Our long weekend trip crossed Edinburgh and St. Andrews off the bucket list. This only partially addressed the conundrum of lots that Kristine wanted to see in Scotland with not enough time to see it. We wound up deciding to pick a reasonably secluded cottage that would let us get to potential activities within about 1.5 hrs of driving. Enter Balquhidder, about 45 min outside Stirling. The only problem was that on the drive up, the M6 was between Melbourne and Balquhidder. Lots of the M6. On the Saturday before a bank holiday weekend. When we left home at 10:30, the SatNav said we would arrive by 4 pm. We pulled in just before 7. It was a long day - no thanks to the traffic, and huge kudos to the girls for being extremely good-natured during a particularly grueling 2 hr stretch where I think we only moved 10 miles.
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| The SatNav wanted us to take the M1, but we took the M6. Bad decision. |
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| Close-up of the farm relative to Balquhidder. Paved road stops at Ballimore |
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| M6 traffic jam |
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| Hero shot at the Tebay rest stop when we finally got clear of the nightmare traffic |
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| Balquhidder traffic jam |
The cottage and farm
We stayed on Immeroin Farm (BBC story about the farm is here). The cottage didn't have the architectural cool factors that came with some of our other stays. It did have its share of unique features - among them an oil stove which doubled as hot water heater that we inadvertently turned off, resulting in increasingly lukewarm water for the week. The farm and its location were amazing. Kristine and I decided that the setting in the valley made it probably rival the cottage in Wales as far as favorite places to stay. The girls were nonchalant about the valley, but they loved the tire swing. The hours of laughter it produced, which we could hear from the cottage, added to the peacefulness of the setting. This was helped by a solid week of evidently non-Scotland-ish weather (e.g., no rain, lots of sun, and warm enough weather that we were always in shorts and t-shirts). It was also helped by being there a couple weeks before the midges came out in earnest.
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| Mother / daughter bonding |
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| Sisters bonding |
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| Father / daughter bonding - note the Father's score (goal is to avoid getting points) |
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| Begin photos of the tire swings |
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| End photos of the tire swings |
Day out - hike
On the recommendation of a couple colleagues, we decided to do a day out in Glencoe. I was hoping to make it all the way to the coast. We didn't even make it to Glencoe, thanks to a recommended hike that Kristine found in one of our guidebooks. The drive up involved some amazing landscapes, which were good for the soul. It also involved the bus in front of us clipping the wing mirror of an oncoming truck, and the wing mirror flying under our car. That was not good for the soul. We stopped in a parking lot a little short of Glencoe and enjoyed a hike that had beautiful landscapes but no exciting accidents. Thankfully the drive back to the cottage also had beautiful landscapes but no exciting accidents. |
| Tourist spot in Scotland - naturally it's got a piper |
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| With Clare in the parking lot. Our actual hike took us stage right behind my head. |
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| Some lug jumped into the photo with the good-looking girls |
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| Elise eagerly ran ahead and didn't pay attention to where normal people were crossing here. The result was some excitement - a dropped water bottle that the stream didn't claim, Chris slipping on a rock, and Clare not understanding the whole "hold still and let me carry you across" thing. |
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| Elise and Kristine kept going from the stream. Here she is showing just how intimidating she can be. |
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| We crossed the stream stage-left (where there is no path and you have to clamber). The folks in the photo crossed it stage-right (where there is a path that you can walk upright). |
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| Lesson learned - our return crossing was considerably less exciting |
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| Final view on our descent |
Day out - Stirling Castle
Our next day out as a trip to Stirling Castle. We learned our lesson from Edinburgh - there were no suggestions from stingy fathers about exploring the castle unaided. Everyone got audio / visual guides.Although it is smaller than Edinburgh Castle, we had fun spending the better part of the day there. Several of the rooms had actors in period costume and character who talked with guests about life in the castle. We spent quite a bit of time in one room listening to one of the servants of Mary of Guise the wife of James V and mother of Mary, Queen of Scots (wikipedia link here). We were among several families with girls, and the woman used this to talk quite in depth about life in the castle from a female view. She talked about dowries (offering me sympathy for having to pay three of them), athletics (Mary, Queen of Scots was evidently quite the tomboy as a child), court rules about leisure (there was a law at the time banning football as a sport because the Scottish government wanted people to be practicing archery on the weekend, but it was poorly enforced or adhered to even by the royal family), and finances (Mary of Guise negotiated quite the stipend for herself when she married James V, and evidently gave generous stipends from her own coffers to the common folks of Stirling). Lots of good girl power stuff.
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| Enjoying lunch before exploring the castle |
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| Interactive way to figure out where in the world different commodities in Stirling Castle came from |
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| They got the "royalty must be serious" thing down |
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| Somehow this looks awfully like a teenager on a mobile phone |
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| It was supposed to be all of us holding the tour guides like the knight held his sword |
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| Speaks for itself |
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| Elise eagerly exploring something about the wall in this alcove |
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| Tired girls ... |
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| But not too tired to play tag |
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| Shawn and Kristine shot - the girls are getting old enough to be trusted for these |
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| I took a photo like this in Sainsburys shortly after we landed in the UK in 2014. I couldn't resist taking another one shortly before we leave. |
Day out - Loch Lomond
Our final day trip away from the farm was to Loch Lomond. It was a fun day, and it also showed just how much our family has learned about being good-natured when you change plans on the fly. We summed it up afterwards as the day that plans A and B fell through, and everyone was good sports about plan C.Plan A was to rent bicycles when we got to Tarbet. The girls were excited about this. They have all become stronger cyclists over the last year, and we thought it would be fun to ride on the paths that go around the loch.
Plan B, was to hire a day boat and explore Loch Lomond on our own (link to brochure info is here). The girls would have preferred that this be Plan A. It was only accepted as plan B after negotiations in which the girls and their mother overruled the idea of a whole day cycling. We agreed it would be more like Plan A2.
Plan C, which some chump father assured his daughters would be unlikely to actually happen, was to ride one of the Loch Lomond ferries and maybe spend some time hiking. The exact words were something like "The best case is we get to spend time cycling and in a boat. The next best case is that we'll either cycle or rent a boat. If both of those fall through, then we'll take a cruise and hike. But both of those aren't going to fall through."
Shortly after arriving in Tarbet and talking with the folks who manage bookings for all three potential activities, the father who made the statement above felt pretty sheepish. The entire stock of bikes was already rented (the stock was small and they had not trailer bikes, so perhaps it's just as well). Scratch Plan A. The day boats were indeed supposed to be available in 2016, but they were having trouble with the supplier so didn't have any. Scratch Plan B.,
Enter Plan C and a little bit of redemption. One of the ferry options allowed you to get off and spend time hiking the West Highland Way trail. Kristine spent a week hiking this train when she was in Scotland as a university student. She did a great job encouraging the girls that this would lots of fun and would mean a lot to her to be able to do something with her family that she had done before. The girls, to their credit, were disappointed but did not mope. We crossed the Loch, hiked for a while, had a picnic lunch, let the girls play by the water, then walked back and caught the return ferry. It was an enjoyable day even though it turned out very different from what we'd planned.
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| The pier in Tarbet |
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| When taking a family photo facing the sun, make sure everyone has sunglasses on |
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| Like the Glencoe hike, Kristine and Elise went on ahead while the rest of us stayed put |
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| Important wisdom being shared - how to skip rocks |
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| Walking the West Highland Way |
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| Honeymoon Island - because if you can survive a week together after you get married, then nothing can separate you |
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| Balquihidder traffic jam again |
Farewell, Scotland
Other than the harrowing traffic experience on the drive north, this was an amazing week. The weather was clear and sunny (Marianne assured us it was very un-Scotland-ish), we missed the midges, we couldn't have had a better place to stay, and we made it through each day trip without major mishaps. The only downside was that because we had so much fun, it was a very melancholy Collins family who climbed into the trusty Golf to make our final return drive to Melbourne. |
| The cows gathered to wish us farewell |
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