazing the number of different accents that exist in a relatively small area. As the train “called” at the different stations (these trains don’t stop, they “call”) each group of people getting on seemed to speak with a slightly different accent. One stop we were in England and literally the next stop – Lockerbie – we were in Scotland! Suddenly everyone boarding the train spoke with the thickest of Scottish accents! I was sitting next to a bonnie young lass who was on her way to the Bank of Scotland conference in Edinburgh. She was very chatty and obviously a very patriotic Scot. As the day went on, we realised that most Scots were just like her. They really do love Scotland and are fiercely proud of their heritage. The scenery out the train window was quite different as we approached Scotland too. There were so many rolling green hills – the greenest grass we’d ever seen – dotted with sheep, with curiously spray painted bottoms. It seemed that the sheep in each different paddock had had their rear ends sprayed a different colour. Some were red, some green and some blue. We were speculating over the reason for this and Toby thought it may have been to differentiate which ones were for eating and which ones were for shearing. If this was so, let’s hope the sheep were not aware of this! The paddocks were divided by those classic old rustic stone walls, about waist height and they were just like the ones you see in the movies! They looked like they’d been there an awfully long time. There was snow on top of the hills and it looked really cold out there! Now I’m going to have to talk about the weather again, there’s no escaping it. We stepped out into the air at Edinburgh Station and it seriously took our breath away. If our faces had been stinging with the cold in York, this was taking cold to a whole new level! The hairs in our noses were almost frosting over with each breath! It was so windy that we were literally nearly getting blown off course from walking in a straight line! If I had to describe it in a couple of words I’d say it was “bitter” and “bleak”. The trusty Google weather app told us it was -3°C and the wind chill must’ve brought it down at least another 5 degrees! At least it wasn’t raining. As we rounded the corner out of the station there was a Scotsman, complete with kilt, tamoshanta and sporran (no one knows what he had under that kilt of course) playing raucously on his bagpipes. His tunes filled the air – you could hear them for miles – and it sure did feel like we’d arrived in Scotland! Ross took a cab to his Edinburgh office and Toby and I hit the tourist trail. We were overwhelmed by all the beautiful and unique architecture in this fair city and especially by the famous Edinburgh Castle, that sits atop the giant Castle Rock, imposing in its magnitude and magnificent in its grandeur. It can be seen from almost anywhere in Edinburgh and its sheer size and altitude is astonishing! All we could say when we saw it was “Wow!” We were drawn to it straight away and trekked up the hill to see it up close. Our best option was to take a guided tour but it was a fifteen minute wait for the tour to begin. We had to jump up and down and jog on the spot so that we didn’t lose feeling in our limbs! Our faces went completely numb and trying to talk to each other was like just coming out of the dentist after a couple of fillings! The sounds are coming out but your lips aren’t cooperating. Our noses felt like they were constantly wet and we were never sure if they were actually dripping. That’s how the man who sold us our castle tickets must have felt because he had a permanent drip, perched precariously right on the tip of his pointed nose. We weren’t too sure whether to offer him a tissue or just ignore it and pray for it not to drop! When our very informative guide, Lesley, who incidentally was lots of fun, told us the whole tour would be outside the castle, I must admit we did have second thoughts. Toby’s comment to me: “mum, I seriously don’t think I can be out here any longer without getting frostbite and dying” seemed to indicate he may have had hesitations too. Nevertheless, we soldiered on and it was totally worth it! Again, as in York, the sheer history of the place was astounding. Lesley regaled us with tales of Kings and Queens and nobles and armies; crown jewels, canons and prisoners of war and gave us the rundown of what went down in the Castle since its initial foundations were laid in 70AD! She would have made an awesome history teacher and she was so passionate about her Scottish roots and the history of the place. We loved the story of Mary Queen of Scots; how she was thrown out of Scotland because she was Catholic and how she was separated from her son James, who later became king, because they wanted him raised a Protestant. Her cousin Queen Elizabeth I of England betrayed her, never letting her see James again and eventually having her beheaded at the age of 45! We stayed back talking to Lesley long after the tour ended. We couldn’t get enough of this real life soap opera! We could get enough of standing out in the blustery conditions though (and so could Lesley!) so we let her warm up and checked out the insides of all the Castle buildings. We capped off the visit watching the daily canon blast and with a delicious lunch at the café that overlooked the whole of Edinburgh from atop the great rock. The café had all sorts of Scottish treats for sale, including delicious Scottish hog roast (doesn’t quite have the same ring to it as roast pork does it?) and the one we all love to hate: haggis! We knew it contained unsavoury parts of a sheep or cow but decided to get clarification from the chef who was proudly offering his delicacy to anyone showing interest, on what exactly it did contain. He told us in a very matter-of-fact way that to make haggis you simply get the heart, lungs and liver of a sheep, mince them all up and add some delicious herbs and spices. Mmmm. Yum (NOT!) He must have seen out shrivelled up faces while he was giving us the rundown and reassured us that it was much, much nicer than it sounded. Toby replied, in his slow Aussie drawl, “Geez, it wouldn’t be hard to taste better than that sounds”. He implored us to give it a try and even reached for a plate before we politely but firmly declined his generous hospitality. Thanks but no thanks! We spent the rest of the afternoon touring around Edinburgh, walking past the abundance of kilt, tartan, clan shops that exist in the city, offering all sorts of snuggly gloves, scarves, hats and tamoshantas and all things tartan. They lured us in and Toby even agreed to purchase a tartan hat with woollen flaps to cover his ears. It is amazing how much warmer you are when your ears are covered. With Toby in his new hat and me in my Lady Penelope pink fluffy number, we must’ve really looked like locals because we were asked more than once for directions. That’s a turn up for the books – we never know where we’re going! As I write this we are chugging along on the train back to Manchester, just about to “call” at Bolton Station. Toby and Ross are crashed out and I think I’m going to have a job waking them up in time for us to get off in a couple of stops’ time! All in all it’s been a great day in “Scaw-lnd – och aye!”
