Brian and Elaine Christie, Dianne Swanson and Alan Christie pose for a quick picture in front of Meldrum’s Inn at Cerese. This was the first taste of wonderful old world hospitality, which made the group search out more small inns for the rest of their vacation.
Elaine Christie rests for a moment on a rock bench high above the little North Sea village of Crovie. Crovie was settled by victims of the Highland Clearances in the 1700s. They became fishermen instead of farmers, pushed as far as they could go without actually leaving the country, as so many of their kinsmen did.
Days of rain produced dramatic flash flooding, like this waterfall and river in the Loch Ness area.
The Christie crew visited Kinnaird Head Lighthouse and Museum in Fraserburgh. The Scot who designed the lighthouse used walls from an existing castle for three sides of the lighthouse. Scots are notoriously thrifty!
Farmland such as this area near Tarland provided some of the beautiful, lush scenery the group enjoyed throughout Scotland.
Take a lifelong yearning to visit a particular country, couple that with the fact that your grandparents emigrated from that country, and you have the perfect set-up for a fantastic, once-in-a-lifetime vacation. Recently, Dianne Swanson, along with her sister Elaine and brothers Alan and Brian, spent ten days in Scotland, exploring the byways, visiting the rural communities, meeting the people and learning about the culture of this magnificent country.
“Other than visiting Edinburgh and Glasgow, we were in the highlands,” says Swanson. “This wasn’t a typical vacation because with our farming background, our priorities were different. We didn’t go to see every castle and to shop. We did a bit of shopping but this was not our goal. We went to see the country, the farming communities, the rivers, the scars; we wanted to feel the life of Scotland, to see the country and immerse ourselves in the culture, and we did so. It was great!”
She adds, “Other than two nights in Glasgow and two in Edinburgh, we had no reservations and no agenda. We just rented a car and toured.”
The grand adventure began when the plane touched down in Glasgow, Scotland. The foursome spent the night at Glasgow but headed out early the following morning with a rental car. “Brian drove the whole time,” Swanson remarks. “He had no problem driving on the left side of the road, which is how they do it in Scotland.”
They made their first top at New Lanark to visit a woolen mill built in the 1800s. “The whole community worked at the mill,” Swanson says. “The man who built the mill believed in housing and education for his workers, so he provided houses, the parents worked at the mill and the kids went to school. This man was truly ahead of his time.”
The group then traveled on to Edinburgh, where they toured the ‘royal mile’. “This is the old part of the city with a castle at the top of the hill and old buildings radiating out and down the hill from the castle,” Swanson comments. “At the bottom of the hill sits Holyrood House where the Queen stays when she visits. The whole mile is just full of history, and we enjoyed it immensely.”
Swanson and her siblings then journeyed to St. Andrews to see the famous golf course. “Golf originated in Scotland,” Swanson points out.
It was here that the foursome discovered the joys of lodging at small country hotels, an incredible experience that convinced them to stay at these small lodging houses at every opportunity. “The food was fabulous and so was the hospitality,” she says of the small country hotels. “Everyone wanted to make our stay as nice as possible. They helped us decide where to go and they made suggestions about what we should see.”
The group toured a lot of farming country and visited smaller communities. They chose to travel back roads with twists and turns where top speed was 30 miles per hour, rather than using the superhighway and missing the majority of the country. “We toured primarily farming country,” Swanson remarks. “We saw millions of sheep and lots of dairies. Farm fields are small and, in many places, still divided by old stone fences. Farmers grow small grains, particularly barley for the many Scotch distilleries, and a lot of root crops like potatoes and turnips as well as small fruits such as strawberries. The countryside is hilly, but open and beautiful on the eastern side and mountainous on the west. The heather blooms only for a few weeks in August and we enjoyed many mountainsides covered with the beautiful purple blooms.”
They visited the castle in Scone and then stopped in Fraserburgh for sentimental reasons. “Our grandfather emigrated from Fraserburgh,” Swanson comments. “It’s a fishing town on the North Sea and there is a lighthouse museum there, called Kinnaird Head. My older brothers and I started school in Alberta at a one room school house, named Kinnaird by my grandfather.”
She continues, “Fraserburgh was very interesting. We toured the lighthouse museum and we thoroughly enjoyed the North Sea. It was cold, windy, and wild, but we loved it.”
The siblings traveled through Inverness and saw Loch Ness and Culloden Moor, the site of the last battle between the Scots and the English. “We stayed in this area for three days,” Swanson remarks. “We also visited the Isle of Skye. They had had a lot of rain in the area and on our way to Skye we saw a lot of raging rivers coming out of the mountainsides.”
The group also went to the Trossachs, Loch Lomond, and Stirling area, and toured Stirling Castle and Flander’s Moss, the site of extensive peat removal after the Highland clearances, before returning to Glasgow to finish out the trip. “We returned to Glasgow and spent a whole day there,” Swanson says. “We walked from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. seeing the sights. We toured a cathedral that was the only cathedral in Scotland to survive the Protestant Reformation, and we walked through a tall ship in the harbor and visited the transportation museum. We could have spent hours at the museum, but we didn’t have time. This was our last day of the trip, it was already late afternoon, and it was time to return home.”
Swanson feels the entire vacation was well worth the effort and expense. “There was no best part, it was all fabulous,” she says. “The country was gorgeous, the food was incredible – sticky toffee pudding is to die for, and the people were marvelous.”
Swanson’s sister Elaine best summed up the experience when the foursome arrived home and family met them at the airport. “When a family member asked about the trip, Elaine said ‘I can tell you about a little of it, but for most of it, you just had to be there’,” Swanson concludes.
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