Tuesday, December 6, 2016

Projects, Stories, and Photos


Isle of Harris GC--story about small golf courses.

Andrew at J L Gill in Crieff--story about the whisky that got away.

Two New Projects and More


  I have two winter projects that are drawing my attention, both new books…sort of. The first project is Sixteen Years of Travel in Scotland, England, Ireland, and Wales. It’s a book that combines the best stories from my first book of travel stories,Ten Years of Travel…, and my second book of stories, The Rambling Adventures of a Traveler and Golfer. The book also includes dozens of new stories not in either book as well as many more pictures.  The first two books will then go out of print—if you’ve got one or both they could become collector’s items—and they are still available at Amazon until the new one comes out in the spring. Speaking of collector’s items, I once saw a copy of Scotland’s Hidden Gems: Golf Courses and Pubs (our first golf book) on an Amazon seller’s store for $95 as a “signed, limited edition.” This was while the book was still available on Amazon for $12.95.
The Amulree Church

Bridge over the Keltie Water in Callander

Cairn Holy in Southern Scotland

Burleigh Castle, the Castle on a Corner

The second project is much more challenging for me. I’m working on a photo book tentatively titled Scotland in Black and White. The book will contain sixty black and white photos (or eighty since I’m having trouble narrowing it down to sixty) with commentary on each one (stories, description, history, etc.). The book will probably be available on Amazon, but will be mostly available from me and at shows where I sell. I’m excited about this new venture.  
Edinburgh Castle

A Gargling Gargoyle

Is this Mary's?

The Simple Life on an Island

Besides the book writing we are planning more travel adventures over winter into spring: Victoria, BC for Christmas, Las Vegas in early February, Phoenix/Tucson in early March, and Scotland in April and May.  Until I have new material to write about, I’m putting up some stories and photos from past trips. We hope you all have a joyous Holiday Season and a Safe and Prosperous New Year!

English Motorway Trauma or the M6 Exacts Its Toll

It was going to be a long hard drive from near Lancaster to Cirencester at the north edge of the Cotswolds. Though, it didn’t have to be as hard as we made it.
Winchcombe Village in the Cotswolds

The route we wanted to take was to get on the M6 and stay on it all the way to near Cirencester. The M6 is a difficult drive anytime—lots of lorry traffic since most goods are shipped by lorry rather than rail—but with heavy rains for the first hundred miles it was much trickier. We didn’t realize that the M6 splits into the regular motorway and a toll road south of Birmingham—a reason to always have an up to date map. Before Anne could figure out which way we should go, I had to choose. Of course, I chose wrong. I went left onto the toll M6 when I needed to go right onto the regular M6. To add to the trauma, the toll road had very few exits—we didn’t know how to get off or where we’d be when we got off.
Typical Cotswold scene

To calm down and try to find some help we pulled into what my old college speech coach called a GOP service area—gas, oil, and pee. I thought we could ask for directions at the hotel in the service area, but Anne (the brilliant navigator that she is) had a better idea. She noticed numerous tour buses parked in the rest area and sought out one of the drivers figuring he’d surely know the route we needed. The driver Anne talked to gave us great directions for getting off the toll road and into the Cotswolds to Cirencester.
Cirencester main street

Navigator Anne led me onto, and then off the motorway, and into the quaint English villages called The Cotswolds. The new route actually ended up more interesting than staying on the regular M6 of our original plan. We drove through colorful, thatched roofed English villages, had lunch in Morton-in-Marsh at Mrs. Potts Tearoom, and still made it to Cirencester in plenty of time to wander about town before dinner. I guess a little motorway trauma didn’t hurt us after all.

The Good and the Bad of a Travel Dinner

On a Saturday night in September we ate in the Brasserie at the Townhouse Hotel in Melrose in the Scottish Borders. Supposedly, the restaurant is rated the #1 restaurant in the area by Trip Advisor. The food was excellent—we shared a fish cake starter and I had pan fried duck breast as a main. The service, though, didn’t match the food.
Our waitress was not local (Polish or Romanian most likely by her accent) and was probably fairly new to her job, so we could forgive some things. We had a difficult time making ourselves understood and she didn’t do things that she was supposed to—give us bread, check that our meal was right, see if we needed anything. The girl basically took our order, disappeared, brought our food, and disappeared again, bring a bill. 

At the end I had to get the manager to get our bill.  When the manager brought the bill I asked her about the lack of service. She said all those things should have been done automatically, but then the manager blew it, too. She didn’t apologize for the poor service, she made no effort to make up for or correct the problems—a free coffee or dessert or adjustment of the bill would have been nice. We didn’t even get a “sorry about that.” She said she’d speak to the girl, but that’s no consolation for us.
Oh, well, so far more than 6000 people have read my Trip Advisor review of the good (the food) and the bad (the service) of our Townhouse Hotel dinner. 

Language Problems

Most of our travels are in the British Isles (England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, and the Republic of Ireland) and aside from a few run-ins with Gaelic or Welsh or un-under-standqble Londoners there haven’t been too many language problems. But when we took a two-week train tour of Germany, Austria, and Hungary, we did have some language difficulties. 
It was interesting that after more than 35 years a bit of my college German (one year and an audit of year two) came back and was useful. It didn’t help us change our train reservations in Salzburg, though. We wanted to take a later train to Munich than originally scheduled. We got the baunhof (train station) phone number and called from our hotel. Every time we got a live person on the line they would hang up as soon as they heard my English. We finally went to the train station by cab (€7.50) and talked to the Austrian train authorities and finally the German train authorities. We confirmed what we thought—our first class tickets allowed us any seats which weren’t reserved on any train. We could have saved euros and time if someone would have talked to us over the phone, or if we had spoken Austrian or German.
In Budapest, Hungary, we had an example of how the locals solved some of the language problems we expected to encounter. At a small grocery store Anne bought a small snack item and some bottled water and had me pay for it. The clerk, who didn’t speak English, asked for an amount in Hungarian. I stared blankly at her and apologized for not speaking Hungarian. She understood and quickly put her hand in her pocket, took it out, and opened her palm. It took me only a couple of seconds to get it. I reached into my pocket, pulled out a hand full of coins, and showed it to her. She picked through the coins and took what seemed to be an appropriate amount and said, “Igen (‘yes’ in Hungarian).” I said, “Koszonom (‘thank you’).” I’m sure my pronunciation was poor, but I knew what she had said and she knew what I meant.
Sunny day in the park in Budapest.

There was one instance in Scotland where the language left me baffled. Our good friend, John Clifford, offered to take me to a Scottish football game (soccer) between his team, the Celtics, and the team from Aberdeen. He drove us from Crieff to the house of his   friend in Glasgow near the stadium. He told me that several Celtic supporters would all meet at this one house and leave their cars to be watched by their friend—the stadium is in a fairly rough neighborhood. All together eight supporters showed up to the house. They were all good friends and most spoke with heavy Glaswegian accents. As they chatted before the game, even though they tried to include me in the conversation, the rate of their speech got faster, the brogues thicker, and the slang terms more numerous. By the time we headed to the game I was understanding about three of every ten words, and one of them repeated quite often began with “F” and ended with “ing.” I was amazed because I had never before not been able to understand John. 

Stonehenge is impressive!

Anne getting slightly tipsy drinking my share--story about the Whisky Train.
MERRY CHRISTMAS AND HAPPY NEW YEAR





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