On the Road, to the Highlands

An inauspicious start to our first foray into the Highlands: torrential rains, flooded roads, and gale-force winds that sent our 15-passenger minibus swaying from side to side. First stop: Luss, a tiny village on the (water-logged) shores of Loch Lomond. It’s apparently a very polite place (according to parking signs), where garden gnomes are quite comfortable. Then, it was on to a brief stop at the Drover Inn, voted “Scottish pub of the Year: 1707.” We didn’t spot the ghost who reportedly inhabits room 6, but we got an eyeful of the taxidermy collection of beasts that’s accumulated over the centuries.

Up through Glencoe and over to the Isle of Skye we passed dramatic landscapes of fog-shrouded mountains, gushing waterfalls, and a substantial number of Scotland’s 32,000 lochs (or lakes). Castles like Eilean Donan appeared like mirages in the mist on our way to Kyleakin on the Isle of Skye where we stayed at a cozy bed and breakfast on the water. 

And They Come Tumbling Down

Many agree that no European city embraced social housing towers more than Glasgow did after the Second World War. As the Corbusian and Brutalist towers went up, the tenements came down. Today the skyline is changing, as these towers are regularly declared unfit for habitation and demolished. Once there were more than 230 housing towers, but today’s count of approximately 170 will be reduced to 120 within the next decade. Demolition of many of the city’s towers is seen as both ideologically and socially driven. Some possibly could be reimagined, but most are undeniably horrendous and breeding grounds for alienation from the day-to-day life of any community.

Sunrise on the Isle of Skye

All The News

Print journalism is still alive and well in the UK, unlike across the pond. We tend to favor The Guardian and The Times, but we also pick up a variety of other papers (including the salacious Sun) just to see how the same stories are spun for different audiences. We’re constantly amazed at how erudite most of the reporting is, with vocabulary that you wouldn’t run across in the US dailies. Also, journalists feel free to bandy about words pertaining to sex and body parts that would make the most liberal American reader blush. Some of our favorite stories to date include man slits open mum to see if there’s a reptile inside; health officials ask grocery stores not to display daffodil bulbs in produce sections so consumers don’t mistake them for Chinese vegetables; Cambridge professor assembles glossary of hundreds of obscure nature terms in danger of disappearing (see “zwer,” the whirring sound of a covey of partridge taking flight, or “didder,” a patch of bog); and conservationists call for a ban on tiny “fairy doors” screwed into trees in Somerset woods as the numbers reach into the hundreds. And yes, as with the New York Times, Portland seems to merit a disproportionate amount of attention from the Guardian.

And they love quirky PDX

Glasgwegian Tenements, Glaswegian Streetscapes

              Red Sandstone                                                    From Our Bay Window                                                   Cream Sandstone                          

Glasgow is a compact and dense city—it has twice as many people per square mile as Portland. Outside the central core, a carpet of four-story stone buildings rolls over the hilly topography, sometimes punctuated with church steeples. Called tenements, these structures were the most popular form of housing in 19th and 20th century Glasgow and remain the most common, and desirable, form of dwelling today (single-family homes are extremely rare). Block-long structures contain a series of flats, two or more per floor separated by a common stairway (no elevators). Some blocks feature alleyways, but most have some shared yard space. While tenements are desirable housing now, they were the slums of the early 20th century when workers flocked to work in Glasgow’s factories. Families of four, six, or eight were crowded into a single room with 30 people sharing a lavatory and 40 to a water tap. A hundred years ago, Glasgow’s population was twice what it is now: what a difference a century makes.

            Rear Elevation                                        Fronting Onto a Private Park                                 Two-Story Townhouses

Irn-Bru, A National Drink

IRN-BRU (the Scottish fond abbreviation for Iron Brew) is the second national drink of Scotland after whisky. The beloved beverage is bright orange, slightly ginger-flavored, and very, very sweet—kind of like liquid bubble gum. Quirky and oftentimes risqué marketing helps keep it the best-selling carbonated soft drink not only in Scotland, but also in the whole UK. In one recent news article about Scottish commandments, #2 was drink an IRN-BRU to cure a hangover and #3 was to turn a supermarket upside down to find the IRN-BRU with your own tartan (57 different tartans are printed on various labels). Definitely an acquired taste - Nae for us.

Local Pubs...It's Cultural Research...Honest!

Wee Chip                                       Oran Mor                                                      Belle                                                      Pot Still                         

    

Pubs…..central to community life in the UK.  Our English friends tell us that Scottish pubs are different from those down south. In England, pubs are for everyone but older pubs in Glasgow primarily attract men, standing and drinking with their mates. Newer pubs are a bit different with men and women hunkering down at tables for a few hours. We’ve managed to explore a few, each with a different character, though we imagine we’ll need to continue to do “research”! In our explorations, we’ve generally encountered warm wood interiors, usually with mismatched furniture and wall(s) of whiskys. Our neighborhood pubs include large ones like Oran Mor, a former church, and tiny places like the Wee Pub at the Chip (longest name for the smallest pub in Scotland).  The Pot Still is older than Portland and is legendary for its collection of whiskys. Wandered into the crowded Ben Nevis one Friday evening searching for some Celtic music (too early) but wound up sharing a table with Colin and Ray, two pensioners who are regulars. Friendly conversation ensued, even to the point of friendly arguments. I kidded Colin about the differences between Glasgow and Edinburgh and when I told him Portland had more breweries than Glasgow he countered with, “You bastards!”

Ben Nevis