Where Did the Summer Go?

Summer. Where did it go?  It was going to be a busy summer and I knew it would go by very quickly – and it did!  In some ways, I feel like I missed it, because looking back, it looks like a blur. It was a blur of visitors and traveling – and yet I was still able to be very present in the midst of it. 

And because of visitors and traveling, it has been a LONG time since I posted. But not from lack of things to write about, that’s for sure!

I could surely bore you with the details of each and every adventure, or just try to convey a few interesting and/or fun things that happened along the way. I choose the latter.

But just for a quick recap, the last 5 months have looked mostly like this:

April – 2 weeks in 5 cities in Italy with Wes and Cristy Bratton and Steve and Glenda Schlahta

May bank holiday – 5 days in Marsailles, France

Early June – Mike and Heather Erhart stayed with us for a week

Mid-June – Mom came to visit. She was here for almost a week and then we went on a week-long cruise to Norway

Mid-July – Glenda Schlahta came for a week

Early August – Mike’s two sisters and BIL (Leslie, Mary and John) and Kathryn came for 12 days. We spent several days traveling around Inverness, the Isle of Skye and the west and north coast of Scotland.

Mid-August – Kathryn and I went to Ireland for 4 days

End August – Josh and Heather Mikelson came to stay for a couple of days

Whew!  It was both fun and exhausting to have so much going on.

Mike and Heather

Mom

Cruising with Mom

Glenda

Heather and Josh

Mary, John, Mike, Leslie, Kathryn, me

And I must say, Scotland surely showed everyone its best side. It has been a glorious summer, weather-wise. The temperatures have been very pleasant (almost hot) and it has been very dry. Every Scot who has talked about the weather has exclaimed that there has not been a summer like this since 1976. It must have been a very memorable summer because their recall is consistent. 😊

I advised each visitor on what clothing to bring. I said, “Think ‘early spring.’ Don’t use up space packing sandals or shorts.” And I think every single person has complained about being too hot here. Ah well. At least Scotland made a nice impression. And of course, no matter the weather or temperature, it seems to always make a good impression with its cliffs and beaches and blue water and big skies and amazing sunsets.

So, one of the things Trip Advisor probably does not tell people who want to come to Scotland -especially the very northern part of Scotland – is that it does not provide all the conveniences that we take so for-granted in the US.

    1. There are no roadside rests with public toilets.   There ARE public toilets.  I believe there is at least one in each town/village – and some are resorting to being pay toilets because of the overwhelming tourist traffic.

    But as a visitor, you do not know these things. 

    In the US, we are used to gas stations (with toilets) being on every other corner.

If you zoom, you will see this is a pay toilet.
The cost is 50 p to pee.
It takes a credit card.
This is a new addition in Golspie.

2. There are no 7-11’s in towns and/or fast food restaurants (also with toilets) – let along anything that is open all day, every day.

    3. The north is vast. You can drive for a long time without passing a gas station. Or a town.

These are things you learn from having been here and experienced them in one way or another.

And so, having been here for 14 months and driven these roads and experienced these things, you would think I would have known to consider them before leaving a major town/city.

But that is where we found ourselves on a Sunday morning as we (Leslie, Mary, John, Kathryn, Mike and I – in our rented 8 passenger van) were preparing to leave Inverness and end up on the Isle of Skye at the end of the day. First, we wanted coffee and a pastry to eat before leaving town. But it was Sunday. The shops do not open until 10:00 on Sundays. So, after Mike and John scoured the downtown area between 9 and 10 am, we finally got ourselves coffee and a pastry and were eating on-the-road. But it wasn’t until we were crossing the Kessock Bridge out of Inverness that I realized I had made a mistake. I had not even thought to bring a lunch with us. We were leaving civilization as we knew it – where, even though they opened late on Sundays and maybe didn’t even open at all on Sundays, there were options for food and drink in Inverness. And I had forgotten.  

So we drove on – almost to Ullapool, actually – to walk down into the gorge where there was a bridge that could only hold 5 people at once and a beautiful trail. Mike and I had stopped there last summer. And as we pulled into the parking lot, we were greeted by a sign advertising a food truck in the parking lot. Hooray!  We would have lunch after all!  But alas, it was Sunday, and it was not open.

After enjoying the trail, we got back on the road, heading back towards the road we would take to Skye, and kept our eye out for places to get some lunch. We did actually pass several restaurants, but all were closed. Did I mention it was Sunday?

Finally, we drove into the tiny town of Garve. And Garve became our hero – because in the wee town of Garve was ….. a FOOD TRUCK!   And this food truck was serving hamburgers, fish and chips and quite a variety of foods. A one-man operation, but he was doing a booming business. Probably serving all the other Americans who had left town without supplies.  So, this is how we remember Garve: “You will not starve in Garve.” 

Someone, several years back, decided that Scotland is a beautiful place and that the rest of the world ought to know what it was missing. And that someone – or maybe another someone – came up with the catchy title of “The NC 500.”   The NC 500 stands for “North Coast 500,” which is a loop of roads about 500 miles that takes you around the west coast and the north coast of Scotland. Thurso is actually on that route. 😊   And it truly is a BEAUTIFUL drive. But you must go prepared for it, as the above story should demonstrate. 

map of the NC 500

But the thing about the NC 500 is that I think it was surprisingly successful campaigning. People started seeing what they were missing and wanted to come. And so they did. Tourism is up by 200%.   But the real problem is that the towns on the NC 500 were not prepared for the overwhelming deluge of visitors. And it has caused a lot of issues. For one, parts of the NC 500 are remote and are only served by a single track road. The volume of campers and cars has increased by a lot. But the services have not changed. There are no more public toilets or grocery stores than there were before. But the road traffic has increased dramatically.

  

The increase in tourism has also affected restaurants. Before we went to Skye, it was suggested that we make a reservation for supper or else we might not get any. And that was almost the case. We did not make a reservation because we did not know when we would arrive in Skye and didn’t want the pressure of having to be somewhere by a certain time when our trip was going to be uncertain. But we did manage to find a place to eat and in fact, were the last party seated without a reservation (at a lovely little restaurant with great seafood). We were sad for the the next dozen or so people who came in and were turned away, but awfully happy for ourselves. We were lucky to have been fed that night.

whiskey tasting at Old Pultney Distillery

On the road to Skye is an area known as Applecross. Applecross has an amazing scenic road that goes across the mountain, but it is not for the faint of heart. It sounded exciting and there was a small part of us that would like to have experienced it, but in the end, we decided we did not need to have that experience. The road is single track. It is a winding road with switchbacks. There are not places to turn around, and there is barely room for two vehicles to pass – let alone one of them being a camper! Obviously, people ignore the warnings and take inappropriate vehicles up this mountain road and cause mayhem for everyone.   We were not those people, thankfully. For us, it was the road not taken.

So now I want to tell you about a couple of fun things Kathryn and I experienced in Ireland.

Kathryn and I went to Ireland for 4 days. It was a whirlwind trip, to be sure. We arrived in Dublin on a Sunday at noon (but unlike northern Scotland, everything was open for business). We walked around the Archaeology Museum. To me, the most fascinating thing was the section on the bogs. The peat bogs are known for their ability to preserve things. Apparently, people used to put their butter in the bogs to keep it cold? Or just to keep it until they were ready to use it? Not really sure there. So we saw actual ‘bog butter’ on display. But sometimes a farmer would dig up the peat bog with giant digging machines, and in doing so, would dig up a body. This museum had some of these bodies (or parts of bodies) on display. It was SO cool!  The bog had preserved people so well that much of them was still intact (except where the digging machine had cut through them).

We took a walking tour of Dublin (very well-done) and then we saw The Book of Kells at the Trinity College Old Library.  The Book of Kells is a 1,200 year-old version of the gospels of the Bible - with elaborately inked and meticulously illustrated by monks. 

page from the Book of Kells

Then we took the train to Galway, which is on the other side of Ireland, where basically, we slept. Because for the 2 days we were in Galway, we took day tours. One day we went to Inis Mor, the largest of the 3 Aran Islands. There, we had the best ice cream I have had for the last year and a half. Sorry, Scotland. You offer many many wonderful things here, but ice cream is not one of them.

The next day we took a coach tour to see the Cliffs of Moher and the surrounding area.   Lovers of the movie, “The Princess Bride” will know the Cliffs of Moher better as “The Cliffs of Insanity.”  Yes, they were steep – and impressively long. We did not have time to walk the length of it. But we did have the nerve to walk on the side closest to the edge. There did not used to be fences or walls there and Rick Steves describes it like this: “For years the Irish didn’t believe in safety fences: just natural selection.”  LOL!  I did see a couple of young people who were playing with that idea!

 The Cliffs of Moher were quite impressive (although, if you have seen what we have here along the coast of northern Scotland, I think it is less impressive, because we have such fantastic cliffs here).

We also had our first Guinness beer in Galway. We were told we must try it. We were told it tastes the best if you drink it in Ireland and that the taste is completely different if you drink it anywhere else. So we tried it. And guess what? We liked it!  I think we were both surprised. It is a dark beer, but it was definitely not a heavy beer.

ham and cabbage (MUCH better than our corned beef and cabbage in the US

So, a funny story about the trip back to Dublin. After the day-long coach tour, we boarded the train back to Dublin for a 2 ½ hour ride. I expected to sort of veg out for that time because we were both tired from the day. But, as often seems to happen, we sat next to interesting people. Four Americans!  A young couple were on their first international trip and were learning lots of things about traveling internationally. (Things I have also learned this last year) And the other two people were two ladies – FROM SPOKANE!   They came to Ireland to run in a half-marathon.  10k?   I said, “My daughter lives in Spokane.” She said, “Where?”  I said, “Downtown, but she works at Home Goods in the Valley.”  She said, “I live in the Valley. That Home Goods is near my house. I go there all the time.”  She said, “What’s your daughter’s name?”  I said, “Emily. Emily Hassell.”  She said, “I think I will go in and meet her and tell her I met her mom and sister.”   I laughed and said, “That would be great. It  will flip her out if you do that. She will say, ‘Of course you did.’”  😊

So, after 2 ½ hours of conversation and sharing a taxi ride to our hotels, she left repeating Emily’s name.

And this is where I had to be patient. I WANTED to get right on my phone and message Emily and tell her I  met someone from Spokane and that she would come and visit her. But no. I had to let it happen on its own. And I also had to keep in mind that it might not actually happen. She might not actually follow through.  So I waited.

Nine days later, I got a text from Emily.

And so I got the joy of hearing the story of how someone I met on a train to Dublin showed up at Home Goods in the Spokane Valley near closing time to say hello to my daughter. Dawn looked at Emily and Emily looked back at her. Then she looked at Emily again and Emily looked back. And finally, Dawn asked, “Is your last name Hassell?”  And Emily smiled and replied, “And what is your connection to the Hassells?”  And Dawn got to tell her how we had all met….on a train….in Ireland. Of course.

And that is one of the things I have found to be so cool as I have been here and traveled here. How I have run into other Americans everywhere I’ve gone and how we talk about the things we have in common because of where we are from and we exchange stories.

 I met another woman on Inis Mor who lives in Bellevue, WA, where Bryan lives, and is a quilter. And just today, as Leah and Kirsteen and I walked along Thurso Beach, we came across a woman who stopped us and asked if we would take a picture of her with that beautiful background of sea and sand and land. And when we asked her where she was from (because she had an American accent), she replied, “Denver, Colorado,” which is exactly where Leah is from!  Not only that, but they live near each other and the woman is a dental hygienist, just like Leah was!  Incredibly small world, don’t you think?