From the north of England we headed for Glasgow and spent a day in the town centre appreciating what the town had done in preparation for the games. Glasgow seemed a very friendly town and everyone was involved in the Commonwealth Games in some way. It was quite fun to have a day checking that out and to fix a very noisy hearing aid that had been bugging me for a couple of weeks - "...clean your ears out man...." was the diagnosis which was duly done and a little more hearing was restored.
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| Corrie of Fee - Cairngorms National Park |
It was lovely to arrive back in Dundee to the comfort of Helen and Moira. We enjoyed a walk in the Scottish Highlands but never quite made it to the top of a "Munro". But we did get puffed and a small bead of sweat on the brow. Fortunately the weather was perfect and as we got back in the car it started to rain heavily....good luck was with us and we believed we would carry that into the Sevens rugby final the next day.
An early start was required to get to Ibrox Stadium in time for kick off and we enjoyed watching the NZ team cruise through the preliminarys. While we hadn't seen any of day one on the screen we were aware that there had been some controversy with our pool game against the Scots. As we were getting on the bus I heard "........cheats" directed at us in our full All Black strip. Maybe we did go a bit over board with two sin bins in the last minute to prevent a 5 pointer to the home side. The cheer was loud at 10.00pm on completion of the final. Some of it aimed at South Africa for their excellent effort in beating us and some of it aimed at NZ for being beaten....that's sport. We were a bit sad driving home to Dundee at midnight but at least we hadn't flown 20,000 kms to see the game....we had more adventures tomorrow.
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| Glenmore - Cairngorms National Park |
From Dundee we headed through the Cairngorms National Park, did a bit of geocaching, and arrived late in the afternoon at George and Shona Sinclair's home in the Caithness countryside south of Wick. I expected we would be getting a bit isolated up there and while there is no sign of the hustle bustle and queues of London it was all very civilised. It was not nearly as cold as I had expected, London is closer to the North Pole than Dunedin is to the South. George drove us around the far north, through rural countryside (which most of it is) and visited John o' Groats towards the northern tip. George and Shona had a wonderful gathering of family one evening where we could meet son Gary (he has stayed with Blair in NZ), daughter Lynsey, plus their fiance's and also George's sister Rita and her husband, George Sutherland.
It was good to have a yarn around the dinner table but I must admit that while they believe they are speaking English, I understood very little. I found out that "dinner" not only means an evening meal, is also the pronunciation of the monetary system in some countries but also means "I did not". "No I dinna". I got quite mixed up when someone was asked if they had done something yesterday and their answer had something to do with last nights evening meal! We also went on a walk of discovery to search for a geocache down on the seaside just below George's house. This led us to an interesting bag suspended over a cliff and tied off on very steep rocks.....a project for George.......we are awaiting an explanatory report in due course.
From Forse we headed back down the coast to somewhere as yet undefined but included a visit to the Glenmorangie whisky distillery. We had an excellent host who spoke a reasonable version of Scottish English and included a wee dram on completion. There are numerous distilleries here in Scotland and while I am not an enthusiastic whisky drinker I don't think we see many of these whisky's in NZ. Glenmorangie produce 600 million litres a year so presumably someone is drinking it! I do know that the Scots consume about 15% of production themselves but have been informed by reliable sources that most of this is for medicinal purposes. Sounds like a line for a Tui's advert....?
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| Finally saw a dear crossing |
We found a comfortable bed and breakfast at Blairninich for the night. This was half way to no where but we were heading for the west coast and rendezvous with Moira and Helen at Morvich and it looked a reasonable option. At Dornie we took a quick photo of the ubiquitous castle before meeting up at Morvich. Once unpacked we piled into Moira's car for a scenic tour and lunch on the Isle of Skye. Remembering well my school days and the singing of songs at assembly I was expecting a speeding bonny boat, but not to be. Over the sea to Skye is now by way of a two lane bridge so I expect we will soon hear of a modernised version of that song. Next morning we awoke expecting forecast storm conditions but were pleasantly surprised by blue skies and warm temperatures. We drove to Plockton and spent the afternoon kayaking about in a sea loch, that is a loch open to the sea with salt water. There were no mishaps and we enjoyed this soft form of exercise. Sitting in the back of a kayak with Diana, I got to have had a few extra breaks and am now sure she doesn't have eyes in the back of her head.....basically I got taken for a ride, lovely.
Back to Dundee late Sunday and we are now in preparation for our flight this week to Chicago and onto Iowa City the next morning where we will have a couple of days with a couple that looked after our hostel a while back.
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