Scotland tour

We came, we saw, we had a fistful of haggis. The road was long and we covered about 1500 miles in a week with visits to uncountable cities, towns and tiny villages.

It felt great to get out of the large cities and explore the remote outposts scattered around the landscape, in a vain attempt to better understand the soul of the people living here. Scotland is a country fiercely proud of it’s history and origins, where the resentment against any things English goes deep. The locals may appear rugged and harsh, like a reflection of their land, but I found them to be quite charming and easy-going once you get on friendly terms.

The photogénique Castle Stalker.

As usual, the trip contained a boatload of movie locations. In the 1986 movie “Highlander”, Glenfinnan is the home village of the protagonist Connor MacLeod (portrayed by Christopher Lambert on a bad hair day). But the castle depicted in the movie is actually Eilean Donan, located a far bit to the north of Glenfinnan. At least we got to see the Jacobite Steam Train from Harry Potter fame cross the Glenfinnan viaduct.

Stomping Highlander grounds in Glenfinnan.

We found the Doune Castle, where John Cleese once gave his best insults in a French accent to the “English knigghits” in the 1975 film “Monty Python and the Holy Grail”, as well as the Castle Stalker (aka Castle Aaarrgh) where the Graal quest came to a rather abrupt end.

We actually spent the night in another castle, bereft of French knights and holy grails.

Finding Orkney ice cream in Loch Lomond.

Even though we named our merry band The Bagpipe Bastards, we ran into a surprisingly low number of actual bagpipes. Instead we payed homage to The Proclaimers by roaming through their hometown Auchtermuchty with the windows down, playing “500 miles” on loud volume. We are probably still on their “most wanted” list for that one.