A Wee Camping Trip In The Highlands Part 2 - Boots On The Ground

We left Florida at 6pm in the evening and landed in Glasgow at 7am in the morning. This sounds much like a great opportunity to get lots of sleep on the plane, but of course, my brain would have none of that and I probably garnered about 3 hours of sleep. I was thinking about how I was going to get Pam through customs and get both of our large bags onto the city bus, and what kind of weather we would experience between the bus station and the walk to the hotel. First off, I know that these things do no good, but I was somehow born with the idea that if I worry just the correct amount, less things will go wrong. There may have been some element of rightness in that kind of thinking, but the main feeling I’m left with is that I have not quite worried enough yet. In this case however, we had one of the occasions where Pam has the wonderful opportunity to remind me, “See, it was all for nothing!”

The flight was great, and getting off the plane took about 10 minutes even though we were some of the last people off. We weren’t in a hurry at all, remembering that it was 7 am Glasgow time and our hotel check-In time was 1pm. Our time in between would be spent as you might think someone from Florida would never spend it, walking around downtown of a large city with full suitcases and backpacks in 30 degree weather. We followed the stumbling group of about 6 people to our bags, first coming to a giant staircase, which would have been outlawed in the States, and an elderly gentleman next to Pam chuckled, “Welcome to Glasgow….” as we worked our way slowly down the first descent of our trip. Once we conquered the stairs we found we were almost the last ones to get our bags, and almost the only folk coming into customs. Our customs official was a tall, nice young guy with a full red beard and he seemed excited that we were really there to go camping. “For Two Weeks?” he said, unbelieving. That wasn’t the last time I heard that phrase from a Scot. Pam replied, “Unless we like it and decide to stay!”….his answer was “Please do not say that to me…have you paid for your trip yet?”

Once we cleared customs, we quickly opened our bags on the floor. One look outside the glass windows of the airport put the fear of God into us quick. The wind was howling, the skies were dark and we could see the light rain falling. In addition to that, it appeared the people walking by were wearing full winter gear and bent over double against the wind. All faces carried the same scowl on them. We took turns, Pam going first, heading into the nearest restroom (pardon me, Toilet, nobody says 'restroom' in Scotland). Pam came out wearing four layers of pants, including full waterproof gear, which we thought we might need for hiking up in the Highlands, never anticipating that we might need it just to get on the bus. I grabbed my giant parka that took up half my suitcase and kissed it right there.

From there, it wasn’t difficult to find the city bus, and sure enough there was room for our suitcases and us, without issue. I had researched it all online, and knew that we could walk up to the bus, hand them a credit card and it was about 7 pounds each for the trip….I knew I had this one covered if the bags would fit on the crowded city bus….well…there were 4 people on the bus, and the two gents manning the station were friendly enough. They acknowledged me right off and told me to swipe my phone over their machine. I had never gotten around to figuring out how to use my phone to pay for stuff, so I  handed them my credit card. “Aye, that’s noah good here. We accept Apple Pay and cash.” All I had was about $50 dollars on me in cash, so I pulled out a twenty and he waved me back saying, “Aye, we dona take no Monopoly money here,” while he laughed a good one with his friend. I grabbed Pam and rushed back into the terminal and went about using the wifi to figure out how to get Apple Pay working on my phone…level of difficulty: no phone service, sitting in a foreign country on unsecured wifi, my credit card information hanging out there like ripe fruit for the hackers. Yes ma'am, I was worrying full time now…