Scotland

Roofs of Dundee, Scotland, at sunset.

Roofs of Dundee, Scotland, at Sunset. Dundee is on the shore of the Firth of Tay.

August 2004

.August is traditionally a wet month in Scotland, similar to some eleven other months. But August 2004 proved to be exceptionally "wet and thundery," as the BBC and London Times put it. On our first three days in Scotland, it rained eleven inches. During the remaining six days, it rained a foot. Every day we were there, at least one community in Scotland had a foot of rain in one day. This created historic floods and landslides, which limited where we could drive. On our second day, for example, we tried to drive from Glasgow to Bute, due west (by a convoluted, 120 mile, loch and ocean-avoiding route), but couldn't: the roadway didn't exist. Every night was filled with news of flooding, and entire villages evacuated by helicopter.

A little rain did not slow us down (not even a lot of rain). Driving on the left-hand side of the road did not slow us down. Driving down a one-lane "highway" with two-way traffic didn't slow us down much (though it occasionally did prompt sudden, extreme fear). Driving down roads so narrow that vegetation brushed both sides of a subcompact car -- at the same time -- did slow us down.

The narrative of our journey is contained in the captions of the photos, so click on the photos. Arrows at the top right of the page will guide you back and forth. On the right-hand side of each photo is technical information about the time (set to U.S. East Coast time, so add five hours), date, shutter speed, etc. If you have trouble visualizing where we were (you will), we recommend MultiMap.com (http://www.multimap.com/), which has excellent online maps of Great Britain.

Glasgow

Glasgow is Scotland's famed industrial city. Much of the Royal Navy, old and new, was built in Scotland.

Highlands to Loch Ness

Not enough of the Highlands, which were largely unreachable due to flooding.

Castle Urquhart and Loch Ness

Castle Urquhart was an unexpected pleasure: a rugged castle, and a giant trebuchet. No large seamonsters, or lakemonsters.

Cawdor Castle and Macbeth

Cawdor Castle has nothing to do with Macbeth except that Shakespeare has a phrase in which he calls Macbeth the "Thane of Cawdor." This hasn't prevented hundreds of thousands of visitors from trying to find traces of the doomed lord.

Castle Brodie and Culloden

Scotland has made great strides in restoring the battlefield of Culloden, including rerouting a highway and restoring landmarks of the battle.

Central Highlands

Stark beauty, cows, sheep, and castles.

Castle Glamis, St. Andrews and Dundee

Queen Mum's home, and the home of golf.

Scone Palace and Castle Loch Leven

Scone Palace is impressive, but then, so are scones.

Edinburgh

If Glasgow is the Scotland's industrial center, Edinburgh is Scotland's political and cultural center.

Roslyn Chapel and Hadrian's Wall

Technically, Hadrian's Wall is in England. Roslyn Chapel (also spelled "Rosslyn") played a role in Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code.

Iceland

Iceland is not in Scotland.

Sheep all over the place in southern Scotland, north of Hadrian's Wall.

We greatly enjoyed Scotland, and didn't "use it up." We'd go back again, possibly without waiting another 30 years.