Travel Entry June 5, 2012 Or Environmentalism in Scotland

Robbie doesn’t identify as Scottish or Irish – it’s all the same. He identifies with Gael. To him, Gael = us and Gaol = everyone else.

It’s fascinating to hear about the view of environmentalist here. How ‘they’ reuse to change their ways of preserving because they don’t want to acknowledge they are wrong. How because of them, people are getting paid not to have sheep. How because of the decrease in sheep , heather is taking over the ground. How shepards are out of work; they have gone from 20 to 2. The views are interesting.

It was a long day of driving. We stopped in the morning at the Culloden battlefield. Then we hit loch ness, the Emigrant’s statue at Helmsdale and the Castle of Mey. We stopped at the Woolen Mill for lunch.

Robbie bught us loch ness statues from the Monster hunter. He moved to Scotland and set up a trailer by the loch. The locals thought he would be a drain on society, but he makes money to support himself by making little statues and he helps out around the area, getting seniors their groceries and doing odds and ends as needed. His guarantee is that if Nessie doesn’t look like his statues, then he will return your money. Teehee.

The Castle of Mey was interesting, probably because the guide worked for the Queen mom or 20 years before she passed and so has a total of 30 years of working in the house (when the Queen mum died, she stayed on to work as a guide.)

We had supper at the hotel in Thurso. I had mushroom risotto with potatoes, carrots and cabbage. The starter was tomato soup and the dessert was lemon mousse, topped with raspberry mousse. Yum! D had the soup as well, the slaithe (fish) with Ember beer for the entrée, and chocolate fudge pie for dessert