Ben and Corinne's Big Adventure: Scotland

One week after leaving Greece and i am in Scotland, home of Mel Gibson (William Wallace) and all the wee laddy’s and Lassy’s you can imagine. Indead there are many Wee things up here, almost anything you can think of all wee and wee-er. They have also exchanged ’Yes’ for Aye (I) and a few other words have simply disapeared into the back of their mouthes. I have mostly been able to understand my whiskey drinking friends except for a few and as in most places it seems the wee folk from lower socio economic areas - those drinking the tesco branded blended whiskies rather than the 16 yr old Islay Malts speak the worst.

I had a wee lad in a few days ago. I understood about 20% of what he said but i still managed to help/fix his entirely healthy dog maybe. This weeknd i have taken my kangoo van and headed for the hills. I explored north of Gourock, across th clyde and visited a number of Lochs and Hills and Valleys, all very green, windswept and beautiful. Scotland is a fantastic place in Britain because there is no-one around. No ugly Terrace house villages, hoodies and motorways where i am. There are miles and miles of great rds through deep valleys covered in heather and bracken sourrounding deep cold lochs that are surrounded by rugged treeless mountains. There are alos a lot of Spruce and confider plantations that make the area look very European alpine. I even drove past the Nuclear submarine pens at HMNB Clyde on my way home today.

In my first week here i stayed at the Spinnaker hotel in Gourock and this week i have moved down the road tot the bosses house in Greenock. I tis a pleasant early 1900 Granite 3 story mansion and i am on the 3rd floor. The owners have gone to Italy so i have a good many rooms and stairs to myself.

Today I caught the Car ferry from Gourock to Dunoon and then drove all around the area visitng places like inverary, loch fyne, loch lomond, inveruglas, etc. It was fantastic and has really inspired me to come on holidays here properly and bring the wifey along too. Yesterday i traveled to Falkirk and Stirling and saw a bit of loch lomond. Falkirk was shite but Stirling was very cute and really old/authentic looking with cobbled bumpy streets, castles, old pubs, churches and monuments. Falkirk was the site of William wallace’s final (Mel Gibson) defeat (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falkirk) , while Stirling was where he defeated the English army, in reality not just in the movie.

I saw lots of nice scottish sheep and cattle whilst driving, the cattle are mainly scottish highland cattle, with long horns and a long hairy coat. Their coat is very shaggy and hangs ovet their eyes which gives them a really cheeky appearance.

I would very highly recommend Scotland to anyone nearby. It is beautiful and the people are friendly. The only disadvantage is the weather which tends more towards worse than bad much of the year.

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The route of my Travels on Sunday. Ferry from ’gourock to dunnon then north through the Argyle forest, around loch fyne, toInverary and then over through the mountains to Loch Lomond, all very beautiful.

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Something i forgot to mention. The QEII was here on Sunday night for her final voyage to Dubai to become a floating hotel. The big Bitch was built here a long time ago in gourock so there were a lot of sentimental old blokes hanging around getting pissed thinking about the good ole days when they were ship builders. I actually watched the wee lassy go past the Spinnaker hotel whilst sitting with 2 old men who i thought were speaking another language but were actually just scottish blokes speaking fast.

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