Hiking in Scotland, Part 2

September, 2008

The next day Jon and I went north to an even smaller village, Rogart.

It's so tiny that you have to ask the train to stop or they'll just breeze right through. We stayed at a hostel that is made up of old train cars, see picture at right. Very cool! Or, at least it was cool until the owner got all nasty the following day when we didn't vacate soon enough. This was odd considering that there was virtually no one waiting to take our places. She just didn't want us to be there any more... (There is only one train a day - and we had no place to go while waiting for it.) I realize that she may be a lovely woman who was just having a bad day -- but I'd never go back there, even though it was a neat place to stay.

Still, we did get in a few lovely hikes in – and managed to get even more lost than in Drumnadrochit.

On one hike, we unfortunately followed a rather homemade-looking "shortcut" sign. (Yeah, yeah. We knew even then that it was probably a bad idea...!) The path wound up a hill and then sort-of lost interest. Of course, we felt committed by that time and didn't want to go back the way we'd come so we just kept walking…up over really steep inclines and deep valleys, through knee-high bracken (which is pretty nasty stuff), and through a lot of mud.

Then we came to a fence we couldn't get around. It was just a few wires, really…you know, the kind that can be electrified. We weren't sure if this one was or not but neither one of us was brave enough to touch it to find out.

First Jon hopped over it. Well, that wasn't going to work for me - for one thing I'm a foot shorter…for another thing, I'm 30 years older.

As it turns out, the fence wasn't electrified which is a good thing because Jon dropped me right down on top of it as he was helping me over! By that time, we were laughing so hard I barely managed to get over it at all. And it was not a pretty sight, I can assure you.

Eventually we found a bit of a track, which was a nice change. Then we noticed a few Highland "coos" (i.e. cows). They're really cool looking with long wavy hair that hangs down in their eyes. (Note: Although I did take the picture at right, it wasn't taken then. And it was taken from a car...)

THEN we realized that there was no fence between us and them, see picture below. (It may look like the cows are far away but ... did I mention that THERE'S NO FENCE??) That was a bit tense as we kept walking slowly while I tried desperately to remember if I'd ever read that Highland bulls were aggressive. They only seemed to be mildly interested but I was quite happy to put a little distance between us just in case!

Ah, the joys of hiking!