Last Friday Meagan and me left to spend a week in Scotland. We had a rather exciting start, as we hung out at the airport a bit after having checked in, but before going through the security control. Of course the thing made the “beeep” when I walked through, and they checked Meagans backpack (now we know that peanut butter and cream cheese are considered as liquid and therefore not allowed), and when I looked at the screen to check again to which gate we should go, I saw these big letters saying “gate closed”. *very bad word*. We started running (and luckily the Bergen airport is really small) while we heard Meagans being called..still, we caught our flight, and it was a nice tiny plane with lots of space for your legs (pretty unusual nowadays) and a free sandwich and orange juice. I like SAS.
All we needed to do on that Friday evening was to get from the airport to Aberdeen, so we tried our first time hitch hiking in Scotland. Got picked up by a very talkative lady and her rather quiet husband. As soon as Meagan said that she was Canadian, the lady started talking. Wow. Every now and then she would ask her husband: “Isn’t that right, Paul?” – “Yes.” Taaaaaalk. “Would you do that, Paul?” – “No.”
But it was fun (at least the 20 min to the city center), and a nice first ride. We couch-surfed the first night at a couple’s place, which was nice. Saturday we went to the tourist information to ask some stuff, bought a map of the area where we wanted to hike, and went to shop the food for the next 4 days (which we planned to spend away from civilisation).
Then we tried to get a hitch out of Aberdeen, which wasn’t easy. Nobody picks you up near the city center, so we walked 2 or 3 km out of the city, and there we got a ride pretty soon. Not very far, but when the guy droped us at Invuriere, a couple stopped just some minutes later and took us further. The same again, and like this we came to Inverness. There it started raining, and we spend 1 1/2 hours standing besides the road sticking out our thumbs. But honestly, who wants to pick up two wet dogs with huge wet packs? We finally got a ride to Drumnadrochit (right next to Loch Ness, so we could admire the “Loch Ness Monster Exhibition Center” – what a name), walked a bit and found a place to put up our tent. And then we had our first experience with the midges. Thousands of them! Of course it was fine in the tent, we cooked, ate, but at some point we had to go outside again to brush our teeth. Wans’t nice. Of course some of them got into the tent with us afterwards, and we had to spend some minutes on killing them..
We started rather relaxed on Sunday morning, and weren’t too lucky with the hitching. It’s one of the roads that are still big enough that people think “Someone else will pick them up..”, but already that small, that a car just comes every once in a while. So whenever we saw a car we got excited, aaaand – it passed. But just when we made a break and ate some Nutella because we were so frustrated by all the waiting, a woman picked us up. Yey! After some more waiting and finally getting a ride to Cannich, we could start our hike! 5 min later it started to rain.
It was not actually the starting point of our hike, it was still a small road, but we thought before that we won’t get a ride there anyway. So we walked, but whenever a car passed us, we sticked out the thumb, and after an hour or so we really got picked up by a German family. They drove us the Loch Affric. Our plan was to hike westwards, along Glen Affric to Morvich, and maybe do a little detour on the way up to the top of Sgurr nan Ceathreamhnan. So we hiked a couple of miles that day, and finally put up our tent, cooked, ate, fought the midges, and went asleep.
On Monday we started around 11, and had a nice hike whole day. Painful though, as we weren’t used to the heavy packs and got really tensed muscles at the back. We still enjoyed the landscape around (and the fact that it’s so different from Norway..much smoother, and all these different kinds of green), and watching the sheep and cattle (were quite happy though to have the river between the cattle and us..it was this really big and furry type with long horns). That day we changed our plans as well: instead of doing the mountain with the name impossible to pronounce, we decided to walk further to Morvich this day, walk in a loop back the next day and head southern afterwards, to get to a road (and a hitch). First because our mountain was covered in clouds, and second because we figured out that there was no way that we could manage to hike up 700 height meters with the packs. Flat is good, everything needs some training..
Tuesday was a nice and sunny day as well, we had a bit of ascent, and an amazingly great bath in a lake afterwards. Cold, but if it’s the first real opportunity to get clean after a couple of days, you’re not too picky..We reached the Youth Hostel in the afternoon, got some water, helped out a german couple that ran out of food with half a bread loaf and a package of pasta (poor them, our bread was already three days old and dry), got orange juice in return, and walked some kilometers further. Put up the tent, were amazed by the fact that there were no midges around, and cooked. After eating we had a couple of minutes when we completely freaked out because of some strange noises outside..you don’t really expect to hear anything in such an area! And my brain is quite creative then what this could be..when we finally dared really to stick our heads out of the tent to check what it was, we saw the deer on the other side of the river, half up the hill. Not so dangerous 
During the night there was heavy rain and wind, but it was luckily better in the morning. We put the wet thing down, hiked the last kilometers to the road and started hitching again. Got a ride to the next town soon, bought and ate the best caramel and chocolate biscuits ever, and (after a couple of short rides) finally came to Huntley. Took some time to get there (but I guess that’s because we had a “break” and some food after every hitch..)
Thursday we spent more or less with lying around on the lawn next to the castle in Huntley, reading, chatting, eating..relaxing day. Late afternoon we hitched back to Aberdeen, hung out near University and listened to a guy playing the bag pipes, and finally met the guy with who we’d couch-surf that night. He was really cool, nice and a bit crazy, and we had a great evening there cooking and chatting with him.
Friday we did some shopping for Norway and checked 4 outdoor shops in Aberdeen. I could spend hours in there, just looking at stuff..Took the bus to the airport for an hour, got everywhere on time this time, flew to Norway and came back to lovely Fantoft.
Was one of the best trips ever, and I really liked to see how much one reduce everything: a pair of pants, some shirts, sleeping bag and matress, tent, food. Nature around. Getting along with Meagan that well. The hitching and the couch-surfing. Neat thing.
