Holiday Road - Planning my next trip to Scotland

 

Blogophilia Week 7.8 Topic:  Holiday Road

 Bonus Points:

(Hard, 2 pts): Quote the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins

(“The world is charged with the grandeur of God”)

(Easy, 1 pt): Incorporate morning madness

 

So, the first thing that came to mind when I saw this topic was the song from National Lampoon’s Vacation (admit it, you have that melody in your head now, too).  The second thing I thought of are the two Holiday Roads I plan to take in the Summer of 2016 when I go back to Scotland with two friends – (1) the A82 road from Glasgow to Skye and (2) the road in the Quiraing on the Isle of Skye.

 

Before we actually embark on this road trip, I will of course consult a Scottish local to ensure my route is accurate, as I’m not 100% sure of it.  But from what I’ve researched, I believe the best and most scenic route to Skye is A82 from Glasgow (our starting point) through Fort William to Inverness where A82 ends, then A87 from Inverness to Kyle of Lochalsh where we’ll cross the Skye Bridge over Loch Alsh into Skye.  (Alternatively, we could bypass Inverness and go to Mallaig from Fort William and take the ferry to Skye, but I really want to drive over the Skye Bridge). Then, at some point during our stay on Skye, we’ll visit the Trotternish Ridge and drive through the Quiraing. 

 

For the A82 road trip, we will have a very long day ahead of us, and I’m sure there will be a little madness scrambling early in the morning to check out of our hotel and get all our bags situated in our hire car before hitting the road.  Hopefully, the morning madness won’t extend to road conditions:

 

 

 

(Though I wouldn’t mind sharing the road with one or two of these guys along the way)

 

 

Just twenty-five miles outside of Glasgow, our route on A82 will take us along Loch Lomond (the first of ten lochs along the way). (Side note: we visited Loch Lomond on our last trip, and it was breathtaking). 

 

 

Next we will drive through Caledonian forests north of Crianlarich. 

 

(Crianlarich)

 

(Caledonian Forest)

 

Through Tyndrum:

 

 

Next we will drive through Orchy (this is a part that is a little unclear to me).  I don’t think we’ll actually cross over this bridge, but if not, it will be very close by:

 

(Bridge of Orchy) 

 

And we could stop at the beautiful Bridge of Orchy hotel for a cup of tea before moving on:

 

 

 

We will soon come upon Glencoe, but not before passing

by the peak of Buachaille Etive Mòr.   

 

(Buachaille Etive Mor from the A82) 

 

Next, we will pass through Rannich Moor on the way to Glencoe

 

(A82 heading across Rannoch Moor) 

 

(Rannoch Moor – looks deserving of a pit stop, don’t you agree?)

 

On through to Glencoe

(A82 descending into Glencoe) 

 

(A82 at the top of Glencoe) 

 

 

(Glencoe) 

 

(Another side note – while this trip will just be a pass-through, there will be a separate day trip to Glencoe where we will have time to fully embrace its beauty.  As stunning as this photo is, I can only imagine what it’s like to experience in person.  It certainly seems fitting of a quote by Gerard Manley Hopkins: “The world is charged with the grandeur of God.” 

 

Next, from Glencoe we’ll cross the Ballachulish Bridge over Loch Leven toward Fort William 

 

(Ballachulish Bridge)

 

 

 

On to Fort William:

 

 

 

After Fort William, the A82 dives down toward Loch Ness. 

But first we’ll go through Letterfinlay: 

 

 

 

(A82 at Letterfinlay - Letterfinlay Lodge Hotel on the banks of Loch Lochy) 

 

Perhaps we'll stop for a quick bite to eat there

 

 

Now, nearing Loch Ness:

 

 (A82 near Loch Ness)

 

 

 

 (Urquhart Castle and Loch Ness from A82) 

 

From Loch Ness we go to Inverness, and the end of A82.  Its three hours to Inverness from Glasgow, and 2 ½ hours from Inverness to Skye (all without stops, which won’t happen – lol!)  If we wanted to break up our trip, this would be a nice place to stop for the night. 

 

(Inverness) 

 

From Inverness, we’ll take A87 to Kyle of Lochalsh, but not before passing through a few more amazing points of interest, like Eilean Donan Castle:

 

 

and the Five Sisters at Kintail (at Loch Duich): 

 

 

Then it’s over the Skye Bridge at Kyle of Lochalsh to Skye, our destination.  Now that is a holiday road.  The total estimated driving time from Glasgow to Skye appears to be about five hours, but with all this incredible scenery, I anticipate the drive taking much longer. 

 

(Skye Bridge) 

 

 

Finally, the last road to conquer is this road on the Quiraing in Skye: 

 

 

 

(The Quiraing.  What I wouldn’t give to be behind the wheel of that race car) 

 

And a taste of what it's like to drive in the Quiraing:

 



 

Disclaimer:  None of these photos are mine, I found them all online while researching this trip.  However, come Summer ‘16, I will have my own set of photos J

 

 

 



"Welcome to my Nightmare"

So I’ve had this recurring nightmare over the past ten(ish) years.  I haven’t had one of them in a while and I’ve never made a dream journal (which I’ve always wanted to do but, frankly, am too lazy to keep one), so I don’t recall exactly when I had them or what precipitated each one, but it’s the only theme that I’ve had on a recurring, albeit sporadic, basis.

Those of you who know me, know that I have a touch of arachnophobia.  Those of you who don’t know me, should know that “a touch of” is a blatant understatement.  Spiders freak me out.  Seeing one gives me goosebumps, sends my heart racing and makes the hairs on my arms and the back of my neck stand straight up.  When I see them outside, I make a very wide berth when getting around them.  When I see them inside, I call on whoever I can to kill them for me – I’ve interrupted my boss from work when I spotted one on the moulding above my office door and I was afraid to walk underneath it to leave my office (bet he never expected to have an employee buzz him on the phone and frantically say “omg there’s a big creepy spider in my office and you need to come kill it now!”).  I’ve also called my sister and made her drive across town because there was a *huge* spider who made itself at home in the bush on the corner of my front porch, and I had to run past it to get to my front door (in my defense, you could see that sucker from the street).  Then there was the time, around 11:00 p.m. on a school night, when I went into the garage to get my drawing pad and a huge spider dropped out of it and landed on the metal part of the doorway separating the garage from the hallway.  I could not jump over it to get into the house because the irrational part of my brain couldn’t comprehend the rational possibility that the spider wasn’t likely to leap straight up and attack me two feet off the ground (and yes, it was still alive).  So I stood trapped in the garage and yelled upstairs for the kids to come down to help.  What ensued was an assessment of the situation by the kids (“geez! That’s an UGLY spider!”), confirmation from me (“yeah, no shit!”), and a lengthy Destroy (spider) and Rescue (me) Mission that involved an air soft rifle, a shovel (because no one wanted to pick up the dead spider with a paper towel) and cell phones (because the kids, of course, wanted to document the mission).  Anyway, you get it now.

So in these dreams, I am about to move into a new house – my dream house.  The exact details, floorplans etc. of the house are always a little different but the house is always big, very spacious with lots of room, and rooms.  I’ve always dreamed of having a big house.  But in these dreams, there’s always something that prevents me from moving in, and it’s always spiders; the dreams then turn into breath-stealing nightmares.  In one, as soon as I opened the front door and stepped through, the entire living room was overrun with huge spider webs dripping from every inch of the ceiling, several feet in length.  The room was dark, spiders in shadows created by their own trappings, and the air was thick with fear.  I couldn’t breathe and in fact, was jolted awake by my racing heartbeat.

Another time, I was about to move into a very cute two-story house.  It was the middle of the afternoon, a beautiful day with a warm, shining sun.  I entered through the back door into the kitchen, a beautiful, white and inviting room.  Then off the kitchen there was one of those pull-down ladders, which led to a small bedroom loft upstairs.  As I was climbing the ladder I envisioned warm sunlight streaming through a cozy window.  Instead, the room was filled with spiders and I practically fell down the ladder rushing to get down.  I ran out of the house, terrified to go back in.

The other time that I can recall off the top of my head, was the dream where I was moving into a huge house – I mean crazy huge: multiple floors and in each central hallway, there was a door that opened up to a different hallway and more rows of doors.  It appeared never-ending and there was so much of the house that I wanted to explore.  There was one “clean” floor, but when I stepped out of that doorway and looked up toward the rows of floors with their closed doors, all I felt was this intense, heavy trepidation.  I couldn’t venture up to any of them because each one of those floors all had an ominous vibe coming from them, and I knew without looking that they were all dark, spider- and web-infested chambers.

 Welcome to my nightmare. 

 I suppose in real life, there’s some correlation between the spiders and my elusive dream house.  The spiders represent a deep fear of something (other than actual spiders, though that fear is real enough) and I don’t think the “dream house” actually represents a house in the structural sense.  Some other ‘dream’ or goal, perhaps?  What does it really mean?  *shrugs*  I have no idea.  But I imagine I won’t be contacting a realtor anytime soon...

 

 

This was written for Blogophilia:

 Blogophilia Week 4.8 Topic:  In Shadows

Bonus Points:

(Hard, 2 pts)  Incorporate a recurring nightmare

(Easy, 1 pt)  Use a lyric or quote by Alice Cooper

(“Welcome to my Nightmare”)

 

 

 

 

Stars Align (aka San Francisco Tea Stop Cafe)

 

“No man is happy without a delusion of some kind. 

Delusions are as necessary to our happiness as realities.”

(Original quote by Christian Nestell Bovee,

quoted by Prentiss in Criminal Minds)

 ***

I’m not sure if that quote is a pearl of wisdom or a simple stating of the obvious.  But I am well aware of my deludedness (and am deluded enough to make up deluded words and assume they will make sense), and I am fairly happy with my deluded-to-reality ratio.  Though, truth be told, I probably spend more time in the deluded world than reality but whatever.  Reality begs delusion sometimes ;)

 So I’ve been thinking lately of trying to blog on a regular basis (lol! That’s where the ‘deluded’ part comes in, when do I ever write anything on a regular basis?)  Still, it has been on my mind for a while, and seeing Charla start to blog again has inspired me.  Though technically I’ve never considered myself a “blogger” but hey, I’m up for the challenge.  I’ve also wanted to find a place to post photos from my last two trips and blog/write about them.  I never was a fan of the Facebook blogging platform, particularly the inability to reply directly below a person’s comments.  So, consider this Blogspot blog a test.  Perhaps the stars will align and it will become a successful endeavor. 

 *Inconspicuous attempt to segue into photo blog*

So, back in October, Christine and I went to San Francisco to see Alter Bridge.  Before the show, we stopped for lunch at the Crown & Crumpet Tea Stop Café.  Here is the link in case anyone’s in the city and wants to stop by.

 http://www.crownandcrumpet.com/

I would recommend having lunch or tea here.  It was a very quaint little café, the table setting was exquisite and the food delicious.  I had the hot-pressed ham, brie and apple sandwich.  I would have never thought to put thin apple slices in a sandwich, but I made a mental note to do so in the future because it was incredible.  My pot of tea was quite good as well, though in pursuing the menu now I don’t remember what I ordered; it may have been the “Marie Antoinette” – a relaxing blend of bergamot, blue mallow and roses.  And of course I could not resist the macaroons for dessert (they are a weakness of mine, the difficult part was deciding which flavors to limit myself to).

 

The café was on the ground floor of a mid-rise building. 

I loved the “refrigerator magnet” quotes on the main wall.

 

 

(You’d think they could have assigned the arts to a different suite letter  :o )

 

 

 After lunch we went upstairs to a little clothing boutique. 

I kind of wanted this jacket ;)

 

That was our brief visit to the city.  The Alter Bridge show was amazing (Myles Kennedy has one of the greatest voices, in my opinion), but unfortunately it was too dark in the venue and I couldn’t get any good photos of him :/

So that’s it for now.  I’ll be back some time next week with a new photo blog.  Maybe.

 

*Totally conspicuous attempt to complete all bonus prompts

with a completely random photo of my cat’s eye*

 
 

This blog was written for Blogophilia

Blogophilia Week 3.8 Topic:  Stars Align

 Bonus Points:

(Hard, 2 pts) Use a quote from the show, “Criminal Minds”

(Easy, 1 pt)  Include two gemstones (pearl and cat’s eye)