Slàinte mhath: Cheers! Enjoy the Scottish whisky!

Cheers! Enjoy the Scottish whisky!

What is the weather really like in Scotland?

A motorhome trip with the MoWuKnuffels

to our English-speaking Neighbors

Slàinte mhath!

The German title of this travel diary is Sechzig mit links. Mit links is German for "easy, simply or without problems." As there is no equivalent in English, the title has been freely adapted from another Scottish specialty. Cheers!

The author has just celebrated her sixtieth birthday. Does one make this step into a new phase of life so easily? Is it perhaps the left-hand English way of driving that is meant? Or does the number 60 refer to the British speed limit in miles?

You can find out if you follow in the footsteps of the MoWuKnuffels, who set their sights on their English-speaking neighbors on this journey. In her usual amusing and critical manner, the author again describes personal impressions of the country and its people in her latest diary.

Monika von Borthwick belongs to the older generation and lives in culturally rich Upper Bavaria. In addition to her professional work, she looked after bus travelers as a tour guide in the European region. Even then, she wrote down her experiences of the country and its people in more or less detail.

After the death of her husband, she shifted to traveling alone and explored numerous areas in Europe and North America on her own with her newly acquired motorhome and her two dogs. In the process, she discovered a love of storytelling and sent detailed reports home by email. These documents form the basis for her personal stories from each host country.

A motorhome trip with the

MoWuKnuffels to our

English-speaking

neighbors

Preliminary thoughts

Why our English-speaking neighbors this summer? Was that not too close for us after having traveled to America and Mexico three times in a row? Wuschel would be ten years old this year and I did not wanto subject her to the stress of flying any more. She is such an extraordinarily reliable and sensitive dog that I wanted to be considerate. Being seven years old, Knuffi would still do anything, even if her soul flutters sometimes. After my accident in Toronto, my walking ability was still not one hundred percent restored. So I chose less strenuous destinations in Europe.

The planned large-scale project including Greece, Turkey and Israel was canceled because of the political events and the warlike conflagration. One does not necessarily have to put one's existence at risk.

So why not travel to the neighboring islands and meet the people openly, even if they are more left-wing (traffic-wise)? Driving will certainly become a new challenge for me. Spring in the mild south of the country, summer in Scotland and perhaps Ireland - and when everyone goes away, we can make ourselves comfortable at home again.

With these notes, the MoWuKnuffels now invite everyone to follow their journey and sniff a little subjective country knowledge on the part of the author. Enjoy!

Omar Khayyam, Persian mathematician, Philosopher and poet:

Life is a journey.

And those who travel live twice.

Slàinte mhath!

Table of contents

A little statistics at the beginning

Approach

England's South to Nottingham

Birmingham over the Scottish border (Hadrian's Wall)

Edinburgh and through the hinterland to the west coast

First island experiences (Arran, Kintyr Peninsula, Islay)

Inner and Outer Hebrides

Some statistics to start with:

Travel duration: April to June inclusive / 3 months.

7,000 km one way without ferry connections to the islands

850 € total ferry costs

1,200 liters of diesel fuel consumption

1700 € fuel costs

1200 € overnight costs

Approach

April 5th

Left is not so hard!

We did it and crossed the Channel from Dunkirk (France) to Dover in two hours at 10:00 am continental time. We drove the roughly nine hundred kilometers from Bavaria to the French Channel coast in three stages.

Two weeks earlier, I had awakened my German Wuschelmobil from its slumber. However, it resented the long break of one and a half years and avenged my long absence with all kinds of repair demands: an expenditure that I would have spent more wisely elsewhere!

I discussed the strict British regulations for bringing dogs with me with the vet and thought that nothing could go wrong. But I was wrong! At the check-in for the ferry, it was discovered that some data was missing from the pet passport and so I had to turn around in Dunkirk and see a French vet. He gave me his new stamp without much hesitation and collected fifteen euros. I will charge it to my vet when I return!

Thank goodness it was easy to postpone the crossing without incurring any costs, so instead of at 8 am we started two hours later. We would only lose an hour due to the time difference. The journey was a bit choppy and rainy. Dover's white chalk cliffs had turned grey when we arrived and the largest fortress castle in Europe was only visible through a veil of rain.

At the moment, however, I had other things to worry about. I had to adapt to left-hand traffic. That was only possible with a lot of concentration and thought. In the process, I felt like I was back in my first driving lessons and kept saying out loud to myself: Left, left, left, and slow! As long as I was in the flow of traffic it went fine, but when turning and on roundabouts I kept whispering the rules to myself and trying to think backwards. Hopefully this would become ingrained over the next few days and weeks! My GPS was worth its weight in gold in this situation and always prepared me for a new route in good time. With map reading and left-hand traffic, I probably would have been absolutely overwhelmed and incapable to find my first overnight stop.

Since it is virtually impossible for a camper van to stay overnight freely in the UK, the only option were campsites. Pitches like the ones we have in Europe are not available or have been eliminated. There are a myriad of campsites, with varying levels of comfort. I had already scouted out cheap options at home for the first few days and ended up today west of Hythe, after a skillful turnaround maneuver, in the so-called New Beach Holiday Park.

Horrible by my standards! Hundreds of mobile homes, close together, with little room between you and your neighbor. The area for the touring guests (the travelling people) was a bit more spacious and greener - even more so as there were hardly any campers on the road at this time of the day. I didn't want to complain and was secretly missing the beautiful state parks in the USA. There was no view of the sea, because the coastal section was separated from the shore road by a high quay wall with only a few access points. It was possible to walk on the concrete wall, but the sea was too ungracious that first evening to give us a pleasing view. It was an advantage, however, that my two four-footed ladies did not get to drink seawater and I was therefore spared (for the time being) a case of the runs.

I spent the rest of the day resting, reorganizing the load and taking short walks. Wuschel and Knuffi slowly got used to the new situation and came to terms with their berths. Two metres shorter and twenty centimeters narrower meant a considerable loss of freedom of movement in the interior, if we compared it to our American camper van. It would work out this time too, though - after all, we had already spent half a year together in Portugal (see Winter Wings!). This was in Winter 2009 before our last trip to America.

The coming day was a (no driving) rest day for me and a further acclimatization to left-hand traffic. The public bus to Hythe left almost every twenty minutes from the front door. Why should I go through the stress of maneuvering through narrow streets for two pounds? Plus the dogs had their well-deserved rest at home.

April 6th

Narrow-gauge railway

Bright sunshine when I woke up today! It was darn early, as my two ladies were in front of my bed in continental time - and that was half past six local time! A little sleepy, I took care of all the morning necessities and devoted myself to planning the day.

As intended, I wanted to visit Hythe, but my spontaneity threw a spanner in the works. Actually, in this weather I could take the world's smallest public narrow-gauge railway twenty kilometers south, through the so-called Romney Marsh. This is a vast flatland that lies below sea level. The 20,000 hectare area would strictly speaking be a nature reserve. Nevertheless, the military has managed to appropriate an extensive training area for itself and the nuclear lobby has succeeded in building a brutal nuclear power station in Dungeness. So much for practicing environmental protection!

But before I was allowed to get on the small train, an actual means of public transport and not just a tourist attraction, I had to kill about an hour. Going into the city center was too far for me with my weak ankle, so I strolled up and down the Royal Military Canal in a pretty park. This little waterway was once built to stop the French from overrunning Hythe. But for those who crossed the English Channel, this better moat was „peanuts"!

At last the time had come and I could climb into the spic and span toy train. Taller passengers, like me, had a problem with their seats, because they bumped into the ceiling when sitting upright. Well, the ride itself was not particularly exciting. It went past many backyard gardens that looked like „Hempel‘s under the bed" (as we say in German fo a mess), over several drainage ditches, past a myriad of ewes each tending to their two lambs - an uninspiring area. The end of the ride led through a flat gravel landscape formed by the tides. The gravel has to be removed regularly; otherwise the two nuclear reactors would be cut off, seperated, from the environment at some point. So they came up with the glorious idea of using the small stones by the tonne for the construction of the Channel Tunnel. It was not possible to find out what would happen to this gravel material after the construction work had been completed.

We had a one-hour stopover at the Dungeness turnaround station. I used the time to stroll from one lighthouse to the other and to look at the small fishermen's shacks, some of which are now inhabited by quirky artists. I was hungry and in the mood for fish and chips. In the station restaurant - just as cute as the train - they served me a portion that was not bad. I‘m really a good eater, but I had half of it packed for my two ladies. They, however, just turned up their noses at home and moved their attention to other things. Probably they don’t have their British taste buds activated!

I was actually able to spend the rest of the afternoon in a deckchair outside. While Wuschel worked on my feet with her usual devotion, I devoted myself to further travel planning. I hadn‘t come to a sensible conclusion yet, as there were a great number of interesting spots to visit along the coast. Surprises were inevitable! I had to set priorities somehow. Anyway, Hythe was definitely on the agenda for tomorrow.

April 7th

A look into the past

Today, too, the weather was promising and we all crawled out of bed together at around seven o‘clock. Was it because of me being sixty or because of my accident that I needed more and more time to get around? I was usually ready to go in two hours, today I needed almost three...

I caught the bus after ten o‘clock and drove to the traffic-calmed pedestrian zone of the small town. No big sights, I thought to myself and strolled off. I couldn‘t resist a visit to „ALDI", because I wanted to compare the price level between our two countries. I had the approximate prices from Germany in my head. In general, one could say that the purchase value of a Euro at home was comparable to the purchase value of an English pound at that time. However, that meant that prices were higher because the pound had higher value than the Euro at that moment. Unfortunately, it was the same with gas. Diesel was more expensive than regular gasoline and you paid about £1.42 for a litre, so please don‘t grumble at home!

The only busy main road was quickly passed - as long as my speed could be called fast. In any case, I could not take my two ladies on longer walks in the near future. That would have been too exhausting for me, I regretfully realized.

I noticed a really small, cozy little town with many coffee shops, which were very well visited. Some old houses and Inns – not necessarily Baedeker suitable but nice to look at. I was drawn to the church up the hill: I love panoramic views more than anything! There I later got into conversation with a German forensic scientist in the crypt. A group of young researchers got together here to catalog, study and describe the many bones in this crypt. With this work they wanted to prevent, among other things, the odd medieval skull or bone or two wandering off into private hands. They had been working on this classification for three years and it would take several more years until all the 1,100 skulls and 8,000 thigh bones of about 4,000 people had been recorded and filed in the computer. The young lady explained to me with enthusiasm what one could learn about humans from such old remains and how different shapes and fragments could be interpreted. I felt like I was in Schliemann's time, when he was doing his excavations. A truly meticulous activity, that required a lot of love for the matter. Today, at least the crew could work outdoors and not in the damp coolness of the crypt. She also told me that there were only two places in England that had such an ossuary to show for it. Unfortunately, I have forgotten where number two was to be found. I marveled at the dedication and expertise of these students. Silently, though, I wondered how long such enthusiasm would last and whether much of it would remain with skull 935 and femur 6,598.

Fed with information and very tired I did a little round in the decayed cemetery with old gravestones, before I went back home again. On the way I bought a kitschy Tea Pot with an English flag and a red heart. What must be must be! Glass teapots anyone can have and mine had broken down!

Tired and hungry, I arrived back at my home port at around 1:30 and was greeted effusively by two hairy ladies. Today they were not alone for as long as yesterday. We had lunch outside and later a blessed siesta. Since I was still exhausted from the long tour, I decided alternatively for the deck chair and not for the swimming pool. But how to read a book sensibly in a balmy breeze when besieged at the same time by two dogs, each demanding a hand to pet?

We will break camp here tomorrow and push further west. Rye, Hastings