(This post is a condensation of a site I created after my trip.)
Welcome
This page is about my three week road trip through the Scottish lands of Caledonia.
Road trips are a great way to explore new places. You can stop any where. You can choose your own route. You can carry everything with you everywhere you go. It’s no wonder to me that in a country as big and varied as the United States that driving would be a national past time. All you need is time, a car, a goal and intestinal fortitude to pay for the gas.
This site is about the latest of my road trips. In the recent past I’ve driven down the U.S. west coast, across Canada, up the Mississippi, and along Historic Route 66. This trip is a venture to the north of the United Kingdom. I’ll be spending just over two weeks getting to know Scotland.
My planning has centered around three themes: scenic road trips, staying at hostels, and creating this web site. After checking out several books of driving tours, I settled in on a book by Frommer’s entitled Scotland’s Best-Loved Driving Tours which contains “25 unforgettable itineraries” and did my best to stitch them all together in to one long road trip.
Hostels were going to be a relatively new experience for me. Though I had stayed in one on Isla Mujeres near Cancun in 1983, all I really remember was it being incredibly cheap and having to rent sheets for my hammock. Recently on a ferry ride from Nova Scotia to Newfoundland I rented a bunk in a dormitory and found this worked fine for me. These two experiences convinced me to try hosteling this trip. But which hostels to stay in? Again, after looking around I came across a book entitled Hostels U.K. which was full of frank assessments of hostels throughout England, Wales, Ireland and Scotland. Using it as my guide I booked a few hostels. Unbelievably, even six weeks in advance, I found many were already full. This discovery caused me to book everything early. I didn’t want to find myself stranded!
Lastly, there’s this site. This theme is actually much more involved than you might think. Not only are there gadgets like cameras, computers, and video recorders to deal with but there are Internet connections to find, batteries to charge, and software to learn. For now I’ll only say that I’m trying a new publishing system called Sandvox for this trip. It’s new to me and there’s lots to learn but what I’ve seen so far looks promising. Let’s hope I’m not wrong!
So, enough with the introduction! This site will be fleshed out over the next few weeks. Please check back for updates. Oh, and write me an email at the left, if you’re so inclined.
by 