kareina

The nicest thing about my prefered travel method is the part about staying with friends and family, rather than in hotels. This means that one gets to actually spend time with locals and get a feel for what it is like to live there. Saturday morning I got up at 05:00 so that I could be at the train station on time for my 06:20 train north. This got me to Inverness at 10:30, where I was met by the aunt of clovis_t and her husband. They wandered around the city center with me for a bit, showing me the lovely town all, and a cute building which was built in the 1500's. We picked up some food for lunch, and went back to their house.

They've got a lovely place--their home is clearly well loved and cared for. Some other family members dropped in, and we had a yummy lunch before visiting his grandmother at the hospital (poor lady had broken her leg recently). I enjoyed meeting his grandmother, she is a very sweet lady, though clearly not doing as well as she once had. From there we drove up to Loch Ness, pausing at the hotel where they will be holding their 40th anniversary at the end of the month. (Since my longest relationship ever was five years, I'm impressed at that record.) We then went further up the lake to a nice resturant, where we had a yummy meal (Scotish Fudge Cheesecake is *yummy*! I love a country where fudge doesn't contain chocolate, since I'm one of the three people on the planet that doesn't like chocolate).

Today (Sunday) a couple of other family members came over in the morning for some coffee and a visit, and then we drove out to a stone-age burial mound. I was struck by the feeling of peace and contentment. The people who built these cairns clearly cared about their work, having gone to the effort of balancing the use of different rock types/colours, and shapes and sizes, as well as setting it up so that the midwinter sunset sends a beam of light straight down the passage. Sure, these were burial places, but the feeling was of respect for the departed and a celebration of their lives. This was in marked contrast with our next stop, the battlefield at Culloden. There my feeling was one of dis-ease and disappointment that people would send so many to such a violent end because of political squabbles. It is not a comfortable thing to stand where so many have died, even a couple of hundred years doesn't really help ease the feeling. I wonder if I'd react like that to such a site if I weren't told about what had happened there?

This evening I took the bus back to Edinburgh, arriving back to sismith42's house on time to see the fireworks over the castle from the comfort of her balcony.

Tomorrow she and I go see Smailholm Tower, which was the setting for one of my favourite books when I was a child. I think this is the book which made the SCA so attractive to me when I found it. Then, in the evening I fly to London Stanstead Airport, sleep there, and catch a very early flight out the next morning to Eindhoven for the Textile Conference.