12.22: On the road to Banchory

I took the hill roads to get to Banchory. I drove through Kirriemuir to the birthplace of J.M. Barrie, author of Peter Pan. It is a beautiful little village as so many of them are. Some are quaint, some are charming, some are rather grim. Lots of stone and brick in them all. The more contemporary grey stucco look is really grim, at least in winter. Perhaps it is more pleasant in spring and summer.

I still can't get over how narrow the streets are and how drivers figure out who yields to whom. It is more challenging--as in heart-stopping--on a tight curve with a truck. I made such a turn on a slight downhill and almost got up close and personal with a Foster's truck. I couldn't see around the truck, but was flagged when it was clear. Aggressive drivers, but somewhat polite. The hill roads were also very narrow, so I was delighted to be mostly alone on the roads. Traffic seems to take the middle of the road unless there's oncoming, and I can understand why.

The distance from Kinross to Banchory isn't all that great, but I stopped a number of times along the way to walk a bit or to take pictures or just enjoy the view, so it took me several hours. Banchory is another small town. The restaurant/pub at the Burnett Arms, where I had a booking, is very popular. I walked around the town a bit and explored along the shores of the River Dee there. Banchory is considered the center of castle country, so I was able to map out a number of castles to visit the next day. I'd planned for this day to be a laundry stop, but laundromats are not common. I was able, though, to take my "bag wash" to the dry cleaners and for a reasonable price. I just had to pick it up before 2P on the following day as they were closing for the holidays.

I had dinner at the restaurant/pub at the Burnett Arms and there was a loud, lively group--Friday night and before a long holiday weekend. There were a lot of soccer matches over the weekend, and apparently pretty important stuff, so there were heated discussions about football, but also a great deal of laughter.

I'd opened my map to figure out where I'd been and where I was going and two chaps joined me to talk about Banchory being the best place in the world to live, about their glory days in soccer leagues when they were young, their work with the forestry service, their uncertainty about where Illinois might be, about the best players on soccer teams in the UK, about why coaches of UK soccer teams should be from the UK and not elsewhere, and then some other stuff about soccer because I got kind of lost. The faster they talked, the more pronounced the accent, the louder the volume. One of the guys kept turning to me to ask if I understood--I think he wanted to be sure I understood about soccer as I think there is some sort of penalty or fine for not knowing about soccer. Not really, but that's how passionate they are about the sport.

I left the pub around 11P, but they continued to talk and drink and laugh until the wee hours. By the way, in July 2006, Scotland passed a law that there is no smoking in any public place. Period. So every pub and every restaurant and every bar is smoke-free. That was wonderful.