Posted on Jul 22, 2009
I had a loose day between Nether Springs and Iona I decided to spend it in Melrose, a town in the Scottish Borders, where I began my St. Cuthbert's Way pilgrimage two years ago. I had hoped to visit the ruins of the great Border Abbeys, but the weather was even worse than it was two years ago, with high winds and driving rain. All was not lost. I met the head of the local folk club in the pub of the hotel and spent an evening with a vriety of local musicians. THey ranged from a blind singer whose Scots accent was so thick he might as well have been singing in Hungarian, to a twelve year old piper, to a melodeon ( a type of button accordion) player who had driven 1 1/2 hours to be there. Yours truly was invited to sing and play the fiddle. There were thirty or so people htere, and anyone hwo wanted to contribute did. It was a grand and very old fashioned evening.
The next morning my misadventures began. I arose early to srive across Scotland to Oban. When I picked up the rental car in Glasgow I accidentally left my camera on the counter. I called from Holy Island and they said that they would put it away for me. It seemed like an easy thing ot stop at the airport to pick it up. But, halfway between Edinburgh and Glasgow on the M8 I stopped for gas and breakfast, and, while juggling food and drink I managed to leave my wallet on the counter. I discovered this while standing outside of the locked Hertz office in Glasgow, so I rushed back and picked it up. This should still have left me with plenty of time to catch the Noon ferry in Oban. However, the road around Loch Lomond is narrow even by Scottish standards, and hte bus at the head of the line of traffic was being driven by someone who was very nervous, or wanted to be sure everyone got to see all of the bonnie banks and all of the bonne braes.
I arrived in Oban at 12:30, which left me plenty of time to sample the local cuisine and walk around the harbor before the 4:00 ferry.