There, and back again. A finn's tale

Dunnet Head, John O'Groates, Wick, Dunbeath, Helmsdale, Boat of Garten, Aviemore.

They used to be just dots on a map. Now they, together with many more, have been transformed to real towns with real, and beautiful, buildings and people.

The roads connecting all these places have become familiar and dear to us. Gone is the apprehension of driving on the "wrong" side of the road, having been exchanged for a nagging feeling that we,should build roads like this as well! I mean, who

*doesn't * want to speed ahead at breathtaking speeds (*any* speed is breathtaking when the road is only 20 cm wider than the car) on curvy roads?

I'm going to miss the wee roads that crawl up and down along mountainsides, through forests, by meadows and marshland, sometimes with a inclination/declination of up to 13%.

I'm going to miss the sheep that ward their young away from the road when a car approaches. I'm going to miss exchanging a greeting with *each and every* car or bike I meet, as we slowly pass each other on one of a thousand passing places, and I'm going to miss the landscape, the sights and the people I've met.

Thank you Cairngorm Campers for providing us with our rolling home!

Thank you Scotland for providing us with a new and wonderful place to wake up every morning!

And thank You, dear reader for providing a reason for me to scratch down these texts during our trip!

Doing this alone would not, however, have been half as rewarding as sharing these moments with my beloved wife Carola. So thank you, my darling, for putting up with me and my endless puns.  I hope you don't mind if I stick around for another 21 years.

Thanks for watching

Don't miss my next blog "Kanalresan 2, the Return of The Narrowboat Stompers", coming in 2019 to a computer near you!

Yours,

Björn "ÄnnuVärre"Friberg

A short note on wildcamping

Before we got here I spent an unhealthy amount of time on the Internet trying to figure out where we to wildcamp (that is, staying overnight outside a camping site).

The thing is, with a campervan you don't really need the  infra that caravan sites offer.
In our car we got a toilet, a kitchen, a bedroom and a living room. If we can find a nice loch (yes, we did) or a creek (yes, we did that, too), we also have a bathroom.

So, what does one do when the eve closes in and the time for creating culinary extravagances draws near?

1) Forget anything you read on the Internet (except, obviously, this).

2) Find a single lane road (the ones that are about as wide as a finnish bike lane and is equipped with passing places (the speed limit on these seems to be somewhere between 50 mph and whatever the car/bike is capable of. These roads can be found anywhere in Scotland.

3)Drive along this road until you find a passing place that, for one obscure reason of another, has been enlarged to the extent that you can fit your mancave-on-wheels into this space without obstructing the non-existent traffic.

4) Make sure your chosen site offers a fecking awesome view of the surrounding landscape. If not, keep going, you'll find a cooler spot within10 minutes.

5) Camp. Leave nuthin' behind that wasn't there in the first place. This includes cigarrette stumps. Especially cigarrette stumps. Don't shout, play loud music, set fire to the surroundings or bug(ger) the local flora or fauna.
If the last part gives you trouble, the Mallard (pub) in Dingwall (town) sells "Funny Inflatable Sheep" among other, even more intriguing products, through a vending machine in the mens' room. The pub grub isn't bad, either.

This should be the view from your car. Don't settle for anything less.

Thurso and whatnot

Yet another rainy morning greeted us outside the wee village of Halkirk, where we had wildcamped for the night.
We decided to splurt out on a commercial breakfast so I called the local hotel to check whether they serve breakfast to non residents. The bloke in the other end of the line had no idea about hotel policy since the phone number on the hotel website was incorrect. Bugger, him and me both thought.
We opted for the bar "Y-not" in Thurso instead.
Two eggs Benedict later the sun came out.

Cute teacup/pot -combo

We fought the throngs of people on the main shopping street for a while, visited a wee museum (more likely some old bloke with a hoarding problem), had a coffee and a piece of cake that probably clogged up the rest of my arteries, and went on our merry way. The girl who served us the cake had a *very* good singing voice.

The day the earth stood still on Thursp shopping street

Museum of wtf?

Museum of sad boats

Slightly happier boats. Must be a hard life for boats here - I've seen passenger ferries tie up with thinner mooring ropes...

Oh, and I amost forgot Portskerra! Don't miss Portskerra!

We saw a sign earlier in the day, pointing down to the Portskerra pier.

That sounds nice, we thought, images of ice cream and of victorian ladies strolling in the sunshine for some obscure reason going through our heads (ok, ok, *my* head).

Portskerra pier, in my mind

Portskerra pier IRL

No ice cream, no Victorian ladies. Just the smell of decaying kelp and concrete. Next time we see a sign that could point to something interesting, we'll follow it again. Because that is what we do, Carola and I.

The memorial for drowned fishermen we also found by Portskerra pier is a jarring testament to the life that has formed these people. Well done you all, for choosing to live here. Me, I'd go nuts in a fortnight.

A wee walk

The weather has taken a turn for the better, and we decided to take a little stroll along the coastline in Scoury.

I told my trusty chinese phone to take a photo every 2 minutes while it was dangling from my backpack strap. Most of the photos are of Carola, since she was walking in front of me. She tends to do that, since she is the more adventurous of us two. This way she also takes care of any cobwebs and other nasties that might otherways assault yours truly. Ladies first...

After a refreshing walk with wonderful scenery we drove on to the village of Durness, where we topped up the fuel and the fridge.

After a visit to Smoo cave we found a nice spot by the road to camp, by Ceannabeine beach (not even the scots seem to know how pronounce these names...) just east if the village and had a couple of beers and a nice dinner (Kedgeree (heavily modified Jamie Oliver recipe) and raita).

This morning's alarm clock was big and fluffy and went BAAAAAA!!!! beside our car at 07.13 a.m. The sun is shining on us and on the white beach beneath us, and a little creek provided the perfect opportunity for a refreshing morning bath.

The seagull we befriended yesterday (with a little help from a poppadum) is back. Today, toast is on the menu (both for us and for the seagull).

We got happy news from home yesterday, as our son Tom reported that he passed the theoretical exam for his driver's licence. He won't be able to take the practical exam quite yet though, as his dad, who is also supposed to function as his teacher, is out of the country, currently nekking it in a small creek in northern Scotland. Sorry 'bout that, son!

Big Sands, Ullapool and Hector

Big Sands is a ridiculously beautiful area close to the quaint village of Gaerloch.

Since there's no phone or internet signal at Big Sands (either), we found amusement in walking by the ocean, in picking a rock that looks *exactly* like a potato, in trying to get our beard, reapectively hair, out of our mouths, and in watching prospective neighbours fighting with their wildly flapping tents.

According to BBC, the flapping was due to the storm Hector, with gusts up to 30 m/s.

According to a gentleman in a shop in Ullapool, the  storm Hector was just a figment of the imagination of pussy-footed people in the big cities, who think anything that moves a feather is a storm. "Aach, it's just wind. I bet the ferry's still running normally." 

We thanked him and fought our way through the imaginary storm, down the street to a very busy restaurant by the ferryport, where we had a lovely lunch.

The ferry was running normally.

Ham and haddie

Today my lovely wife drove us all the way from Boat of Garten in the Cairngorms national park  to Applecross on the west coast. This included the Bealach Na Ba (Pass of the cow) road, apparently the gnarliest road in Scotland. Since it was her turn to drive, my job consisted of grabbing the hand rail and trying to keep the car upright by sheer force of will. That road is *narrow*...!

Wonderful sceneries, a waterfall, baby rabbits, seafood, prosecco on the beach and Ham and haddie (I like to try my hand at local delicacies when travelling) for dinner took up the rest of our day.

Right now we're parked by the road a little north if Applecross, overlooking the Atlantic.

I've had shittier days.

Ye gods, they're coming at me!

Scotland, the land of numerous sheep and left hand driving.

After a hassle free trip by car, plane and coach(es) we reached Aviemore in the Cairngorm National Park, where xx from Cairngorm Campers collected us from the city center.
A short and informative hour later we were off in our Toyota Alphard campervan.

It's bloody scary to drive on the left side of the road! The alternative, though, is probably even scarier so we'll just suck it up and enjoy it.

Late afternoon found us parked at the Osprey Center by the shore of Loch Garten. A sign stated that the flora and fauna in the area is so special that it actually could be in another country. A walk in the forest confirmed this - it looks exactly like home in Finland...

Since our day had started at 3 a.m (gmt+3). we had a very early evening, leaving the scottish midges (as annoying as the finnish mosquito but gnat-sized and using stealth mode) to find someone else to suck on.

The user battery of the campervan turned out to be shot, but a phone call to the rental company took care of that problem in no time at all in the form of one (1) dad in law -mechanic (Douglas) that set us up with a new battery.

He had a previous engagement, so his son Kevin (also a mechanic) took care of the installation of the battery. This, ladies and gentlemen, is how you should run a business!

A nice cup of tea with a view, and we're off again for a day of white-knuckled left handed driving.

The last of the Haggii

We have reached the point of no return.

From here on we can but move forward. For alas, we have now devoured our last remaining cans of this gaeliest of gaelic delights.

The history of this traditional dish is shrouded in scottish mist, but historians of dubitable reputation agree that it was the pot-bellied viking Bjorn Langnos that, preferring to drink his whisky in lieu of using it to make sauce, combined the haggis with lingonberries, thus creating "Haggis å kookapäärona", one of the first dishes of the nowadays highly regarded gaelo-finlandian fusion kitchen.

I'm not very fond of driving during the night, at least not in the summer, when every imaginable forest critter with a deathwish seems to just wait to jump out in front of the car, but since the plane from Helsinki-Vantaa leaves from, well, Helsinki-Vantaa we have no choice. Up, up and away at four o'clock in the morning it is, then.

Oh joy.

Proof of address

Once upon a time last winter there was a happily married couple who had spent quite a significant number of years travelling an itsy bitsy, tiny part of the world on their oldish sailboat.
In order not to get bored of spending their annual holidays in the most beautiful archipelago in the world, they decided to broaden their horizons a bit and check out how the other half do it (vacationing, that is).

I, myself, comprise about half of that couple. We're ordinary, finnish people (except that we speak swedish instead of finnish, try to have a rather Peppi Longstockingly approach to life, and got tattoos for our 20 year anniversary).

I've long wanted to go for a roadtrip in the Netherlands so this year I decided to sell this idea to my darling wife Carola. I showed her pictures of all the quaint villages, told her about the rather far out art festival in S'Hertzogenbosch, and all in all started to prepare for  roadtrip to the tulips.
-I want to see Scotland, she said.
-No way, woman, I've got my heart set on the Netherlands and you *will* respect my authority! I manly retorted before ordering plane tickets to Edinburgh.*


We decided to hire a campervan and follow the NC500 -route because it sounds cool and makes me feel like I'm participating on the Cannonball Race or something, and at the tender age of 52 I'll take all the bolstering I can get.

The North Coast 500 route consists of a mostly single lane road that meanders along the coast of the Scottish Highlands, crossing mountains and villages, and offering plenty to see for the wide eyed traveller. A campervan offers the weary traveller the freedom to stop for the night wherever the weary traveller wants. Since the scottish freecamping regulations do not apply to vehicles, it also offers the equally weary (of campervans) policeman to wake the traveller and tell him/her to feck off to a campsite. We have yet to see how the cookie crumbles on that one, but we hope that the van will provide us with, in the words of the most famous scot of them all, Mel Gibson: "Freeedoom!" **

Renting a van in Scotland is a more convoluted affair than in Finland. Over here you pay, scribble your name on the contract, let them take a copy of your driver's licence, and Bob's your uncle.

In Scotland all the above applies, but you will also need to provide the renter/renter's insurance company with a proof of address, assumingly so you don't run off with the car.
This proof has to consist of at least 2 bank statements or other more or less official documents with your name and address on them (I haven't seen one of those in 15 years) or utility bills with your name and address on it. Since a five minute googling and a bit of creative photo shopping could provide me with any of the above, stating any address I want, this whole Vonnegutian approach to security seems rather outdated...

But all is well that ends well and after parting with the "proofs of address" and slightly over 0.001 million euros, our home away from home is now ready to receive us on Monday.
Stay tuned to this channel for more ramblings!
-B-

*Coaching sessions on how to keep your marriage a happy one are available upon request ;)
And Scotland is an extremely beautiful place in its own, rugged way, as we could see when we visited the place last year. We can't wait to visit it again. We are actually already thinking about going back for a third time in 2019, then hiring a narrowboat.

**Yes, I'm well aware that mr Gibson isn't actually scottish, but since this is my blog I do reserve the right to embellish the truth a little bit at times in order to amuse you, my dear followers.