Mel and I decided to jump onto a bus tour to the Scottish Highlands the other day. We're meant to be not spending money due to the fact that we don't start work until the end of the month, but then again we may as well make the most of all of this time off.
The tour started fairly well. The guide was pretty informative about all things Scottish and historical. He told the story of how a loch that once sat in the middle of Edinburgh (I can't remember the name) used to be where most of the populations "waste" would drain into. By waste I mean piss and shit, you know, back in the day when people flung their stuff out the window.
Well the fact that this lake was full of piss and shit gave Edinburgh the nickname of "Auld Reekie", the locals decided to do something about this and drain out the loch. Once the water and excrement was pumped out 300 dead bodies were found at the bottom. Apparently most of these were women thrown in there for the old "is she or ain't she a witch?" test. That loch is now the Princes Street Gardens.
The bus then headed towards a small town called Callender. One of the highlights of the tour was supposed to be a visit to Doune Castle, this was one of the castles that was used in the shooting of Monty Python and The Holy Grail. Being a huge Python fan this was one of the features that I was most excited about. The tour company must have been more busy than usual because we were in a larger bus than what they normally use. And this bus couldn't fit down the road which lead to the castle. So no castle visit. This made me a bit grumpy for the rest of the d
ay. 
As we left Callender we stopped to visit Hamish the hairy coo. The breed of Highland Cow is pretty cool, I don't know why. They just seem to have a bit more character than your usual cow. We got a few photos of Hamish and then the bus headed to the town of Killin. This was a pretty nice little town which featured the Dochart Falls. This seemed to be a popular spot with kayakers and white water rafters. We grabbed lunch at a "The Wee Bake Shop", I had haggis for the first time in the form of a steak and haggis pie. Pretty damn good pie actually.
We then made our way through the mountains and travelled alongside Loch Tay, apparently it's Scotland's sixth largest loch. Throughout the tour the guide was giving us a bit of a history lesson about Mary Queen of Scots, William Wallace (and how the movie Braveheart is completely full of shit), Robert the Bruce and Bonny Prince Charlie (who was actually Italian).
Our last stop was at the Glenturret Distillery which claims to be Scotland's oldest whisky distillery. Things were a bit odd because the place was billed as "The Famous Grouse Experience" but they actually make Glenturret single malt whisky. To make a long story short Famous Grouse is a blended whisky which takes a number of single malts, mixes them together, bottles it then sells it. Glenturret is one of the many single malts used in this process. I actually learnt a fair bit about how whisky is made.
The vibe that I was getting was that Glenturret may have been in some strife once upon a time and The Famous Grouse stepped in to save them at the cost of spreading Famous Grouse propaganda. Well that's my theory anyway.
We also passed through the town of Crieff, this is the town that Ewan McGregor was born in. So there you go. On the way back to Edinburgh we passed through Perth! I always knew that there was a Perth in Scotland but this place was actually much bigger than I thought. I think it has a population of about 120,000. I also learnt that St Johnstone FC is Perth's soccer team. I looked them up and they don't seem to be heavy hitters on the scottish football scene because they're only in the first division, not the Scottish Premier League.
Well that's enough for now. It's good to see that the AFL season has kicked off, the 'Pies won and they face Brisbane next week. Mel and I will have to try and make it to a pub that will be playing the game. Last time I watched a Collingwood/Brisbane game with Mel the 'Pies got smashed by about 80 points and Mel was giving me shit all night, let's hope we can have a reversal of that this week.
Ok, now I'm going to go. Take it easy everyone.
