A Wee Bonnie Sheepie

Let me tell you a sordid tale; a tale of moral degradation, of alcoholism, deprivation and ovine voyeurism.

It is the tale of our road trip to Scotland over Christmas. The middle of a wet depressing winter brings out thoughts of suicide in any reasonable man, and the only way to survive, or so I thought, was to freak out over the winter holidays.

So a trip was planned, no not to Ibiza, or the West Indies, or even the south of England. I planned to go to Scotland where I could freeze my 'nads off.

Well I didn't have any real friends left in the UK, so I had to settle for an assorted collection of second-tier creatures to accompany me, mainly based on their utility. So I got a driver, a photographer, a person to speak English with a brit accent in case we were ever pulled over by the cops, and someone to provide comic relief. Well, after the trip, I can say that they all were totally useless at their assigned roles! Except maybe the photographer did provide a lot of comic relief, as it was drunk most of the time.

The driver fought with the brit accent guy the whole of the way trying to figure out who was the better driver, the photographer had been told to always crouch on the ground to take photographs, so roughly half our time was wasted seeing it trying to balance on its haunches like a pup learning to beg, and the comic relief was so spaced out that most of the time his vacation was actually running on a 12 hour jet lag behind ours.

Okay, so I kid. Most of these guys were always among my good friends, and the camaraderie we shared on this trip has bumped them up to among the best of my friends. I don’t know about them, but once the trip was over I got a bit depressed missing them (help! they're forcing me to write this). Thanks a lot, guys; you may be retards, but I love ya. So I do apologise in advance for the cracks I'll be making at your expense further on.

Anyhoo, on to the trip.

Day 0 - Dec 21st
Gupta arrived at the station where I was waiting to meet him. Together we took a long and torturous cab ride to Enterprise to pick up our car. Where we found, they didn't have the car we were expecting! But they were really nice, they gave us a discount, and soon we were behind the wheel of a brand new Renault Scenic, confronted by a bewildering array of buttons. More about this car later.

Well, with a prayer we rolled off and were soon at Sainsbury's buying a bewildering array of food, snacks and alcohol. Let it be noted that we bought too much food, about half of it came back with us, but the alcohol ran short O_O. And this was with one teetotaler! Of course, I hadn't counted on the photographer literally inhaling the alcohol as thought there were no tomorrow.

Well, the next to arrive was Kuruvilla, with the precious camera cradled betwixt arms. To be noted, the camera did not leave that position for the rest of the trip. After which Kumar and George called me to say they were lost in the fog, which led to a chase sequence with me shouting Kumar's name like that of a long lost lover's as I drove through the maze of roads that is Norwich.

Well finally we were all in ground zero in my house, and a plan of action was being formulated. To be mentioned - I had been to Scotland before, where I had covered the East Coast; Edinburgh, Perth, Aberdeen, Inverness and then cross country via Aviemore and the Caingorms back to Edinburgh. (That trip ended rather tragically with me being rear ended very violently on the motorway. The car was totaled, and we had to be towed back to Aldershot.)

Well this time I had mapped out a route starting from Edinburgh, to fort Williams, the Isle of Skye, Inverness and then back to Edinburgh via Aviemore. Check our route here.

The fog was going to throw a spanner in the works, but we decided to set off at 3 am. At 1 am I finally drifted off to sleep only to be awakened at 2 by what seemed to be a weasel being slowly slaughtered. This turned to be Kumar snoring, and try as we did; there was no way to get him to switch off.

So at half past three in the morning, bleary eyed and bushless(?) tailed we set off, with me taking the first shift and Kumar navigating. Rain and intermittent fog slowed us down, and as we drove into the dawn, the starting of our Scotland trip seemed ominous indeed.

In my next post - High Road Hi-jinks! The sheep call out to Kumar! George finds out we're tavelling to Scotland! And many more pics!