This is the german coastguard. Are you reading me? Please copy.
It’s gone a bit quiet ever since I returned to Europe. The number of interesting stories are indeed a bit dwindling. After climbing Ben Nevis as the highest hill in Britain in the last episode, what is there more to tell? It’s slightly downhill from here. That means it’s just easy rolling steadly towards the end. Can’t say that I won’t approve.
I visited Whisky Distilleries and various castles (to my great disappointment you couldn’t take any photographs from the amazingly decorated rooms — except for the ruins), some with exquisit gardens and sometimes even sunshine. Most of the evenings I spent in pubs listening to live Scottish music with a pint of cider or Guinness. Not quite a thug’s life rather than the dumbing down of excitements over the last few months. How says that there is no translation of the german word “Gemuetlichkeit”?
I travelled the Isle of Skye and spent a day on Lewis via ferry, driving around in my car jumping out at every opportunity of sunshine and a great view. The latter was plenty, the former often limited to a few minutes each hour. The landscape, it is nice. The ragged and rough coast, the chilly winds, the wild sea on the one side and the ever-green grass, the calm, almost static sheep and the steady stone houses on the other side, it makes this place special. Although the grass is not as green as I expected. The Absolutely-Greenest-Grass-Award(TM) still goes to New Zealand. Still, these are the places where you could spent in serenity and solitude and be completely okay with.
Visiting the Standing Stones of Callanish gave me a small-scale impression of what Stonehenge is all about. Fascinating why people come up with that kind of stuff centuries ago. The site is quite peaceful. There are 20 more sites with stone circles or cairns, but I didn’t visit them all. That one is surely the most amazing.
Unable to book accommodation for Stornoway, I feared that I had to sleep in my car but I found another hostel, so I could get some good sleep until 4:45 when I got up to catch my ferry back to the main (is)land. That early ferry gave me plenty of time for the day — although not enough. My journey continued along the most-northern shore of Scotland and I would have considered to stay there for a night if I was sure to get a bed AND a good view of the Northern Lights. As both was not available, I continued to the most-northern point of Britain and headed back south all the way to Inverness. I again overestimated the speed of travelling and thus had to skip a few castles and stuff along the way.
Inverness seems to be a friendly place. I arrived late, but the town was bursting with nightlife and pubs and so it was a rather short night. Really, I wished I could have stayed longer.
