Back on the Rails
On to Aberdeen
The Northern Source of Yuppie Scumme
was really sorry to be leaving Stromness and the Orkeys.
It would have been nice to stay another day and try to see Kirkwall, and maybe
Scapa Flow, but as I said before, that would have meant staying two days
(because the ferry doesn't run on Sunday), which meant that I'd have to spend
all day Monday trying to get back to London in time for my Tuesday flight, which
in turn meant that I wouldn't be able to meet Graham in Reading for a curry
Monday night.
It would have also been nice to take a train to London on Saturday, so I could spend Sunday and Monday morning touring Wales, but this would have required a sleeper car from Inverness to London, and they don't run Saturday nights.
Therefore, I was more or less stuck looking for some Sunday venues in Scotland, when there weren't that many trains that run on Sunday. So, I chose Aberdeen.
Which was an entirely stupid choice, but I'm getting ahead of myself.
At the time, it seemed like a reasonable enough choice, because I'd never been to Aberdeen before. I should have counted my blessings.
Well, I got up way too early, went down to the restaurant and had a
nice plate full of kippers for breakfast, and checked out of the hotel. From
there, I dragged my sorry ass across the street to the ferry, boarded the ferry,
found a booth in the bar, and laid down and pretty much slept through the whole
crossing.
A quick taxi ride from Scrabster, delayed only because I couldn't figure out how to operate the payphone, and I was back at the Thurso train station, where I had just missed the train to Wick.
In reality, the train to Wick was just going to turn around at Wick and come back to Thurso before heading to Inverness. Still, I had what I considered two good reasons for catching it:
I'd never been to Wick before, and it seemed like a pleasant sight-seeing idea
It'd save me having to spend two hours waiting in a cold train station.
I suppose that as cold, wet train stations go, the one
at Thurso was about as good as any. As much as I like boredom, though, it did
really try my patience for doing nothing.
I bought a paper, some candy and a Coke, and set about catching up with the local politics, which as I may have mentioned, is one of my favorite vacation pastimes.
The current political firestorm seemed to be based on the liberal party's ability generate any slander they wanted concerning the Tories, and still get everyone to believe them. In this case, it was the Liberals claiming that the Tories were on the verge of instituting a 17.5% tax on food. By late Sunday, virtually everyone in the country believed it.
I also discovered that Scottish newspapers don't seem to carry Dilbert, or any other cartoon for that matter.
Another trip to the train station always meant another opportunity to buy a package of Smarties. They're entirely unlike the candy of the same name in the US. They're a lot like M&Ms, only they taste good.
After a tube of
candy, a can of coke, and one news paper, the train finally came. Note the
obligatory "train arriving at the station" photo.
It left around noon. It was a four hour trip to Inverness, more or less during daylight hours. "More or less" in that sunset was going to happen fairly soon after arrival in Inverness, and it wasn't that bright out to begin with. As before, the picture at right was taken around mid-day.
More or less irritating, too, because the window above where I was sitting kept popping open every two or three minutes. I didn't really mind, because as usual, the heat was set on "swelter," but it did seem to bother everyone else on the train, who took the opportunity to scold me for opening the window every two or three minutes.
You know, if I had half a brain, I would have just moved to a different seat. That's what I get for riding in coach.
Between the ubiquitous patches of fog (both meteorological and intracranial), I got to see the northern highland countryside again. Once again, I was struck by the number of golf courses and sheep grazing pastures I saw.
A fairly common sight in Scotland: "Haggis on the Hoof." Contrary to popular myth, they had more than three legs, although many of them did appear to live on the sides of hills.
It might have been difficult to tell the sheep from the golfers,
except that the sheep all had big, brightly colored fluorescent splotches
painted on their butts. This made it relatively easy to tell them from the
golfers.
Unless it was the golfers who had the spray painted butts. Maybe I got this backwards. Maybe it wasn't so easy to tell the two apart, after all.
Maybe it doesn't matter.
What does matter was that I was planning on getting a picture of the Glenmorangie distillery in Tain, which I'd missed on the way up. Unfortunately, fog (of the intracranial variety) obscured my view.
I got very few pictures of the train ride from Thurso to Inverness, partly because of the varieties of fog encountered, and partly because it looked exactly the same as it did on the way from Inverness to Thurso, so taking pictures seemed somehow redundant. Actually, I got quite a few pictures, and they were indeed quite redundant.
So, rather than display redundant pictures, I'll change the subject completely to mention that I have made it a lifelong pursuit to avoid any white colored gloopy food if at all possible. The epitome of gloopy white food that makes me want to wretch is mayonnaise, which I firmly believe was invented by the French solely to torture me.
The only problem is that I really like tuna salad. A lot. It's just that I know what's in it, which means that before I eat, I have to repeat my mantra over and over "it's just whipped oil, and oil isn't white." Sometimes it doesn't work.
Which brings me to the food trolley on the train and still one more way that Scotland found to be an assault on my sensibilities. The labels on the tuna salad sandwiches said "Tuna Mayonnaise." SHUDDER! I spent lots of time doing my mantra. I mean, I could handle haggis, and black pudding, and vegetables boiled to mush, and even British TV. The thought of "Tuna Mayonnaise" reduced me to sheer panic.
I had one anyway.
None of which is at all interesting to any reader. I just mention it because it might be a little more interesting than a bunch of redundant pictures.
I see I'm losing your interest.
I'll try to pick up the pace a bit.
I got into Inverness at about 4:00, and left for Aberdeen a little after 5:00. This left me time for exactly one picture of the eastern coast of the highlands before it was completely dark.
By now, things were getting pretty dark, and there wasn't really much to look at. Normally, this wouldn't bother me, except that I was generating a serious craving for a curry. This might have had something to do with the rather extensive article on curries in the news paper. I decided to check into that as soon as I got into Aberdeen and found a hotel.
What happened was that I got into Aberdeen and remembered that it's
a town totally taken over by oil money. I later found out that it's just as
despicable as any other oil town I've been in. Somehow, the Scots accents didn't
diminish the creepiness, even if they did seem a lot cuter than Texas
accents.
Aside from deciding to go to Aberdeen, I had also made the mistake of not making advance hotel reservations. This meant getting a little concerned as I worked my way down a list of hotels with no vacancies. I finally found a room at The Cults Hotel.
Remembering where I stayed in Inverness, it occurred to me that the Scots really do have a habit of picking hotel names that make one reluctant to check in with children or small animals. Worse still, I found out after a £5.00 taxi ride that it was also in the most insufferably yuppie section of town. Worst of all, I found that the hotel itself had been overrun by a roving band of over- scented yuppies.
I thought I'd died and gone to London. Someone spare me.
I asked the inn keeper where I could find a curry. The answer depended on me defining the word "curry," which seemed to me to be rather odd. The answer directed me to a Chinese restaurant that served Thai curries. I elected to quit while I was ahead, and went down to the hotel restaurant and had another slab of domestic beef.
The trouble with eating BSE infected beef is that the act has a sort of synergistic, positive feedback effect on itself. After all, I was in Scotland, in the winter, eating beef, in Aberdeen. Aside from the collection of yuppies upstairs (milling around in a ballroom, shouting at each other across the room on their cellular phones), I was even kind of happy.
A bit.
What I was totally delighted about was getting to go back to my room to watch an episode of Red Dwarf (season 7, episode 1) that I'd never seen before. You know, life just doesn't get better than this.
And, I also observed one more bizarre truth of my vacationing, namely that whenever I go to a foreign country, the local government collapses. In this case, some Tory MP croaked, leaving John Major without a majority.
I sure did hope this wasn't going to ruin the train schedules. But, enough for one day.
Follow me to another day of pointless meandering via rail
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