But by morning, no one had killed us and if there were any ghosts, I didn't see them. The bathroom situation was strange as we shared the one that had a shower with the family of the house. To say that Bed and Breakfasts here are a tad different than those at home is an understatement!! But breakfast was good and we headed off.
We made our way to St. Andrews first thing. The odd part for us in this part of the country is that there are sheep and cow fields as green as any mountain valley right beside the coast line. It's hard to wrap our minds around it. The soil here is rich and dark, unlike the sand along our coastline back home. Seeing fields of baled hay and then the ocean behind it is hard to fathom.
The roads here are a little tricky. For one, you'll be riding along and all of a sudden you're passing through a town. The sidewalk is about 2 feet wide in places and the buildings go straight up from there. Today as Tony was buzzing through a small town and we took a very sharp, very fast, left turn to simply following the road, it made me think of the Bourne movie series.
Watching the movies is intense enough in those crazy driving scenes where he drives on sidewalks and such. But to actually be experiencing it (albeit at a far slower speed) I was starting to turn a bit green. All the while, there are cars behind you urging you to go faster. Pair that with having no idea where to go (even though we have the GPS trying to tell us), and you can understand why we are often cussed as "dumb Americans" here.
The other nice feature are the cars parked alongside or in the road. Many times I just close my eyes and if I don't hear tires screeching, horns blaring, or the sound of crunching metal, I know we've made it through. One of our favorite lines related to precarious car driving is "Hold on to your ass, Fred" from Smokey and the Bandit. This whole driving adventure is a "Hold on to your ass, Fred" moment for sure!!
The Cathedral and castle ruins in St. Andrews were lovely. We drove through the little town but it was just so congested with college students along the sidewalks. Fortunately Tony knows my aversion to crowds and got us out of there. It was back to zooming through the country to the next little town.
From there we drove through the mountains toward Loch Ness. The mountains here are very different. There are hardly any trees on them and they have various colors of low lying shrubbery. I keep thinking that it's the altitude and the tree line is due to being too cold like the Rockies back home. But every once in a while we'll see a patch of trees at the top of a mountain. It's just very odd to see all these mountains with little to no trees on them. The other strange thing is that without trees, you can see the roads that snake to the tops of them and then over the summit. I can only imagine how long it would take to traverse up one of those roads.
Once we hit the lochs, there were tons of pine trees. They look like Blue Spruces, my favorite. They are straight up with beautiful, long branches with dangling boughs. At one point it totally felt like traveling along the Parkway at home. The Highlands are very pretty.
We are staying in Inverness tonight at a more traditional B&B. I've checked and the door does lock and we have our own bathroom. So hopefully I can get that much needed rest. Tomorrow is Wick and the northern tip of Scotland. From here Tony says the roads narrow, and I think we may have to share some with the sheep. We may even get to take an off road excursion up one of those winding mountain trails. I'll do my best to dream of it.
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