Highlands Tour 1

We took a long (very long!) day tour around the Scottish Highlands - this is just the first part!

Our route

Some things I didn't know:

- the population of Scotland is 5.4 million (sheep population is over 6 million!)

- the paisley pattern of 70s fame (like a teardrop) originated in Paisley, Scotland

- Dumbarton (like the bridge in the SF bay area) comes from Scotland - its name means Fort (dum) Breton (barton), from the Welsh. And yes, Dan Aykroyd in the movie Sneakers pronounced it the Scottish way (which twisted my head, because we say it like DUMbarton, and he said it like DumBARTon) 🙄

- a Scottish belief is that if you were born in Scotland, then your soul would return to Scotland when you die. This is the central point of the song Loch Lomond - the elder brother chose to be the one to die, and told his younger brother that he would get to Scotland before him (via the faster low road). There's a *lot* more to this song - see here... So - here's my favorite (so far) rendition...

- there's a West Highland Way walk of 98 miles

- the Scottish Gaelic language is slowly making a comeback (~1% of Scots speak it) - Catriona/Katelin McDonald plays a Shetland Reel.

- there are over 31,000 lochs (lakes) in Scotland - if you look at it on Google maps, you can imagine a bit of lace or netting, torn ever so gently into pieces - that is what the landscape looks like

- "Clan" literally means children or family, but it realistically meant protection in a lawless land

Something I did know, but was made ever so clear - the Scots are still very angry about the English taking over. A bit (just a very little bit!) of politics (old and new) was part of our tour...