It came together quickly, on the spur of the moment. In hindsight, most nights centered on the act of binge drinking usually do. You wake up the next morning smelling like flat Irn-Brü and kebab sauce, trying to piece together the previous night but generally just thankful that you did, in fact, wake up.
Such were my reluctant expectations as I sped from Scotland’s Isle of Mull south to Glasgow where I would meet fellow travel blogger and man of mishap, Mike Sowden, for a night on the town. His blog’s subtitle is “The Art of Unfortunate Travel,” and it’ll all make sense when you read posts like the time he challenged himself to hike the North York Moors and nearly died. Read more...
Even though I’ve visited Glasgow on four separate occasions, I hesitate to write this post. Edinburgh gets all the love, even from me. I spent three weeks in the city to the east last year. Glasgow got just three days. I flew into and out of Glasgow on my trip last April/May, but effectively spent no time in the city (apart from a night at an airport hotel Sarah and I spent on our way home). I capped my last trip to Scotland with a three-day stint in town and used it as a good excuse to get together with Yorkie and travel jester Mike Sowden of Fevered Mutterings.
Three days and an airport hotel night? It’s not fair. It’s not right. It’s downright ignorant.
I agree on all accounts… Read more...
The Isle of Mull, the second largest of the Inner Hebrides, hunkers down in the sea just 45 minutes west of Oban. The Morvern and Ardnamurchan peninsulas of the mainland cup mountainous Mull against the coast of Argyll, all of a similar kind yet separated by waterways. Mull’s history is splashed with sunken Spanish galleons, the Lordship of the Isles, and the backdrop of Robert Louis Stevenson stories. Perhaps more than anything, however, Mull is known as a wilderness burgeoning with wildlife like eagles, deer, seals, otters, and dolphins.
My previous travels around Scotland had taken me through Oban and around Scotland’s west coast, but I had never made the journey to Mull until my previous trip … Read more...
The A93 reaches its westernmost point at the highland village of Braemar deep within the Cairngorms National Park. There the road makes a left turn and shoots south toward the rolling hills of Perth and Tayside, but an unclassified road pushes further west from Braemar, deeper into the mountainous Cairngorms, toward one of the last remnants of the ancient Earldom of Mar: the Mar Lodge Estate.
The Mar Lodge Estate is a lesson in natural beauty comprising more than 72,000 acres and four of the five highest peaks in the Cairngorms. After the hustle and bustle of Sarah’s arrival to Scotland we decided our first order of business the next day would be checking out this remote estate. Read more...
by Keith Savage on August 3, 2011 · 1 comment
Scotland’s modern geopolitical designations are a tangle of lieutenancies, registration counties, and shires – just to name a few – that thwart honest attempts to plan simple trips. I had several conversation with Rene while in MoraySpeyside about that very name. Is it Moray? Is it Speyside? Turns out it’s both, but they’re different, and it’s also Banffshire. Somewhere in my head region pulsed a vein pulsed. In these situations, I tend to seek relief in the past. I have this romantic and assuredly false notion that it was a simpler time.
Kingdoms and earldoms and all manner of geopolitical distinctions sleep unbothered on ancient maps of Scotland. You could grasp the rising and falling tides of history by leafing through those parchments. Read more...
A hunter, oft-stubbled and bleary-eyed, driven by an insatiable hunger for exploration and experience - and perhaps a chance to thin the herd of caffeinated and alcoholic beverages. From the highlands and islands to Edinburgh, Glasgow, and the Borders, I explore Scotland with a pen in hand and a fire in the belly (which could be partly from the whisky). 
