Trip To Scotland
Wednesday, August 04, 2004
Okay, I probably won't post tomorrow (Thursday). I'm heading out to the west coast to see the Kilmartin area. It was the first part of Scotland settled by the Irish, and was where the first Scottish Kings ruled. Scottish Dalriada. It's more ancient stuff. Old cairns, more stone circles, and the Dunadd Fort which has the imprint of a foot at the top. As a ritual, the new king put his foot into the footprint of former kings. Supposedly it is a size nine...my size. :-) It's a lot of climbing around and it's a three hour drive just to get there, so I will leave early and get home late. Expect me to put up the pictures sometime on Friday. The weather claims it will be party cloudy...we'll see.
I woke this morning to steady rain. That confirmed for me that today would be an at-home day, except for the outing to the home of two wonderful members of the church, the Smithsons. They live about 10 miles outside of Stirling in a wonderful little town called Kippen. I learned there that here you eat pancakes as a snack. They were served cold with butter. I guess they can have a variety of things in them, like a cookie might, but the consistency is a pancake as we know it...a bit smaller than what you would get for breakfast, but not tiny. About the size of a Subway chocolate chip cookie. :-)
I've not taken a single picture today and there's not much to report except that my e-mail isn't working. It was fine last night, but today it won't come up at all. I've started a trouble ticket and hopefully it gets resolved soon. Morehouse is supposed to be sending me the first edit of my book (did I mention that they have moved the publication date up to Spring, 2005?), and I will have to return it by Aug. 23. E-mail not working is a very bad thing.
From here, I plan to head to the grocery store, as I'm out of bagels...another bad thing. The weather tomorrow is (according to CNN's weather for Stirling) supposed to be partly cloudy, so that looks good for what I had planned...which involves a fair bit of hiking in old Scottish Dalriada. One of these days I'll take the train down to Edinburgh, but I find I am more interested in the countryside. Plus, I hate to waste a day when I have a car. I may save the cities for when I am on foot.
So that's about it for today, even though it's not yet 2 pm. Say a prayer for my e-mail.
