Isle of Arran

I awoke very early on Saturday along with Rosemary (Vancouver) and Sannä (Finland) to catch a bus that tours the Highlands. The bus tour ended up being sold out, so we ended up throwing a dart at the train schedule. It hit on the Isle of Arran – Scotland in miniature, they call it – which is just off the southwest coast. Beautiful. On the island we went hiking, visited a cheese factory, a marvelous brewery, and the Brodick Castle. A local girl told me I had a nice accent.

We spent some time in Glasgow both on the way there and the way home. A word of caution: Don’t take the last possible train from Glasgow Central to Edinburgh Waverly at midnight on a Saturday night unless you want to encounter an inebriated lad wearing a David Hasselhoff speedo over his pants who uses a microphone made of a rose to enquire as to what your favorite song is, and then proceeds to coax the entire train car – literally, everyone from the prepubescent to the surprisingly old – into belting out said song at the top of their lungs in ragged unison. “Hey Jude” was deafening.

1. Edinburgh Castle

2. Glasgow Cathedral -- one of the only Scottish churches to survive the Reformation

3. I like the ground

4. Glasgow Cathedral

5. Kyle and Rosemary in Brodick on the Isle of Arran

6. 13th-century Brodick Castle

7. The coast of Arran looking toward Brodick -- we'd just finished a bit of a swim, having got caught on an island created by the tide. (What Winnipeger worth his/her spit considers the tide?) "Don't thank me, thank the gravitational pull of the moon."