Hassells in the Highlands

        It is 10:15 am and I am sitting in the Birmingham airport waiting for my flight that leaves at 2:15 pm. I have a cold, frothy coffee drink from Costa, an e-book, the internet, and this blog post to keep me amused.    Katrina, Leah and Carol are on their way back to Scotland, and we should all be arriving at our destinations tonight about the same time.       This has been a fun week. But a week ago, and even 5 days ago, there was no way to know how it would go. Four women, all used to running their own households, together in a car for hours and hours and hours day after day after day and even sharing rooms.  Would we all get along? Would it be fun? And most importantly, would my roommate snore long and loud throughout the night, keeping me awake so that I was tired and dragging and cranky? (my own personal concern)    These were things that remained to be seen.   I...

  Durness.  It is a small but picturesque town on the west coast in Northern Scotland. Mike made a trip there when he was here for a week in March. And he brought back pictures of fabulous hot chocolate and a very cool cave. So, it being a weekend with no other plans, and wanting to take advantage of the time we have here, we decided to make a road trip.  It is 71 miles from Thurso to Durness. It took 2 hours to drive it. Here is why. Two lanes about half the way to Durness. Then one lane, with no road markings at all, but with "passing places" the rest of the way. ("Passing places" are a little wider area on the side of the road- sometimes hardly noticeable without the sign telling you so).  Now, granted, there were "passing places" quite often on the road. But the thing is, the road is windy - there are curves the whole way. Every once in a while, you can get up some speed (50 mph) but you quickly have to slow down either because ...

Inverness. It's a large city. To get to Thurso, we had to fly into Inverness and then drive the rest of the way. There are other options: train or bus. It is only 119 miles away, but it took us 3 hours to drive it. That seems like a lot of time, you say. Well,...the roads. They are mostly 2 lanes (one each direction) with no shoulders. And I am sure the lanes are smaller than what they are in the US. Mike actually is driving 60 mph most of the way. But I guess there is something about all those curves. Not quite "The Road to Hana," but curvy. And, I have to admit, we found a nice little coffee shop that offers all kinds of homemade baked goods to go along with their wonderful coffee, which just happens to be at a public parking lot. So, we made a 20 minute stop. (Actually, we discovered it on the way up last week, so we sort of planned to stop on the way down). We needed to drive to Inverness this weekend for a couple of reasons. 1. We needed to return the rental ...