We had an early wake-up call this morning, because we had a pickup from the air-bus, for our 7:30 flight to Scotland. Because of the larger number of people leaving the hotel early, they opened up the dining room for breakfast.
I know that two days is not really enough time to see a country, but I felt that we had gotten a good taste of this one, and was anxious to be getting to Scotland.
Flying in over Scotland was a thrill, seeing the highlands spread out. Unusual, also, because there was so little cloud cover that we could see the country as we prepared to land. Our route took us directly over the highlands, with a view of munros and firths.
The trip was fairly uncomplicated, although we had a little debacle at the Glasgow airport in regard to a car rental, so we had to re-rent another car, at about twice the cost.
Our trip north was uneventful, except for Eric having to quickly learn how to drive on the left – very confusing, when every instinct urges you to drive on the right! The hardest part was getting out of Glasgow, and onto the M3, which involved navigating at least three roundabouts.
Driving into the highlands was awe-inspiring, especially since the bare hills were almost completely vacant of human life. I had expected a drive through picturesque villages, but those were on side exits from the major north-south highway.
The drive through Inverness was hair-raising, as we went through five roundabouts, following Brown’s (our friend) instructions, making a couple of premature turns, but always finding our way again fairly easily. We had the further complication of additional traffic from an Elton John concert which was to take place that evening.
The atmosphere changed from urban and stressful to rural and bucolic as soon as we got out of the last roundabout, and we were soon at Knockbain Schoolhouse. Brown was waiting for us at the gate, and gave us a quick tour of the property.
This would probably be a good point for a footnote about the Reverend and Mrs. Brown Morton III, and Knockbain Schoolhouse. Brown is a professor of architectural conservation at Mary Washington, and during the course of his career has worked on projects worldwide. He is also an Episcopal minister. Margaret Brown is a native of the UK and a journalist, currently working for Leesburg Today, although she also does some freelance work. Margaret’s family used to own a large estate in the Inverness area, where she had spent her holidays since childhood. They acquired the Knockbain Schoolhouse when they were looking for a new place of residence in the Inverness area. Although they weren’t inclined to consider purchasing a redundant schoolhouse (Brown had seen too many of them in the past), this one captured them, and the rest is history. Their house overlooks the Beauly Firth, which is just around the corner from Loch Ness, and is connected to it at Inverness, which is its inlet. In short, their home is to the west of Loch Ness.
We made our way up the very steep hillside in the back of the house, to a vantage point from which we could see across the Beauly Firth to the Black Isle. The entire scene was lit golden by the late afternoon sun. I thought, “I’m home. I want to stay here forever.”
After a wonderful dinner of two different kinds of shepherd’s pie, we had a strategy session for the next day, and then went to bed. Brown said that the rule of the house in regard to expeditions is, “All may, some will, none must.”
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