Sunday, May 29
We packed quickly, grabbed a quick bite at
Starbucks before grabbing a taxi to head to the airport to go the Europcar
rental desk to pick up our sedan.
A building front just outside our Edinburgh hotel.
The paperwork took forever! You’d think I was
18 years old and never rented a car before. Good grief! We finally got out of
the Edinburgh Airport about 30 minutes later than I had hoped and were on the
road to the southwest of Scotland.
We weren’t half an hour on the road before we
got to Glasgow, and as we passed through Laura missed a turn and we headed down
the wrong freeway. I had researched and printed step-by-step Google maps before
we left the hotel and I’m glad I did, because the GPS in the car didn’t seem to
be able to find where we were planning on going. Laura misread the printout,
but we got off the freeway in no time, turned around and were headed back to
our prescribed route in just a few minutes.
It wasn’t long before we were off the freeway
and on a four lane road through the Scottish countryside, which soon turned to
a two lane divided road, which turned into a two lane country road. After about
two hours we were on a country lane, passing signs announcing “Bicycling
Event”. We got nervous we were going to get stuck. The road narrowed to really
about 1 ½ lanes, with “Passing Spots” along the road about every 300 feet or so.
Passing bicyclists we’d get so near the edge of the road, which I really
couldn’t perceive very well because I wasn’t used to driving in the center,
that Laura would tense up, suck in her breath, and mumble a prayer or
something.
Coming into a little Scottish town we came
upon two “Official Bicycling Event” vehicles with flashing lights, then came to
an intersection full of spectators with cameras. Just as we passed the
intersection we saw a motorcycle “pace car” with flashing lights just ahead of
what we could only assume would have been a throng of bipedal racers heading
our way. If we had been 30 seconds earlier we would have been trapped in
God-only-knows-what. Instead, we went through the tiny town and rapidly found
ourselves on a road that narrowed to just a single lane, with Passing Spots
every quarter mile or so. Laura reported we were in a National Forest. Driving
was hectic enough given the “wrong side of the road thing” plus the “manual
transmission shifting with the left hand thing” but then the one lane road with
the oncoming traffic and the feeling that perhaps we had made a wrong turn and
was on a section of our route instructions that went for 22 miles make us feel
uneasy. I was getting certain that we were going to follow this road until our
trip odometer informed us we had driven 22 miles and then we would turn around
and head back to try to find the correct route.
But just as we imagined we had certainly gone
the wrong way, the road began to widen to a 1 ½ lane road. Suddenly we came upon
the next village, notated on the map. We had done it! We were on the right
track! Now, nowhere did Google Maps inform us that our route would take us on a
one-lane road for over 20 miles. It’ll warn you when you have to take a toll
road, mind you, but never bothered to note the route. More frustratingly, if we
had chosen the “alternate route” which would have taken less mileage but more
time, we would have been on a proper highway the entire time. Really
frustrating. But the views! It had been amazing and in the end I think we both
agreed worthwhile.
We drove along a little ways further until
suddenly—there we were! In Sorbie, the tiny little town (not even a town,
really) along the southwestern edge of Scotland where the remains of the Clan
Hannay tower is located. I was surprised and tickled to see we had arrived. I
could even see the old church with the tombstones of Hannays going back over
150 years up the lane, the same church my mother and I had visited almost 35
years earlier.
It was neat seeing the tower again, now much
improved when I came in 1981 and again in1993. You used to park on the side of
the road, pass a small handmade sign, and walk up a path through the trees
until you came to a clearing where the remains of the tower were, really but
two walls in a “L” shape and some standing interior rooms and the arch of a
fireplace. But now, thanks to some National Lottery cultural funding, the clan
has done some improvements in the early 2000s, and those improvements were
really great to see. I thought it was cool that I was able to show Laura this
long lost side of part of my family history.
After, we drove down the hill to the church,
opening the wrought iron gates to step into the graveyard. We found a few tombstones
with Hannays on them, each going back from the late to mid 1800s, the oldest we
could spot from 1843. The biggest challenge was that many of the tombstones
were weathered beyond recognition. I took photos of the best of them.
Finished up in Sorbie, we took our directions
and headed to our accommodations for the night, a country house called Friar’s
Carse, outside of Wigtown. It was on a meandering, slow moving and wide river
that fishermen evidently use. The hotel was once owned by a foundation (trust?)
of the Royal Post Office as a place for postal veterans from the war to come
and relax. Strange. The big old house had gorgeous and old public areas, but
the bedroom we had (dubbed “Elder” based on the trees around the grand
property) wasn’t so great with a bathroom that was even worse. It was also a favorite writing spot of Robert Burns, a Scottish poet of renown best known for Auld Lang Syne.
Still, we really enjoyed the place. Laura and
I walked the grounds, heading down to the river and walking along the side for
a ways before returning to the grounds to sit on a bench and bask in the
afternoon sun. Dinner was taken in the dining room in shifts, with guests being
called in to sit and begin their meal every 15 minutes. We were on the late
shift, having arrived late, I would assume. We sat near the great fireplace in
the main room with a drink for a while before we were called into the dining
room. Dinner wasn’t bad.
Like camping through, there is nothing to do
there, so everyone seemed to turn in early. We did as well, leaving our huge
old windows open to let in the cool night breeze.
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