Travelogue #3

Unfortunately, a rather unproductive day. Pity, that.

1. Woke up, big breakfast, all packed, all checked out … 40 minutes before my pickup time. *Sigh*

   Driver picked me up, drove me off to Heathrow. Lots of traffic, so lots of time on side roads.

2. Heathrow was, as usual, difficult to figure out where I was supposed to be. I did kiosk check-in for my flight to Glasgow, which worked just fine, but it was hard to determine where the gates were for domestic flights. Heck, it was hard to determine where the ticket counters for the domestic flights were (which was why I ended up spotting the kiosk first).

   And, as is SOP for British airports, there’s a distinction between where you check in, where you hang out after ticketing, and where you actually board. Which was slightly confusing when it seemed like folks on my flight were being told to move from the gate I was at (5) to a different gate (76) … and I couldn’t see a sign leading to those gates.

3. I think the guy who designed who designed the colony in Aliens worked as an architect as Heathrow. The place is a portmanteau of different designs, materials, shapes, blends of plastic and corrugated metal and glass, tunnels stretching hither and thither …

4. A Boeing 757. How dull. Leather seat covers, though. And cute little coat hooks on the backs of the seats. And a little mini-table as a fixed part of the arm rest. But … no air controls. Stifling.

   Photographic art prints on the bulkheads. A nice touch.

   Little snack of sweets, and, an hour-plus later, landing in Glasgow.

5. BA safety briefings from the cabin attendants include (unlike ones in the US) going into detail about crash position, demonstration of life vests (actually putting one on and pointing out the whistle), and a reminder to take off your high heels before getting on the emergency slide.

   Oh, yeah, and a promise of “life cots” for the babies in case of a water landing. Those were the “life pods” I mentioned yesterday.

6. If there’s one thing I hate more than sitting in an aisle seat and being unable to see the interesting countryside, It’s sitting in a window seat and being unable to move once the plane is on the ground because the Wife in the aisle seat is standing up and getting the luggage and stacking it on her seat, and Hubby in the middle seat is just sitting there like a toad. Rrg.

7. Rented a Ford Monteo, which is a hatch-back sedan, reasonably zipply and plush. I’d asked for an automatic transmission — I can right-hand drive in a manual, but it’s one more thing to keep track of, and since I was going to be juggling maps and such on my own, I figured why take chances.

   The Motorway/A-road routes over to Grangemouth were pretty straightforward. It was only when I got off the highway that I ran into trouble.

8. Okay, so MultiMap.com told me, based on the postal code, where to get off the M9 and onto the A905, and which direction to turn and the like. Unfortunately, they were wrong (though they looked like they were right, comparing their maps to the one my staffer had sent me). I spent the next hour or so tooling up and down little one-lane country roads, looking for my spacious country house B&B. No such luck.

   At long last, I called the place to get directions. Which is when they told me they’d been trying to get through to me, since they’d had something go wrong that meant several rooms were unusable (she didn’t go into details), and they’d put me up in a different hotel (“quite comparable!” she assured me). Okay, so I got their number, and called, explaining my situation.

   Turned out, I was about half a mile away. Indeed, I could see it from where I was, once I knew what to look for. It was up on a hill, with a commanding view. Appropriate, since it was a castle.

   Airth Castle.

   Okay, not quite as exciting as it sounds. First off, it’s something of a folly, a stone manor house with towers and crenelations.

   And, in point of fact, most of the rooms are in an adjoining “modern” Radisson hotel (though evidently there are some in the castle, which also has a restaurant — Friday-Sunday only — and conference facilities).

   Anyhow, checked in …

9. The room is substantially larger than in Reading, with a double and a single. But no broadband. No WiFi. My connectivity choices are (a) dial-up through the phone’s data port, or (b) using the lobby computer at GBP 2.50/hr. So … no browsing tonight, and very limited posting and e-mail — I hate to think of what dial-up will feel like.

   It does have a tea kit, of course.

10. Headed off to do some touring. Actually, I decided I wanted to find the office for tomorrow morning, first. I drove. And drove. And drove some more. How could I have been so far south? I was a bit hampered by having some very detailed local maps, and some large “Scotland”-scale maps, and nothing in-between.

    So when I reached the outskirts of Stirling, I discovered that I had actually been north. Just north, in fact.

    And there was nothing I wanted to do in Stirling. So I spotted (on one of my large-scale maps) a pottery place. Just the thing.

    And I drove. And I drove. And … I missed it, somehow. And back I was in Falkirk.

    I decided to find the office at that point, and actually did manage to find it, so I found at least one thing I was looking for. So I headed back to the hotel.

    Yes, I effectively churned about 3 hours of valuable tourist time into pretty much nada. Go, me!

    Well, it wasn’t a complete loss. I saw much Scottish countryside. Some horses. Some sheep. Some cute churches. And got no pictures of it.

    On the other hand, I discovered I could still drive around on the wrong side of the road and not get killed, so that was good.

11. Being so far north here, the days grow dark even earlier. By 4:30 or so, it was really too dark to do anything.

12. I missed my boss’s group conference call. That would have been just about the time I was giving up and calling the hotel to find out where I was. I guess I can use that as an excuse.

13. Your Brit slang for today: “shattered” means wiped out and exhausted. Heard it twice, from real people. Which makes it, I guess, the equivalent of “knackered,” which I’ve not heard anyone say.

14. My crew cut hairstyle is standard fashion over here. Wasn’t my intent, but a lot of folks similarly coiffed.

    Another standard fashion seems to be Bluetooth phone headsets. Lots of folks wandering around looking like Lobot with a big headsets permanently stuck in one ear.

15. Say what you will about the lack of Net capability at the Airth Castle Hotel, the food at the hotel restaurant is excellent. Including, for dessert, a very tasty cranachan, a Scottish dessert that (at least in this case) is made of oats, cream, honey, whiskey, and berries. I’d thought of sometihng like a crisp, but it turned out to be more of a sticky cream pudding with oat flavor. But very, very good.

Lots of links I could have put above, but given my dial-up capability, the hour, and the Work that Just Dropped In My Lap, I’m going to post it as-is. Ta!