1. ENGLAND
1.1 London
1.1.1 Westminster Abbey
1.1.2 Parliament
1.1.3 Buckingham Palace and surrounds
1.1.4 Harry Potter Studio Tour and related gawking spots
1.1.5 Street scenes (Temple area, other areas, with humor for 8-year-olds, food)
1.1.6 Museums and historical
1.1.7 St. Paul's Cathedral
1.2 The West Country
1.2.1 Stonehenge
1.2.2 West Kennet Long Barrow
1.2.3 Littlecote Roman Villa
1.2.4 Reading
1.3 The North of England
1.3.1 Hadrian's Wall
1.3.2 Langley Castle
1.3.3 Alnwick Gardens Northumberland
2. SCOTLAND
2.1 Inverness and Loch Ness
2.1.1 The Town
2.1.2 The Loch
2.2 The Highlands (the Cairngorms)
2.3 Edinburgh
2.3.1 Museums and historic sites
2.3.2 Arthur's Seat
2.3.3 Edinburgh Castle
2.3.4 St. Giles Cathedral
2.3.5 Holyrood Palace and Scottish Parliament
2.3.6 Edinburgh street scenes, with humor for seven year-olds
3. Flyover Country - Iceland, Greenland, Baffin Island
This post is on the longer side due to the number of pictuers, but I accept no responsibility - it's Scotland's fault, whose cities and countryside were among the most photogenic I have ever seen. For this reason I have a table of contents so you can skip ahead as you like.
A note: we were there after the tragic Southport stabbing, and American press covered what followed as "civil unrest" (Elon Musk in particular tried to make it seem like the whole UK was burning; youll be relieved to know that going forward, you can disregard whatever pearl-clutching Granny Elon is doing, about this or any other matter.) We roamed around the country without concern and encountered exactly zero such situations, and exactly zero people who seemed concerned about such situations.
1. ENGLAND
1.1 London
Not pictured: Nigerian dinner, Indian dinner, gin, the nearest V2 rocket site to where we were staying (they've fixed it). I tried to spur interest by presenting history via metal (see: Aces High by Dickinson, PB et al) but this didn't work as I expected. Also not pictured, our out-and-back Tube trip across the Prime Meridian by one station so the whole family could say we visited the eastern hemisphere. The kid whined, but last time I ran back from the eastern hemispheres so there's really no room for complaining here.
1.1.1 Westminster Abbey
1.1.2 Parliament
1.1.3 Buckingham Palace and surrounds
Looking up and down the lake at St. James Park, near Buckingham Palace. The Eye of London is visible in the background, but it's 100 feet smaller than the one in Vegas, so why bother.
The Royal Mews. The all-white one figured out how to open the latch with his tongue and was trying to get our attention the whole time we were in there.
The royal carriages were on display as well (this one from Wiki.)
Above, Buckingham Palace. Photography opportunities are limited but the tour does include the throne room. In the end, it's a very big and lavishly decorated house, but I can't say I would enjoy living there. The lawn around it in this shot actually made me think of a school or other institution in Pennsylvania, and I think my aunt and uncle's backyard is actually bigger. You can't buy a coke there though, so that's one point in Buckingham's favor. (I often put in these observations to be funny, but I'm really that much of a barbarian that this was my takeaway.) The king arrived by helicopter while we were there and had the nerve not to find us and say hi.
Trafalgar Square on a nice summer evening.
Got my English breakfast - with liver.
1.1.4 Harry Potter Studio Tour and related gawking spots
I'm old enough that my exposure to Harry Potter before I had kids was minimal, but now I finally understand what a phenomenon it was. Avengers movies are fun, but Harry Potter is culturally this generation's Star Wars. The attraction is extremely well-run and designed, including the design of how to part you from your money. The tour is self-paced and it's long enough that there's a cafe halfway along. You do have to take the train out to Watford and then a tour bus from the station to the studio. Most of what they show you is the actual set and props used, but they do tell you where they had to modify things to put them on display. The studio is still active (Barbie, the new Beetlejuice and Ghostbusters movies, House of the Dragon) and the presence of the HP tour seems to distract people away from wanting to bother the ongoing productions. Pinewood, famous for Star Wars among many others, continues to NOT be developed for tourists.
You get to see a lot of the concept art and I thought this one for Voldemort was quite Gigeresque, although looking at the rest of the artist's work it doesn't carry over.
Emerging from the tour we found it had rained while we were inside, and I had to concede that English rain is the best-smelling rain there is.
These two are other locations around the UK. Above: the original Elephant House Cafe in the Greyfriars area of Edinburgh where JK Rowling wrote the initial book(s). They had a fire a year ago. Below: Tom Riddle's grave. Below that: Platform 9 and 3/4 at King's Cross train station. If you want to find it, just ask people that work at the station - I found most instructions online confusing. It's right next to the Harry Potter store (yes really) and there's usually a crowd waiting in line to take pictures anyway.
1.1.5 Street scenes (plus humor for 8-year-olds, and food)
The next five are detail on the Holborn Street overpass over Farringdon. The Pegasus is the official symbol of this area.
Above: the narrowest alley in London. Below and next few: Chinatown near Leicester Square. London's Chinatown is quite nice.
The next few are various locations around Fleet Street and the Temple area, where London's law offices are centralized (and formerly, its financial center.)
Above, the Southwark Bridge (Queen Street) and views from London Bridge.
Above and below, the George Inn. Even if it wasn't actually frequented by Shakespeare, it was used for his productions not long after his death. Dickens also frequented the place. The er, aroma inside was quite similar to that one encounters at the Trap in Sacramento, which purports to be the oldest in California - spill enough beer over a century or more and this is the result I guess. The next picture is tilted so you can see the gallery of the George as well as the nearby Shard. The considerate plaque you see below was more the rule than the exception at the entrance/exit area of pubs.
Above: yes, it's that Electric Avenue, though this is at Brixton and not the Temple area. I had no idea what the song was about. In the Brixton area, this is the first street lit by elecric lighting on Earth. One of the more interesting areas of London - tons of African immigrants and shops, and not a single one of the soccer jerseys they were selling fit me. Below, I loved this but his story always makes me sad - more proof we didn't need of how unfair life is and that the universe doesn't care (unless we force it to.)
Above: a nice little pub where the kid was thrown out (just because no kids were allowed.) The kid got thrown out of three pubs in the UK which is an impressive record for someone at that age. Soho reminded me more of Manhattan than any other area.
Above: a pub that I went to only for the history and delightful company, not at all for the name, how dare you. Below: from elsewhere on the Underground, an important station.
Prince Albert. He was once imprisoned in a can, though Queen Victoria let him out after zany 50s teenagers called her. Apparently recent scholarship suggests this account may be apocryphal.
1.1.6 Museums and historical
If there were ever a museum Olympics, it would have been canceled out of futility because the British would always have won it. Yes, it helps that they were a global empire, something which is explicitly addressed in the British Museum displays (and some of these items will probably not be there permanently as repatriation efforts continue.) First though is a replica of the Golden Hinde in drydock, the ship that Francis Drake sailed around the world while on a mission of what we today would call state-sponsored terrorism to disrupt Spanish shipping. It's unbelievable that ships this size plied uncharted seas for months on end. Learning the rigging on these old ships must have been the equivalent at the time of learning to fly a multi-engine plane.
Below: the anchoring spot for the Golden Hinde where I was just a few weeks before in Point Reyes, which still looks about the same as when Drake was there in 1579. There are interpretive signs at the nearby visitor center.
Above: where Black Sabbath recorded their first two albums; in other words, the birthplace of metal. This whole block was guitar shops - I almost went to the wrong store, distracted as I was by someone playing the bassline from For Whom the Bell Tolls. As I turned to leave, in another shop behind me someone was playing Rush. Below: the cholera pump that physician John Snow traced to its source. I think it's a bold choice to have a restaurant that actually advertises itself in connection to the cholera pump, but then again, Sacramento had this guy too.
Below: the Magna Carta at the British Library. This is a 5 minute walk from King's Cross and has a nice document museum which includes an original copy of the Emancipation Proclamation, which I don't think I'd ever seen before.
It's telling that not only have most of the provisions in the Magna Carta been repealed, but it's just not that psychologically central to British people - to the point where it was noted on the display that Americans seem particularly fascinated with it. Why would that be? Because America IS its laws and documents, in a way that the UK is not. The UK is a history and a land and a people and a royal family, and if they change the government, no big deal. To wit: in the last fifty years, the UK has reformed its county structure (1972), dramatically cut down the power of the House of Lords (1999), and given legislative authority to its constituent countries (1998-99.) To my knowledge, none of these sparked an outcry that this is the "end of the UK." Whereas to an American, these kinds of governmental changes are the types of things peripherally mentioned in near-future dystopias to hint at what kind of disaster the characters are living. Imagine if by 2074, the Federal government has redrawn many state boundaries, the Senate is no longer the upper house of Congress, and Texas and California have been given the authority to decline to follow new Federal laws, with pro-secession parties holding large portions of their legislatures. That's how significant these were to the operation of the UK. (Yes I know that the American Federal government doesn't have authority to redraw state lines, but the point here is the significance to how the government operates.)
It's therefore not surprising that the Magna Carta occupies more psychological space for Americans than it does for British people. As a proud New World small-r republican it pains me to acknowledge any benefits of monarchy, but one benefit it does have is that a living King or Queen is a very concrete manifestation of the nation and culture, and their words don't admit of much interpretation (and indeed the monarch still does have some power - see Elizabeth II's dismissal of the Australian government in 1975.) In contrast, one of the drawbacks of being a credal nation is that we elevate our Constitution almost to the point of being a secular Bible and holy relic, but those abstract words don't jump off the page and enforce themselves - so without a living concrete monarch, we're left to interpret it as we understand it, both legal professionals and laypeople alike. Therefore, unfortunately the divide in the American understanding of the meaning of the Constitution has predictably started to look very much like the disagreements just prior to the Protestant Reformation and its sequelae.
Above: the library at the British Museum. The Museum was positively overrun that day. As with national parks, I'm of two minds about this - great to see so many visitors from around the world finding its contents fascinating and important, but do they have to find it fascinating and important the same day as us?
Above: this guy had a very direct impact on a later activity during this trip. Below: they have a moai.
The Tower of London and Tower Bridge
I took few pictures inside the Tower that didn't have family in them, and they strictly forbid photography of the crown jewels. If you're sad, you can watch the actual tour here and see/read about the crown jewels here. Facts I like: William Penn was prisoner here; and the person in charge of the ravens has as his official title Ravenmaster. Imagine being able to put that on LinkedIn. Anyway here's something medieval-looking.
1.1.7 St. Paul's Cathedral
Above and the next few are St. Paul's Cathedral. The division between what sorts of figures are enshrined here vs at Westminster is not entirely clear to me although there are some patterns - arts and sciences at Westminster; general military memorials (i.e. to the RAF) at Westminster, but individuals at St. Pauls.
1.2 The West Country
Wiltshire and its surrounds have not just Stonehenge, but a lot of other stone and bronze age monuments, mounds, and burial sites. There's no train to Stonehenge, and if you just want to go there (and maybe Salisbury) a bus tour is probably the way to go. But if you're going to the more obscure sites or visiting any of the towns like Marlborough, then renting a car is really a must (thanks for the folks on r/Wiltshire who advised me of this). (Tip: go to Heathrow to rent a car. You can get to Heathrow easily and car rental places in outlying towns have ridiculously limited hours and inventories. Additional driving tip: there is actual traffic on the motorway, and there's very little in-between - it's either a motorway, or a 1.3 car-width country lane. Just be prepared psychologically and watch out on turns.)
1.2.1 Stonehenge
You know what Stonehenge looks like, so I'll focus on some other aspects, like the land around it. For example, some of the mounds you can see in the landscape were also manmade around 2000 BC, the Normanton Downs, and many were excavated (not looted) starting already in the 1700s. It must be difficult to be a farmer in this area, much like the poor guys I saw in Austria at the Roman barracks town of Carnuntum who found a stone tablet and furtively put it back because they just wanted to do their jobs and not have everything turn into an archaeological dig. And I don't care if you don't click on any of the other videos I link to, you must click on this one, or you're only cheating yourself. Plus I made the mistake of singing it while we were driving out there, and the kid turned "Stonehenge, where the demons dwell / Where the banshees live and they do live well" into "Stonehenge, where the family dwells / Where the Mommy lives and the Daddy smells" and I had to hear it all the way back to Heathrow. So listen to it GODDAMMIT.
Stonehenge wasn't built all at once. Construction began in the late Stone Age. It was just announced in the last week that one of the stones was brought all the way from Scotland, not Wales.
Above you can see some of the nearby barrows
.
I like going into the woods in other countries. The chalky stone in the soil was evident with multiple fragments laying around.
As a final thought, since the last time I was there, they really haven't improved the time-keeping accuracy at all. I would've hoped by now they would have at least switched to a digital clock, but no, it's still just these stupid solstice rocks. At this point I think it's fair to say they have no one to blame but themselves.
1.2.2 West Kennet Long Barrow
This barrow is a stone age burial chamber significantly older than Stonehenge. Highly recommended. I told the kid that the prophecy had been foretold, "A young girl from a faraway land will enter the tomb, and on that day will the Witch-King awaken." Her counterargument: (sigh) (eyeroll) "Daddyyyy...." (Added later: after the fact I realized that James May's pub was nearby but would have been 45-50 minutes out of our way, the day was long enough already, and the family would not have been as amused as I had we gone there for a pint.)
On the way from Stonehenge to the Long Barrow, we passed the Alton Barnes White Horse, one of many throughout the Wessex Downs area, taking advantage of the chalk under the soil. (Image credit visitpewseyvale.co.uk.) After seeing the white horse and after visiting cathedrals (meant to be viewed from above by God as the shape of a cross), it struck me how absurd it is to consider the Nazca Lines can only be explained by people building things for aliens. There are ancient Andean figures on the sides of hills that can be seen from the ground, much like the white figures in Wiltshire, or how high schools in the American West will often write their symbol on the side of a steep hill. From there it's not much of a leap to being a smartass and making one that can only be appreciated from above. The cross shape in cathedrals dates to the first ones in the fourth century, meaning it happened early, and therefore was likely to happen; the idea came just as easily to them. So let's not be so impressed by Nazca unless we're willing to consider that the Wiltshire figures and European cathedrals were made for aliens as well.
You can see the nearby Silbury Hill, the largest manmade hill in Europe. Long assumed to be another burial site, excavation has yielded only a few ox bones and some antlers, but no bodies or other interesting artifacts.
1.2.3 Littlecote Roman Villa
We also visited Littlecote Roman Villa, where you can see the foundations of the Roman fort that occupied the site, as well as the uncovered mosaic. Lighting was poor so I used this image from the North Wessex Downs National Landscape page.
1.2.4 Reading
Above: while we were at Littlecote, we met two lovely ladies, an elderly mother and her daughter. They were curious about our itinerary and when I said I grew up in Reading, Pennsylvania and our next stop would be Reading, UK, the younger lady advised me not to spend much time, wincingly ssaying that Reading "wasn't very nice" (a common sentiment as I discovered). Which, get ready to wince, we soon learned means "lots of recent South Asian and Middle Eastern immigrants." But we found Reading on a Friday night to be fun and lively and had a great Afghan dinner. That said, the nice people working at the restaurant were unaware there was another Reading.
1.3 The North of England
We took the train from King's Cross to York and rented a car. I would've loved to spend some time in York, which maintains its medieval wall and looked really interesting. Friends strongly recommended the Jorvik Viking Centre. The last Viking ruler was Eric Bloodaxe.
1.3.1 Hadrian's Wall
The real reason we were here was for me to go for a run along the Wall, something I have wanted to do for years. Briefly: Caesar mounted an expedition to Britain in 51 BC (the ie the vini vidi vici expedition.) Later in the 40s, Claudius decided it was time to get serious about controlling Britain, and finally in the 120s Trajan, who'd brought the Roman Empire to its greatest extent and power, died and passed the throne to Hadrian. Hadrian decided to consolidate control over the province of Britannia and not try to conquer Caledonia, and ordered the building of the wall. Starting in 122, they built a wall 70 miles long (Would the modern English government be able to build a 70-mile long wall in 6 years?) Obviously the history of the area is compelling, but today the area is mostly used for shepherding. Walking along it and wondering what the American border wall with Mexico would look like in 2000 years, or any of our other monuments for that matter, I wondered if Shelley was inspired to write Ozymandias by a visit here (but found no such evidence.) Basho expressed strikingly similar sentiments. If you couldn't tell - for me, this was the highlight of the whole trip, so if trail pictures and history aren't your thing, prepare to scroll quickly.
As for practical trip planning: I had the wife drop me off at Walltown Visitor Centre to Housesteads Visitor Centre (see Gmaps link). It was 9 miles even and I had no difficulty with mobile service. I don't recall if there was drinking water along the trail but there were a couple places you could fill up if you had a filter bottle. I would have liked to visit Vindolanda Museum which a friend highly recommended, but couldn't fit it into the schedule.
The adventure begins.
It was a Monday and in 9 miles I saw maybe a hundred people, most of whom where near one of the places where a road intersected the trail. To the extent I could hear, about half were foreigners like myself.
This is about what I expected most of the trail to look like.
You are correct if you think this rock looks igneous. This is the Whin Sill, from the late Carboniferous-Permian boundary about 300 million years ago (we would call it the Pennsylvanian-Permian Boundary. Harrumph.) This section of Hadrian's Wall trail across the Pennines is the highest section, and here the trail coincides with the Pennine Way.
I have a compulsion to touch things, like bodies of water, or historical things when I can. To take on by association some of their significance?
A Roman mile castle ("chester") foundation. They're built every third of a Roman mile along the wall (about 0.92 standard miles) not only as watch towers but as living quarters. "Chester" comes from the Latin "castra" for fort, and now you know why so many English placenames end with -chester or -caster.
I liked these little ladders. Breaking a rock wall to make a gate would destroy its integrity and it would collapse, and I guess the sheep aren't smart enough to figure the ladders out. Below: looking back down at the lader, just visible where the trail meets the wall (perpendicular to Hadrian's Wall, I would assume this was built by the shepherds.)
This kestrel was kind enough to pose for me while hovering in the wind and looking for dinner.
There were a couple of what looked like tree plantations, which had walls around them - otherwise the saplings and ferns and everything else would get chewed down by the sheep, which John Muir referred to as hoofed locusts.
(This is not meant to be titillating so ignore, if you can dear reader, the dainty leg of your blogger.) A lot of the wall is rocks poking out of soil, which is what I'd expect after 2000 years. A lot of this land may have been wooded at the time, and the annual shedding of leaves in this damp climate would have covered much of the wall quickly, similar to (though maybe not quite as fast as) what happens to Mayan structures in Central America.
This was big enough for a small child to pass, but not an adult or a full grown sheep.
The trail goes through this person's front yard, within feet of their kitchen window.
When I was younger and full of piss and vinegar, I used to get offended by even the suggestion of any kind of comfort on a trail. No way man! I don't need that stuff, I'm hardcore! This is interfering with whatever point I think I'm proving! But with age comes both wisdom, and tiredness; thus it was that in the Canaries I realized that maybe a wine bar every mile along the trail wasn't so bad, and those ales sounded pretty good when I read this sign.
Another chester foundation.
The clouds in Northern England (and Scotland) make for some dramatic lighting conditions. I thought about converting some of these to black and white for this reason, but decided not to, based on the artistic principle that this post was taking too long to finish.
As you can see, most of the trail went through shepherding land (in the UK, you can pass across pastoral land like this as long as you close gates - in California much of the urban adjacent parkland like EBRPD or EBMUD has a similar arrangement although in the UK it's the default.) I'm sure much of the current wall along the trail was build in the last few centuries by shepherds, very likely out of material the Romans already quarried, but "Come hike along a wall build by English shepherds during George II's reign, out of pieces of Hadrian's Wall" isn't as good of a tourist draw. (Although the area was pretty, zero chance I would've been there without Hadrian's Wall, something the staff at Langley Castle acknowledged explicitly.) It's for sure that people did disassemble parts of the wall for later structures, as noted in interpretive signs along the trail.
This tiny fellow appeared to be waiting on the trail for me. He didn't hop away even when I inspected him closely.
Despite my constantly reminding myself that it's allowed to rain in the summer in England, I had so far avoided it. At this point it started misting for the last 1-2 miles so some of the pictures get a bit blurry.
I liked this short section, where Hadrian's Wall Trail is literally on the wall.
1.3.2 Langley Castle
The family collected me from Verovicium and took me back to Langley Castle where we were staying for the night. For the kid I think this was the highlight of the trip, even more than the Harry Potter studio tour. I was on strict orders from the wife not to tell ghost or dungeon stories, though I couldn't resist asking the kid if she checked the suits of armor to make sure no one was in there. During dinner in the castle, this is when I decided I have an unreasonably good life and the martini(s) I had in the drawing room after the run encouraged this attitude.
Above: the real Forbidden Forest (there were peacocks, but no centaurs.) Below: the interior.
Above: much less ominous by day. Our room (next photo) was quite nice as well. Below that, we had a nice tour of the castle, ending up on the roof. The castle was originally built in the 1300s, burned in 1405 during fighting between the Percy family and Henry IV, and restored during the 1800s (the architectural elite among you will notice the Victorian arches.) The spiral steps going up to our room were deliberately uneven so that invaders would have a harder time ascending quickly, and turned clockwise so right-handers would have the advantage fighting downward. (This reminded me of the coded steps at Mesa Verde; a thousand years ago, the Pueblo people were also constantly thinking of how to repel invaders, hence the cliff dwellings.) For centuries, the north of England was lawless border reiver territory for centuries - and later, the people who would settle the Appalachians in the U.S. (remember the Hatfields and McCoys? Guess why they were like that!) Albion's Seed shows how emigration from specific parts of Britain shaped regional cultures in the U.S. (for the border reivers in Appalachia, see Section II-d in this review.)
1.3.3 Alnwick Gardens Northumberland
Alnwick Castle is in Northumberland, not far from the border with Scotland. Besides having its infamous poison garden (yes really), it also has a beautiful non-deadly garden, as well as the largest play structure in the world. Alnwick was used in the first Harry Potter (with computer enhancement) as Hogwarts, which is the original reason it drew our attention. But the garden and play area were so fantastic that we forgot to look at the castle! But compared to the actual model of Hogwarts on the studio tour, it probably would've been a letdown. Plus, you can't actually go into the castle - since the Percy family (the Dukes of Northumberland for the last seven centuries) still lives there. (It seems they and the royal family in London have patched things up since the nasty goings-on in 1405.) If you had any doubt that the English are the global champions at gardens, behold:
The poison garden was started in 2002 by the Duchess of Northumberland. I recognized about a third of the plants (probably as most physicians do) as any plant that produces chemicals that so strongly affect humans is much more likely to have medicinal uses (in controlled doses), although one guide was describing how one of the plants was used as a chemical warfare agent in ancient Greece.
There was one, the gympie gympie, Dendrocnide moroides, so toxic that it's kept behind glass and the botanists put on hazmat suits to handle it. It's not much to look at anyway. Not surprisingly it's in the nettle family, with a toxin similar to that of cone snails. Per wiki, "'For two or three days the pain was almost unbearable; I couldn't work or sleep... I remember it feeling like there were giant hands trying to squash my chest... then it was pretty bad pain for another fortnight or so. The stinging persisted for two years and recurred every time I had a cold shower...There's nothing to rival it; it's ten times worse than anything else..'...It is known that the active constituents are very stable, since dead leaves found on the forest floor and even decades-old laboratory specimens can still inflict the sting." Poison oak has nothing on this stuff.
As you can see, they're not above a little sensationalism to keep the masses interested.
Now, onto the "playground":
Above: inside the play structure, which was definitely not sized for adults. Below: there was a theme of multiple demi-human races (a themed playground? That's a whole other level) and you're looking at (I think) the troll house.
2. SCOTLAND
After leaving Alnwick, we drove north for Scotland. It was not our first time in the UK, but it was our first time in Scotland. It was rather a long drive around Edinburgh and all the way up to Inverness, around 5 hours. The sun rose noticeably earlier and set later in Inverness even relative to Edinburgh. It always astounds me that a place that's been developed as long as Scotland can be so empty - the population is 5.5 million and the density is the same as Michigan. A decent fraction of Michigan is wilderness.
Above: I very nearly applied to grad school for linguistics, so I've familiarized myself with the orthography of multiple other languages including ones not using Roman characters. Yet I remain more confused by Celtic language orthography than any other I can think of.
2.1 Inverness and Loch Ness
2.1.1 The Town
Above: Inverness, Scotland. A pleasant enough town, with one of its bridges lit up at night in blue and gold for Ukraine. Below (for just two photos), Inverness, California, quite near Francis Drake's landing site, taken two weeks earlier.
2.1.2 The Loch
Starting here are shots of Loch Ness; the first is the overgrown little football pitch right at the east end of the lake. I saw no cottage on the shore, rather just a food truck; I guess I probably at one point did cast a shadow on its door.
Now here's the thing. I was there because I wasn't about to go to Scotland without going to Loch Ness. And I for damn sure wasn't going to Loch Ness without swimming in the thing. Why? BECAUSE THAT WOULD BE BULLSHIT, THAT'S WHY. I figured if Nessie took a disinterest in me similar to the great whites out by the Farallons last year (who stayed away in droves) then I would be safe. And sure enough, Nessie ran away because she's a weak widdle baby who needed her binky and her bwankie, awwwwwwww. Of note: I commented to the staring lake-goers that the water temperature was just one degree colder than Santa Cruz the same day. In all seriousness though, I can see why Loch Ness is not all about that beach life.
2.2 The Highlands (the Cairngorms)
I wanted to experience a trail in the Highlands and I did that, in the Cairngorms, on the way back from Inverness to Edinburgh. They're a range in the Scottish Highlands southeast of Inverness, west of Aberdeen, north of Perth. Ben Macdui is a Munro and the second highest mountain in Scotland as well as in the UK overall. I was surprised how well-developed the area was for outdiors tourism - had a definite Vail or Tahoe vibe to it. As I was warned by locals would probably be the case, the gondola was broken. I was hoping to have the family entertained by reindeer that day but you can't usually get same-day reservations and of course, the weather was not conducive to enjoying anything. (They're truly free range and require a hike to see - I'm told it's a big hit with kids that like the outdoors, but read about it before you go.)
Unfortunately I didn't have time to get all the way to the summit of Ben Macdui, and by "unfortunately" I mean "fortunately" because as I mentioned, this mountain is in Scotland, so it was blowing like hell and raining off and on. (A nice young lady at the visitor center emphasized that she didn't mind hiking in weather but characterized a summit attempt that day as "miserable.") I really just wanted to get up high enough to experience the rocky open areas - at this latitude (same as the Alaska Panhandle) more accurately Arctic meadow than Alpine. I maybe got 3 miles up the trail, but I met my criterion for turning around, which is when you can't tell if it's rain or sleet because of how much the wind is making it hurt when it hits your face. It's important to take care of ourselves isn't it.
Above: just like Hawaii, if you have a pattern of quick rainstorms and sunbreaks, you will have frequent rainbows.
Above: taiga trees.
Above: on the way down to Edinburgh we stopped for a snack in Blair Atholl, which is a beautiful town. There are many facilities - an Atholl hotel, an Atholl distillery, and of course Atholl roads (though driving into Atholl can be very tight.) We were so taken with the place that we exclaimed to the locals, "Your Atholl is fantastic!" Given climate change and decreased rainfall, I was worried their Atholl might burn, but they said not to worry as they avoid Mexican food (I admit I didn't quite understand this response.) In fact, such an impression did Atholl make on us that we started using it as a term for anything sublime; for example, "That person is an Atholl," we might say about a friendly chap on the Tube, or "The weather is being an Atholl today." Why they allowed the town to be named by a profane Daffy Duck, we may never know. Below: I don't know which reindeer they're talking about or why it behaves that way, and I sure don't want to find out.
2.3 Edinburgh
Above: I don't know if there would be people standing around playing bagpipes if we weren't there during the Fringe. I also did not see a single person wearing a kilt who was not also playing a bagpipe.
2.3.1 Museums and historic sites
The Royal College of Surgeons, above and below. If you're medically inclined their museum is excellent, but they don't allow photography.
Above: most physicians have, during their educations, seen this painting of a patient in the midst of opisthotonus, the painful (and sometimes literally bone-breaking) contractions that result from untreated tetanus infections. (Is your vaccine up to date?) The original is in the RCSE, because it was painted by Edinburgh's own Charles Bell, the physician who named the palsy, and some of his other admirably skilled work (and even recreational sketches while traveling) is featured there. An early neuroimmunologist! Endless examples of Scotland punching way above its weight in the sciences. It continues: James Young Simpson pioneered the use of chloroform for anesthesia, initially in childbirth. Like a sort of early surgical Sasha Shulgin, he and colleagues tested the agents themselves and reported their experiences. Below: James Hutton's rock collection, which if you're so inclined was at Captain's Bar on South Bridge at South College. (According to the bartender he just left it at the bar. Not sure if that's true.) But I did like the pint of ale I had there. I do have to say, I was absolutely shocked, stunned, and moreover flabbergasted to learn that a geologist would drink alcohol.
Oh and while we're at it, this guy lived in Edinburgh while he was writing Wealth of Nations.
Above: the house where Adam Smith wrote Wealth of Nations, which is now an event center for Edinburgh School of Business. Next two below, his grave.
Below: while we're at it, that's Dolly the sheep. Make all the jokes you want but cloning an animal in the mid-90s was quite a technical accomplishment. You can see her at the Scottish National Museum, which is free (and has a great display of Pictish carved stones as well.)
And above, Charles Darwin lived in this apartment building during his time in medical school in Edinburgh. As a genius, he was of course smart enough to drop out.
As if enough of my heroes hadn't already been from/lived in Edinburgh, here is the grave of empiricist extraordinaire, grandfather of cognitive science and near-discoverer of evolution, David Hume. The round structure is his mausoleum, and yes that is Abraham Lincoln next to it, a memorial to the Scottish volunteers that fought for the Union. I actually feel it's an honor to have Lincoln next to Hume, who died during the American Revolution, and admitted his sympathies for the rebel colonists based on his alignment with their moral principles. Ben Franklin made it a point to meet Hume while he was living in Great Britain, and Hume was also close with Adam Smith, who as Hume's illness was fast taking him, wrote these interesting words (about at-most deist, and possibly atheist Hume.)
Above: a Viking runestone. It's been moved from its original location (though I later learned it spent the medieval period in Sweden where it was created, and was gift to people in Scotland in the 1700s.) It dates to the eleventh century. The runes say "Ari raised the stone in memory of Hjalmr, his father. May God help his spirit." (Because Norse runes are very metal, I also have carved some into the side of my raised bed where I make wine, "RUTTEN JORDE", rotten soil. (This cover version is also nice.)
2.3.2 Arthur's Seat
These were taken on two different days. (Not that you could tell. People like to joke about many places "Don't like the weather, wait fiften minutes" but I've never been somewhere where it's literally as true as Edinburgh.) If you look closely you can see people on the ridge.
As you can see, Edinburgh is basically built around these Paleozoic volcanic plugs. The impressive building below is Holyrood Palace.
Here, I'm at the high point of Arthur's Seat. In true Scottish form, just as I reached the summit the mist rolled in to obscure the view. Then the descent.
2.3.3 Edinburgh Castle
The castle dates to the 1300s. Trying to read about the history before I went, I quickly reached my limit as it was destroyed and then changed hands several times, and the Scottish seat of authority during the late Middle Ages (as one source put it) "itinerant."
Below is the church within the castle complex.
Above: I'm replacing my storm doors with one of those spiky ones. Below: view over toward Calton Hill from the castle.
Above: the castle is described as being built into the rock, and on visual inspection I determined this to be true. Next two below: where bad cats go when they die, or in the case of one cat I know, who will die when I put her there if she pees on any of my clothing ever again.
Above: the Georgian layout of Edinburgh is clear from this window. Below: doctor's office at the castle.
Above: this cannon was specially made for the castle and in its time it was the "Big Bertha" gun of Scotland - soldiers feared to face it, although tan-pants over there doesn't seem to be giving it much mind. Below: looking along the line of sight of the cannon, I wonder if the castle warden's ex-wife works in that building.
Above and the next few shots: the weapons room of the Scottish kings. The beams on my ceiling are not even 50 years old and they don't look that good, which really annoys me.
Above, proof of postcards being mailed from the castle.
2.3.4 St. Giles Cathedral
St. Giles Cathedral has the coolest steeple of any cathedral I've seen (above, credit Wiki.) One can't help but hum doom metal when entering a place like this, as the ambience forced me to all day long. (Seriously, look at that spire and then click on this and listen to it in the background. Aw, what's that, you're reading this for pictures of the trip and my dazzlingly witty insights, not metal? FUCK YOU. LISTEN TO METAL.)
Above: somehow it had escaped my notice that the symbol of Scotland is the unicorn (what a great symbol.) There were a lot of them around Edinburgh.
2.3.5 Holyrood Palace and Scottish Parliament
I like that Holyrood has to remind people it is a "working royal palace".
Below: Scottish Parliament, basically across the road from Holyrood. Notice the unique bike racks.
The first year Scottish Parliament was open was 1999, after legislative authority was devolved from Westminster. I don't understand several things about this. First, the UK's Parliament continues to have Scottish seats (it wasn't as if the Scottish seats from Parliament were just cut out and started going to their own legislature in Edinburgh) - but Northern Ireland and Wales also devolved at the same time. England does not have its own devolved legislature, and while I understand the arguments against doing this, it still would seem to put England at an unfair advantage. (If legal scholars have not already mounted a study of the changes in legislative patterns since devolution, why not? Also, Parliament is a massive legislature, and has a very low rep-to-constituent ratio for the developed world (members of our lower legislative chamber in the US represent 7.5x more constituents than their counterparts in the UK). Second, why does the Scottish National Party hold so many fewer seats in the UK Parliament than the Scottish Parliament? One explanation could be the difference between the Westminster and Holyrood constituency boundaries. (If you're reading this and you know, please comment!)
2.3.6 Edinburgh street scenes, with humor for seven year-olds, and food
I had earlier said due to the many pedestrian alleys and non-systematic streets of old London, it would be an amazing place to hash, but Edinburgh would be light years better. It has that, PLUS San Francisco's topography.
Below: I probably only tried 160 or 170 of the whiskys[sic]. The street name unfortunately refers to the spirochetes and gonococci that are on frequently on offer.
Did you think I was going to not do a Scotch tasting in Scotland? At the end they have a collection of 3000 whiskys donated by a Brazilian businessman who obviously had a problem.
Union Carbide plaque at Greyfriar Kirk.
The Fringe had LOTS of "The Story of (legacy pop act)". Clearly marketing is first and foremost in what people offer at the fringe. Also noted, a lot of plays discussing mental illnesses.
Above: in the University area. Not sure why I was surprised to see a mosque given the UK's population. Below: I asked if I could live there.
Above: I enjoyed lunch in the courtyard of the law school provided a welcome respite from the Fringe goings-on just outside through that gate. It was Scotch eggs ("picnic eggs") and sandwiches. I should add that I considered getting Scottish Mexican food just to be funny but I tried this in Prague, and it was not funny, not even one bit. And one might ask, am I willing to suffer to entertain you, dear reader? No, not even the slightest bit. Below: an artwork by El Anatsui which adorns the other end of the courtyard, made entirely of aluminum from liquor bottles. The work I found online was pretty much all found materials, and using what "nature" chooses to give you seems to force a certain innovativeness.
I commented that the amount of beautiful stonework in ONE BLOCK of the old parts of either Edinburgh or London would easily be more than in all of most, if not all, California cities.
Above: Got my haggis with neeps and tatties (turnips and potatoes - twice) which as usual I inhaled before taking a picutre. To demystify it for the uninitiated: it's like gravy and ground beef but tasting more livery and I quite liked it. Somehow my wife transmuted neeps and tatties into "nips and tits." But she's a sweet girl. And the building where I had my first haggis has some golf history. Below, see what I mean about the unicorns? This one was on City Hall.
Above and below: Edinburgh City Hall. That's a statue of Alexander on Bucephalus.
Above: the Shakespeare of the Central Coast strikes again! (See here for more on this mysterious and itinerant bard. Below: he also has strong feelings about the Fringe.
The Central Coast's Bard has been very productive! But I shudder to think that this ruffian and mountebank is trying to associate himself with genteel Philadelphia.
The next few are from Calton Hill. In this first one, that's Edinburgh Castle in the background. The guns fired at 1pm every day.
Above: Admiral Nelson's monument. Below: the old Royal High School, considered as the location for Scotland's Parliament (twice), now closed and boarded up.
Above and below: the National Monument of Scotland and Nelson's monument.
Above: the curly building is a W hotel.
Above, Dean's Village, with a very nice walking path.
Despite it being the Fringe, Edinburgh felt extremely safe and organized. I did witness one conflict between a man and woman, angry hitting at each other with long sticks; police arrived less than 60 seconds after I first saw them. Trying to set a good example for other lookers-on, I restrained myself from making light saber noises while they were fighting.
We took the train back from Edinburgh back to London. In first class it was quite a pleasant ride. Here is a glimpse of the bridges over the Tyne in Newcastle during the train ride back to London. Below is the North Sea as we traveled down the northeast coast of England. Of course I did physically touch it while we were in Edinburgh.
3. Flyover Country - Iceland, Greenland, Baffin Island
As a geography nerd I like long flights because in the northern hemisphere, the route is usually far to the north, so you get to see unexpected places from the air. First was Iceland, apparently a sort of Arctic Hawaii. (Also on my bucket list: visiting the meeting site of the Althing, arguably the world's first formal parliamentary system, which the Norse settlers could not have known is awesomely sitting exactly on top of the rift between the North American and European tectonic plates.)
We also saw a lot of Greenland:
After passing over a field of icebergs we got to Baffin Island. I used to want to visit these obscure and harsh places but the older I get, the less of a point there seems to be.
I always enjoy traveling, but the first morning back, coming out into my yard early the first morning was really nice. We were home.
GENERAL NOTES/QUESTIONS
- Lots of Ukraine flags and other signs of sympathy for the cause (a bridge in Inverness lit up in blue and gold as well.) I was wearing a Jinjer T-shirt one day in Edinburgh which caused a Norwegian man to approach and ask if I was Ukrainian. I saw more in Scotland than England, along with EU flags in Scotland.
- In general the standard for service speed in the UK is slower than in the US (as is true for most countries.) We are people who value speed over other aspects of service, even compared to other Americans ("don't waste your time pretending you're our friend, bring the food out quickly and be as cranky as you want!" Hence why we like Asian restaurants.) This admittedly got to us and we walked out if a restaurant in Perth for this reason and got KFC instead. My wife theorizes that our faster service may be one benefit of US tipping culture.
- To ensure plastic bottle caps are recycled along with the bottle, apparently by UK law they are physically attached to the bottle. I hate this because it interferes with drinking soda while you drive - either you have to constantly push the bottle cap out of the way, or you tear it off the ring but the little piece of plastic pokes your lip.
- The parallels between Britian and Japan are many. One of the ones that has always amazed me is that here we have this nation, on track to be a global power, but until a bit over three centuries ago, could not even control the north end of its own island. (That statement applies equally to both Great Britain and Japan.)
- Why so few Scottish metal bands? If ever a place should be a cradle of metal, it's here. There's Alestorm of course, but my favorite discovery from this trip is Bleed From Within.
- English meadows and English rain smell really good. That said, I was very happy to smell the dewy golden hills of Norcal my first morning back.
- Many modern humans have Neanderthal genes, and the genes we've kept are not a random selection. Neanderthals were the first glacier-apes so many of those genes are associated with high latitude, in particular clock genes which might work differently in places where the length of daylight varies dramatically during the year. So: do we see this in other animals that have spread across a wide range of latitudes, like say seagulls? In particular the asshole ones in Inverness that woke me up when it was already light at 4:30am?
- Most distances remain listed in Imperial units rather than metric, much moreso than Canada. Temperature and volume seemed to be the only things with metric units.
- I don't love Heathrow. The service and design inside the airport is fine, and I recognize there's really no way to make transiting a major international airport pleasant (Douglas Adams's comment still stands however.) What's more, the Tube makes it possible to get away from the inhuman airport borderlands (mentioned with respect to Newark documented at the end here; neighboring Hounslow is even a nice little spot with a great Romanian restaurant and a good food hall.) But the signage getting around inside the airport eg from the Tube to the rental car area sucks, the signage to get back from the motorway to the rental car return is even more horrendous, and the UK's residential parking of "just take up a whole lane and hope no one crashes into you" is particularly galling here. "But it's not designed for rental cars, blah blah blah" yeah that's fine, but I had a rental car, so that's how I evaluate it.
- Food: thanks to Scotland I may be a whisky man and no longer a gin man. I also may have developed a tea habit. On the other hand, it's still not clear to me why people go so crazy for Cornish pasties. My take is, they're fine, but I don't see the big deal. Also, even understanding that Yorkshire pudding is not like American pudding and taking it on its own, its charms are pretty much entirely lost on me. And if you're British and haven't already dismissed my opinions as the ravings of a barbarian - Hershey's is better than Cadbury. Cadbury must think so or they wouldn't have licensed their name to Hershey to make chocolate under their brand.
- There are places in the UK that get less rainfall than much of the Bay Area. Inchkeith Island in the Firth of Forth gets only 21"/year compared to Santa Rosa's 32". Yet I'd wager Inchkeith isn't much less cloudy than the rest of Edinburgh. This makes me think that the worst thing would be to be a place that is very cloudy but where it doesn't rain much - a gloomy desert. (Similar to places around the Arabian Peninsula which are horribly humid but get very little rain ) We might call this the "both shit ends" index. So what is the place in the world with the highest cloudy days to rain ratio?
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