TriumphAnt

Tear along the dotted line – Driving in Scotland, a North American motorist’s primer. From the moment we arrived at the Edinburgh Airport to pick up our rented car, I made a point of getting into our hosts’ good graces by publicly acknowledging my awareness that in the UK they drive on the OTHER side of the road (not the wrong side). And that does take some getting used to! We had had some preliminary practice in Edinburgh when, as pedestrians, we’d had to adjust to looking in the direction from which the traffic nearest to us would be coming before we stepped off the curb. Here’s the driving version: You roll up to one of the country’s countless T junctions and are confronted by this sign, where the universal “Yield” shape is amplified by an even clearer verbal direction. Certainly it leaves no doubt whatsoever what is expected of you.

The only catch, if you’re from North America, is to remember that the traffic in the lane closest to you is going to come boiling past from right to left – and don’t think I didn’t spend a couple extra seconds on every occasion when I found myself at just such an intersection. (Mantra: Turning left? Look RIGHT and then turn left into NEAR LANE!! Turning right? Look right AND left, cross the near lane and turn right into the FAR LANE!! Roundabouts. At first thought, you might consider the roundabout to be an intersection born in the mind of a psychotic civil engineer. But after as few as two or three passes through one you realize it is a perfectly sane way of controlling traffic and consumes far less land than one of our own high speed cloverleaf exchanges. As you approach a roundabout, you are faced with a billboard-sized map of the exchange. Mark your exit and enter the traffic flow. Most roundabouts are also heavily marked with lane arrows and dividers painted right on the paved surface as well. In the roundabout, just ease yourself into the proper turnout lane and Bob’s your uncle! If you do miss your turnout, you just go round again and catch it on the next pass. It doesn’t take long before you really appreciate that as a HUGE advantage over, for example, the Trans-Canada Highway’s unforgiving exits when you realize you’ve taken the wrong ramp and have to spend 15 minutes travelling to the next exit and 15 minutes coming back just to get back on the highway. (And for the record, it also helps to be in the company of a first-rate navigator who literally mimes your turns in real time with great sweeps of her arm as you enter the roundabout and approach your turnout lane!)

I may never again complain about the government expense required in this country (Canada) to present information in both of our official languages. In Scotland, especially in the North, they do the same thing – but the second language in this case is Scots’ Gaelic (which, it was explained to me, is correctly pronounced GAL-ick, not GAYLE-ick, as it is heard most often in Cape Breton and, of course, Ireland). As this sign indicates, sometimes it can be seen to make a modicum of sense. “Stèisean” is not too far removed from “station” and you hardly even need to know that pittance to derive “bus station” from “Stèisean nam Bus”. But how in heaven’s name, one is surely given to wonder, does anyone take a coined service like “Shopmobility” (a place where you can find one of those motorized wheelchair carts in which you see people motoring around grocery stores) and decide that its Gaelic version should be “Goireasan Ciorramach”? (Of course, come to think of it, on this side of the water who decided that the French for “dandelion” should be a word suggestive of nocturnal incontinence – “pissenlit”? But I digress.)

In fact, after a couple wee drams of a really fine single malt, probably “Oifis a’ phuist” looks like a perfectly rendered English version of how you’d be slurring it out.

Sometimes, even though a sign might be rendered entirely in English, its Zen-like mystery may still leave you wondering just what the heck is the message one is supposed to take away. And sometimes you know they’re just messing around and having a wee bit o’ fun wi’ ye.

As we got farther into the regions of less frequently travelled roads – especially on the Isle of Skye – we discovered two other important facts of driving amid the stunning scenic views. First, because those views are almost entirely rural, you will frequently encounter – and you must give way to – sheep and cattle. Here are a couple random shots of the highland and lowland non-humans we encountered on the roads we travelled in our rented bright red Vauxhall Astra. On one road, we came trundling over a hilltop to find ourselves slowed with the uncertainty of wondering where this little gang might be headed. Turned out they were just moving to fresh grazing somewhere behind us.

Speaking of the Vauxhall Astra, I will be first in line to sign a petition to demand that car rental companies throw an owner’s manual in the glove compartment of every car they rent. In my case, I was stymied entirely by how to pop the gas tank fill-up cover (not the gas cap, but its covering little door). In every car I’ve ever owned, this was accomplished from within the car – typically with a small push or pull lever located somewhere near the trunk release. But it was only when I was sitting beside a monument to Bonnie Prince Charlie gazing woefully at a gas gauge perilously close to “E” that a helpful Scottish teenager ambled by. Presented with my question, he walked back to the gas fill-up cover, lightly tapped it and watched it pop open. Just like an IKEA cabinet door. Then he looked at me with hugely sympathetic eyes and, after peering into the back seat to satisfy himself there wasn’t an empty whisky bottle on the floor, said simply, “Good luck!” I could not help but notice it was in precisely the same tone one uses with a friend who’s just told you that tomorrow he’s going to snowboard down the face of the Matterhorn. The Astra also has its headlight bright / dim switch located where it is in every car I’ve ever owned – on the steering column lever. But the “on / off” switch? Nowhere in sight. My having failed to find it when I first thought it might come in handy actually required our coming back rather too quickly one evening from a restaurant dinner about 10 km from our bed and breakfast on Skye. It was only the next day when, prepared to dismantle the steering column if necessary, I finally found the switch on the face of the dashboard, but tucked away so close to the steering column that it was out of sight when one was sitting in the normal driving position. So rental car companies – help us out here, please! Make an owner’s manual standard equipment. Not all of us are prepared to spend the $1.00 per second for the internet satellite uplink to search one out online when no free WiFi is near.

This is Hamish. Hamish is a “hairy coo” If you think I’m making that up, just Google “Hamish the hairy coo” to see how many fans he has, and how many virtual places there are where photos of him have been posted online. Hamish is a tourist attraction entirely in his own right and lives at a roadside stop near Stirling that includes a café, a large souvenir shop and a sizeable parking lot to accommodate his many admirers. (“Hairy coo” souvenirs, in fact, are available all over the Scottish northlands and Islands. The shaggy highland breed makes for incredibly soft stuffies and they render beautifully on coffee mugs.)

And not just quadrupeds, either. Yep, that’s a remarkably curious emu peering at Leslie over the passenger side mirror. He (or she) strolled right up to the car on one rainy day and took a real interest in the back and forth beating of our windshield wipers, pecking with a chisel-like beak that threatened to do them serious harm and wandering away only when I turned them off. The second thing we discovered in rural Scotland driving is that a great many roads are single lane – nicely paved in most cases, but single lane nonetheless. But as the road shrinks, Scottish hospitality and courtesy expands at the same rate. Every couple hundred metres or so along a single-track road, there are “Passing Places”. Clearly marked, these paved pullouts generally are no bigger than the space required to accommodate one or two vehicles and more often than not you find yourself in a race to see who can be courteous first. The moment you see an oncoming car (or its driver sees you), one or the other of you ducks onto a passing place and blinks your lights to signal the oncoming driver, “No, no; I insist. After you!”

Here we are tucked into a passing place that also just happened to offer a wonderfully moody photo op. And yes, that sidewalk on the right side of this photo disappearing around the slope in the far distance is actually the road. There are helpful signs everywhere. The twisty highland roads give you lots of “Slow down!” warnings of tight upcoming corners and will even help tour bus operators stay out of trouble.

But the best part of taking yourself off the well-travelled roadways? It is worth it!