Aye, the Isle of Arran

I've had a brilliant visit with Jill so far... It couldn't get any more Scottish. I arrived Friday in the early afternoon. She lives in a 2 century old house on the edge of Merkland Forest, just on the other side of Brodick Castle.

After exploring a woodland path beside a trickling stream, we drove up to Corrie, then hiked up the hill to High Corrie, where they have some of the traditional cottages. I can't remember what she called them, but they're painted white and have tar roofs.

She was busy Saturday morning, so I elected to take myself off hiking. I walked the hour into town, through the castle grounds, and along the coastline edge of a golf course, and caught a bus to Whiting Bay.

From there, there's a circular path that takes you up the mountain to some iron age cairns, a beautiful waterfall, and an iron age hill fort. I joined up with a couple on the path, on holiday from Paisley. I am sooo living in the wrong country. The deep Scottish accent is enough to make my knees melt. Perhaps living in England is simply self preservation.

By the time I met Jill back in town (thank the Lord I didn't have to climb that hill back to her place), my flat-land, London legs felt like jelly. Still managed to dance through the pain at the ceilidh that evening, though it's probably a good thing that we only had the one guy between us. To my surprise, we danced most of the same dances as on the Shetlands last summer! Strip the Willow is still my favourite.

Today was perhaps the best of all. This morning we hiked out onto the moor to see more standing stones and sheep... Sheep galore! Then this afternoon we met up with a couple other people and attended a session in a local pub. It was amazing! I've decided it's not a proper session without a whistle player and bodrahn present. It was pretty funny all coming in at the same time with our instruments, and hearing all he commotion we caused with the visitors. Another bonus of being "with the musicians"... I didn't have to pay for my orange juice.

There were another couple visitors that joined us with their instruments. The fiddler joined in all the tunes I started that the locals didn't know. And he was GOOD! Turns out he runs some huge Irish trad music organisation in the UK, that has locations in all the big cities. Oh.

We finished off the evening at a really good restaurant on the north end of the island with Stuart, the whistle/pipe player, and his mum. Incredible food, really reasonable price.

You meet the most interesting people when you travel. Audrey wrote a diary in morse code when she was 14, during the war. How cool is that? I've also found a perfect guide for a trip to Morocco. Next March. 25 deg during the day, 0 deg at night. Who's in?