This past weekend, IFSA-Butler took all of its Scottish programs (Edinburgh, St. Andrews, Glasgow, and Stirling) to a weekend-long excursion in Loch Lomond. Or rather, at Loch Lomond - being in it would have been quite wet. As it turned out, however, it rained for the whole weekend, so it was quite wet all the same. While I only got one glimpse of the sun, I really didn’t mind the rain too much. Scotland is a good country for the rain, and it proves to be very lovely during such. It’s the element of the country, in a sense.
We left on Friday afternoon from Edinburgh on our coach buses, and arrived at a castle overlooking Loch Lomond, which was where we would be staying. Naturally. The place is actually a youth hostel, and it has a fascinating history. Way back when it was first built, it was used by Robert the Bruce (a famous Scottish king in the 12th and 13th centuries) as a lodge for his hunting grounds, which consisted of the modest thirteen acres surrounding it. It changed hands a few times after him, being owned by very wealthy people who put on additions and used it as a castle-mansion, up until around the 18th century. After a while of lack of use (I believe, not sure who owned it until this time), it was used in WWII by a unit of the United States Anti-Aircraft Division as their headquarters in the region. They even converted some of the upper floors into barracks. It was this same unit that pioneered the idea to turn it into a youth hostel, and the surrounding thirteen acres were sold off to help with this conversion. It now stands today as a lovely abode, and this past weekend it stood full of IFSA-Butler students, who had taken complete control of the place, so it was occupied by Americans once more. How fateful.
After a delicious dinner at a local restaurant, we called it an early night for the next morning’s early wake-up call. When was it? 7AM. Which is early. We are college students, after all. Bleary-eyed, we ate a quick breakfast and headed out to Benmore Activity Center, for some adventures in the countryside. I signed up for the group which was doing high ropes and kayaking, and we ventured out in the rain to do just that. You can’t cancel activities just because of something silly like the rain, even if one of those activities is walking on logs 40 feet in the air. And high ropes was first, which I was very excited about. High ropes courses have always been an incredibly enjoyable part of my life, and I try to take every opportunity to strap myself into cables and do dangerous things at high heights. Not sure why, really - but that’s besides the point. In my group was a good friend of mine, Yannick, who is about my height, so we continuously teamed up to do several activities in the high and low ropes course, which was a great deal of fun. However, our similar (and superior) characteristic translated into every activity we did being made as hard as possible by our guides. For instance, when we climbed up a tall, swaying pole with a board on the top hardly big enough for both of us, the trapeze pole that was hanging in the air for us to jump and grab on to was moved as far away as possible. We failed, actually, on that one, but succeeded on every other thing we did. One of these was climbing up another pole with a board on top hardly bigger than the other one but with four of us, Yannick and I and two girls half our height. We then did this, which worked out well and looked quite cool:
The afternoon brought about kayaking, which we did on Loch Eck, which means ‘Lake Whitehorse’. The shared height factor of Yannick and I actually continued to prove treacherous to our well-being, as nearly all of the kayaks were just barely too short for us. But we managed just fine as we ventured out into the Loch and the rain. Luckily, we were provided with a great deal of waterproofs to keep us relatively dry because kayaking in the rain has nothing dry about it. I sang a bit of a shanty to myself whilst kayaking headlong into the wind, and it was impressively effective in helping me to speed through the water, as it was initially intended to. After kayaking up the loch, stopping for hot chocolate, and then kayaking back down, I also sang the ‘Loch Lomond’ song (“By yon bonnie banks and by yon bonnie braes, where the sun shines bright on Loch Lomond” - no sun shining bright, but the banks and braes were still there). This was an important sort of pilgrimage thing for me to do, and I had been looking forward to it ever since I found out that IFSA-Butler was hosting a weekend trip in Loch Lomond, which had been coincidentally at the same time as I was preparing that song for a recital at Conn. So sing it I did, and I was very happy to do so.
That night brought dinner at a very nice restaurant, where I bought my first cocktail since I’ve been here. For those of you familiar with my bar-tending habits, it may come as a bit of a surprise that I held out this long for one, and I would agree. However, most places in Scotland are more suitable for things like pints than cocktails. It was quite enjoyable indeed, but it made me miss the days when I could make one whenever, and for not £4.50. The night was topped off with some hilarious games played with my friends, and then sleep, which was eagerly sought despite our later, more reasonable wake-up time (8AM). After waking at that time, we ate, packed, took some final pictures, and made our way to the buses for a quick trip to the Trossachs National Park. There we listened to a talk on conservation in the park’s headquarters. I actually found this talk intriguing, because it outlined the National Park system in Scotland, which differs in many essential ways from our own in the states. One of the biggest differences is that they have rural development as one of their goals, nourishing and working with the communities that exist within the park. With my concept of ‘wilderness areas’ left untouched by any type of development, I was fascinated. The speaker also explained the numerous problems the parks face (e.g. invasive species, tourists...) and even the difference between a ‘lake’ and a ‘loch’. There isn’t one. Though, oddly and humorously enough, there is one lake in Scotland. That is, one lake called a lake. All others are called lochs. Quite strange.
We finished our weekend with a trip to the Scottish Wool Centre, where we watched a sheepdog demonstration. The sheepdogs were beautiful, talented, and energetic, and it only served to make me miss my own herding dog back in Minnesota. Here’s a picture of my favorite demonstration sheepdog in action, and then my own sheep dog, in a slightly different climate, also in action.
