Get on your bikes and ride

It’s a little funny to be writing these update posts largely for my mom, so she knows I’m still alive, but this specific post is one where she is a central character, rather than just a consumer! I’ve spent the last week tagging along on my parent’s holiday in Scotland. It has definitely been a week that has been much different from how I’ve spent the better part of the last year travelling. I think my mom had the whole itnerary for their trip planned out within three weeks of booking the flights in February. Planning a week in advance has been my upper limit for the majority of my journey! We spent the 22nd attempting to dodge the hoards of people in Edinburgh (once we finally got there). Our first train was cancelled and the second train dumped us all off 35 minutes from the city center so we could catch a train that was coming up five munutes behind us. Our only real plan for Edinburgh was to visit the castle. It’s my parents first foray across the atlantic, so all the castles and old things are still new and exciting, and I guess I’m just jaded. I exaggerate a little, but I really don’t have as much patience for sightseeing and crowds as I used to. We had an early travel day on the 23rd with a 7am bus out towards Islay. For some reason the roads seem smaller when perched up on a big bus. I’m sure it made my cycling look all the more terrifying in the eyes of my parents as we hurtled around tight corners as the rain poured down. The rain cleared as we arrived in Port Ellen around mid-day. I think I read that the entire island had only some 3000 inhabitants in total - not including tourists. I’m fairly certain that most of the communities on the island couldn’t be considered larger in status than village. We spent a good amount of time at distilleries on Islay. We did a tour of Laphroaig on our first day, then spent the second day visiting Kilchoman, Ardbeg, and Lagavulin. There’s a few more distilleries on the island, but we had to save something as an excuse to make another trip back, right!? We only toured Laphroaig, settling for just a dram or two at the other distilleries. My mom would say the same of distilleries as I now do of castles, if you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all. We spent a good portion of the 24th making the return journey back down to Glasgow. It was really nice to have an airbnb to be able to cook our own food rather than eating out all the time. I’m looking forward to being home to cook for myself all the time - buy groceries and have a pantry/cupboards with multiple meal options rather than being confined to purchasing for one simple single meal at a time, all the time. We managed to squeeze a very abbreviated trip to the Isle of Skye on the 27/28th before returning down to Glasgow today (29th) so my parents can fly out tomorrow morning back to Vancouver. The train, ferry, and bus took up nearly the entire day, with wait times, we didn’t actually make it to Portree until six in the evening. With some of the waiting time I managed to find us a car to rent to blitz our way around the island on the 28th before returning to the mainland in the evening. The scenery was all stunning despite the rain and wind that fell throughout the day. I’m actually a little surprised at how much we were able to pack in between 9 and 3. We had to cut the sightseeing short because we had to make the last bus down from Portree to the ferry at Armadale that left at 3:45. Fortunately that bus was able to get us to the ferry before the 5:10 ferry, otherwise we would have been forced to wait for a 7pm ferry that may not have even come with the high winds slowing the boat down to the sort of pace that one could probably swim beside. Today has been another full day of travel. We started from Mallaig, were forced to wait an hour in Fort William before another bus took us down to a 5 hour layover in Oban. This wait was more alright than most of the others because there was a distillery for my dad and I to visit to pass the time. I’ve enjoyed the opportunity to explore new places, but don’t think I’m about ditch my bike and start planning the next Stroh family vacation. I’ve been learning that I am terribly independent. It can be really tiring to continually be taking consensus votes on who wants to do what, and where. There’s also the problem of pace. I’m still kinda young, relative to my parents at least. Getting out hiking wasn’t on the agenda for this trip, even a walk up from the lighthouse at Nieste point saw me waiting in the car for several minutes before my parents made it back to the vehicle. One fortunate similarity was that neither my parents, or I, are night owls. There was at least one night where my dad was lying in bed before 8pm - it made me feel much more justified in going to bed before 10. I’ve only got just shy of two weeks left in this trip to cycle all the way back through Ireland to get down to London to fly out of Gatwick on the 11th of September. I’ve got a loose sketch of what that could look like. I’m just hoping that I’m not writing cheques my legs can’t cash!