#skye pitlochry PNW

[threeforfriday]

Scotland: Day Six (Release the Cranachan)

Prior to the pandemic, with rare exceptions, we tended to go on holiday at least once a year, and the main holiday each year tended to be in the United States. This sort of happened by accident, as many things do: we always wanted to visit New York; then we got married there, then other US cities and states started to line up and suggest themselves to us. We’d never wanted to go to LA and I had never been keen on the idea of Vegas, but even those rubicons were crossed in time. Our concerns about havens for fakery and the super rich, and dens of gambling and misogyny, turned out… not to be inaccurate, but not to tell the whole story. You could spend weeks in Los Angeles and not encounter fakeness and glamour and Hollywood, unless you wanted to. We engaged with Hollywood, but on our terms.

There’s still America unvisited, of course. There are a lot of these states united, some of them more remote than others, some less appealing than others. I don’t know that we’ll get to all of them (once this covid situation has resolved itself to the point that we are allowed to and are comfortable in visiting the States again) but there’s definitely more that we’ll knock off the list. But first there’ll be a number of cities we need to revisit.

But we’re not in New York or Las Vegas or even Poughkeepsie or Schenectady. Tonight we find ourselves in Pitlochry, Perth, in the shadow of the Cairngorms (and, as I found out earlier tonight, about 30 miles and 50 minutes from the town where one of my nans was born). It’s beautiful but the problem is, I keep thinking I’m in America.

It was gradual at first. Every now and then I’d catch myself thinking that something of the landscape reminded me of there. Something of the trees, something of the road, something of the journey. More than a little of it is my experience of driving in America (we’re always driving in the States; well, unless you’re in New York City, you’d have to be a masochist to do that. The streets and avenues and one-ways unlock and click around into new formations each night, like the metropolis in Dark City or the massive death trap in Cube. Miss one in a dozen signs visible for a few seconds and you find yourself inexorably heading for the Holland Tunnel). In America, driving long distances is a lot easier. The sidewalks in NYC may have been built for giants but the freeways were built for us, and they are always entertaining. There is always something to see, some variation to lock your eyes onto, a roadside attraction promised for hundreds of miles before hilariously failing to deliver.

But England. Oh England. All our motorways are uniform, and uniformly depressing, dangerously dull. Driving at night in particular is like staring too long down the corridor of a hospital. Sterile and sickly. Stare too long and the motorway has you. A reservation booked at the central reservation, or hitting the hard shoulder hard, and then you’re in Accident and Emergency for real, not just an endless snake that reminds you of it.

But Scotland. Ah, Scotland! At least this part of it. Endlessly entertaining, eternally beautiful. Don’t get me wrong, stare at anything long enough and you can fall asleep. Gaze at Michaelangelo’s David for a few days on end and you’d be ready to claw your own eyes out. But here it takes a lot longer before that happens and I find myself having to yell for a horror podcast or stop to stretch my legs.

More and more it keeps being a surprise to be on the correct side of the road. At this point, if NPR came on the radio I don’t think I’d be in the least bit surprised.

I am left to conclude that there is a parallel universe in which Liz and I am on a road trip in the Pacific North West, and it’s happening at exactly the same time as this trip. Earlier today I was damn near convinced that we should stop at a diner for a root beer and a patty melt. You don’t get those here, but I can sort you out with haggis bon-bon and a Cranachan if you like.