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Read more: Jacobite Steam Train, Fort William, Scotland, UKThere is a steam railway excursion from Fort William, Highlands, Scotland, UK to Mallaig on the west coast of Scotland. It is called ‘The Jacobite’ (too much history to recount here!). It sounded like fun, so I signed up. FIring the boiler to get up a head of steam I think you have to know what you are doing to make this 75 year old locomotive go. Steam’s up! Getting ready to go in the antique passenger cars. [vc_video link=”https://vimeo.com/173883468″] From the museum collection. The stone in this area is very hard, too hard to be cuttable for this…
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Read more: How to scatter your possessions around the worldAs I travel, I have learned a few things that you may find helpful in your own travels. One is how to give away your possessions along the way, without even meaning to. Have you heard this joke?: Some people learn by reading books. We’ll call these ‘type C’ Other people learn by observing the mistakes others make. We’ll call these ‘type B’. While some guys just seem to have to pee on the electric fence wire for themselves. We’ll call these ‘type A’. It seems I am a type A. I have noticed that I have a habit of…
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Read more: West Highlands Way, Scotland, UKThe West Highlands Way is the longest of the long distance Scottish walks, at 96 miles. Starting not far north of Glasgow, it climbs up into and through the Highlands and moorland of Scotland, the home of ‘Rob Roy’ MacGregor and the Highlanders who wound up battling for control of their own lands. Reading of the conflicts that rose as most of the land came under the control of a very small group, it does make you wonder if we are heading into a similar situation in the modern western world. Note: the following is a very long post, as…
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Read more: The Isle of SkyeThe Isle of Skye. The name alone has a bit of mystic to it. It has a reputation as a place of great dramatic beauty, and this is well warranted. Some areas are flat out spectacular. I rented a Fiat 500 (tiny little car!) in Inverness for four days, and drove down to the Isle of Skye, about a 3 hour trip. There is more forested area up in this area of Scotland than I had imagined. The higher hills tend to not have any trees, mostly grass or heather, or very high, are just bare rock. Some of the…
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Read more: Inverness, Scotland (UK)I reached Inverness after a 3 ½ hour train ride north from Edinburgh. Inverness is a much less dramatic city than Edinburgh, relatively flat, lying along the banks of the River Ness (which empties Loch Ness). You see quite a number of villages and towns in Scotland that begin with ‘Inver’, because in Gaelic ‘Inver’ means ‘the mouth of’. Inverness is ‘the mouth of the (River) Ness’. Others sharing this prefix include Inversnaid and Inverarnan, along the West Highlands Way, where those rivers empty into Loch Lomond. The train ride passes through the Highlands on the way north (where…