Originally published September 6, 2015.
Any mention of the mythic land of Britain has always evoked images of castles perched moodily on windswept moors, boy wizards and boy bands, licenses to kill, detectives in deerstalker hats, blue police boxes, coconut-laden swallows, and a couple of royal babies who have got to have realized by now that they pretty much won the lottery as far as birth circumstances are concerned. I’ve been captivated by all things British (and especially Scottish) since I was young, and my steady diet of British pop culture only increased my desire to visit the magical land where people somehow manage daily to survive despite driving on the left side of the road.
And so, about a year ago, I made up my mind that I would make a pilgrimage to that extraordinary place. I gathered an intrepid fellowship consisting of two of my brothers, Connor and Dillon, and my cousin Zack. After months of planning, we departed for Britain near the middle of August.
Britain is a wonderful country, especially when you get over the fact that its every inhabitant is on a single-minded mission to take all of your money. The exchange rate during out stay was about 1.5 American dollars to every British pound, which means a decent plate of fish and chips costs about fifteen to the twenty dollars. Fuel costs £1.13 per liter, which adds up to a punishing £4.28 ($6.42) per gallon. And then there’s the cost of the attractions. Getting into Buckingham Palace, for instance, is a whopping £35, which perhaps offers insight into the source of the Queen’s wealth.
Despite this, everywhere we went, Britain was full of charming, delightful people. I never tired of hearing their pleasant accents, even if I occasionally had to squint, tilt my head, and ask them to repeat themselves.
Among the first things we saw upon arriving in Britain was the Tower of London. There we saw the crown jewels, and like any normal people we immediately began plotting an elaborate heist to steal them. We proceeded to visit most of the stops along London’s tourist trail. I fondly recall the moment we came out of the Westminster Underground station and saw the majestic Palace of Westminster and Big Ben clock tower, larger than life and ready to hit us over the head with that “Holy-crap-we’re-really-in-London” feeling.
We saw the city from the apex of the London Eye, the massive Ferris wheel beside the Thames river. We attended an Anglican service at Westminster Abbey (in addition to an LDS service at the Hyde Park chapel) and watched people attempt to foment street riots at Speaker’s Corner in Hyde Park. We took the London tube—the subway—everywhere, and I remain impressed that such a large city can have such an efficient, clean, and comprehensive rail system. To whatever British person designed it, nice work. You deserve an extra crumpet.
Driving, however, is another cup of afternoon tea entirely. After a few days in London, we rented a car and made the first leg of our drive across Britain. This involved getting used to driving on the wrong side of the road. Where America separates two lanes going the same direction by a white line and two lanes going opposite directions by a yellow line, Britain uses white for everything, which forces you into a fun guessing game about whether the lane you’re turning into goes the desired way or dumps you into oncoming traffic. On at least one occasion, I turned onto an innocuous-enough lane that turned out to be a one-way street. One British driver launched into a series of helpful gesticulations to inform me that I was an idiot, probably assuming that I, as an American, lacked the Sherlock Holmes-like ability to deduce it by myself.
And that doesn’t even begin to touch on the fun that results from having a car with a steering wheel on the right side of the vehicle. Driving on the left side of the road is one thing, but American drivers have been conditioned to guide their vehicles while sitting on the left side of the car. This means there’s a certain place for your body and a certain place for the rest of the car, and as long as you keep your body positioned in the lane the rest of the car will sit where it’s supposed to. Driving on the right side of the vehicle throws everything off. If you position your body where you’re used to positioning it in the lane, it means half of your car is in the next lane over. Zack did a lot of the driving, and we worked out a signal to let him know he had started to drift over and was about to lose a mirror to whatever obstructions lay on the left shoulder of the road.
Once we were out of the city, we drove toward Stonehenge. There we paid an exorbitant sum to hop on a bus and stare pensively at some large rocks in the middle of a field. (We tried to sacrifice a virgin on the Druidic altar, but it was £30 per virgin sacrifice and we’re not exactly made of money.)
From Stonehenge we headed to Conwy, Wales. The road from London to Conwy took us through picturesque little villages with names where we spent a pleasant night. As we approached the city, we amused ourselves by trying to pronounce the Welsh words on street signs, like “Mold yr Wyddgrug." (I later looked up how to pronounce that one, and it sounds very little like the strange guttural sounds my unpracticed lips made when trying to say it.) In the morning, we toured the nearby castle. Most of the ancient city walls are still standing. This proved to be one of our favorite castles we’d see on the trip. It was ruined enough to retain a sense of authenticity, unspoiled by modern enhancements, but complete enough that it didn’t require extensive imagination to visualize what it must have looked like when it still guarded against invading armies.
A night in Edinburgh, Scotland, followed. Edinburgh is a charming city, eager at every turn to show visitors what it means to be Scottish. Lest you forget where you are, there is a shop or two about every twenty feet dedicated to assuring that no tourist leaves without authentic tartan kilts, scarves, and hats.
This tower looks rather ominous at nighttime, prompting my brother Connor to dub it the “Sith temple.” It’s actually a monument to the great Scottish author Sir Walter Scott, the guy who's credited with revitalizing the image of Scotland in the popular imagination.
After Edinburgh, we left the metropolitan Scotland behind and headed for the austere expanses of the highlands. The roads, narrow enough to feel a little perilous, shrank to basically the size of a bike lane in the States. On both sides of us, undulating green hills, framed by stone fences and flecked with sheep, unfolded. You know when people make references to “God’s green earth”? I’m convinced that the divinely favored landscape they’re referring to is the Scottish highlands, a verdant Elysium that tends to rob you of any response other than “Whoa.” I’m specifically referring in this case to the stretch near Glencoe on the way to Fort William, which inspired us to pull over three times in the space of half an hour to take pictures and just gape.
While Scotland’s people welcomed us with smiling faces and outstretched arms, at the same time Scotland’s terrain did its best to let us know we were unworthy creatures unfit to defile its unspoiled paradise with our presence. From the beginning of the planning process, one of our goals was to spend a night camping in the rugged, mist-shrouded wilds of Britain. You know those scenes in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows where Harry, Ron, and Hermoine spend half the book camping? We sort of hoped it would be like that, though admittedly with an unfortunate lack of Emma Watson. Our hopes were kindled anew when signs informed us that scenes from the Harry Potter movies had indeed been filmed nearby.
After driving around for an hour looking for a campsite, we eventually found a spot where we could pull over and set up the sleeping bag and tarpaulins that would protect us from the elements. (We didn’t want to being a tent, because anything we brought along with us would have to be dragged around Britain for a week and a half.) No sooner had we set up the tarp than we were introduced to the highlands’ dominant lifeforms: the midges.
The Harry Potter movies neglected to mention that the marshier areas of the highlands are the dominion of midges. Everything in Scotland is just a little more rugged, and that includes the insect life. The midges form swarms thicker than anything I’ve seen in the States, impenetrable little storm clouds hellbent on gnawing your face off. We quickly realized that sleeping outside would expose us to the wrath of these tiny satanic legions, so Zack, Connor and I decided to sleep in the car. Our rental car was a Jetta hatchback, which isn’t usually designed for three grown men to sleep in, but we managed it, because the alternative was a slow and painful death. Dillon, however, weighed his options and decided it would be more comfortable to sleep outside underneath the tarp than in close proximity with three other men. I actually slept fine until a few hours later, when a panicked Dillon jumped inside the car and told us he’d heard the footsteps of something large outside the vehicle. It was too dark to see what it was, but something then brushed up against the side of the car, setting off the car alarm. Nobody had the heart to tell Dillon to suck it up and sleep outside, so we spent the rest of the night huddled together, our knees in each other’s faces, listening to mysterious shuffling sounds outside and wondering if the midges and the large unidentified creature would kill each other in a titanic battle that would maybe allow somebody to sleep outside.
In the morning, we found the midges buzzing around the desiccated corpse of a bear. Just kidding. The mysterious large animal seems to have escaped. The midges, however, were so thick that we didn’t bother putting our gear and tarps away: we simply threw everything into the back, unpacked and unrolled, and drove several miles until the midges were far behind. However, the fearful specter of the midges loomed over the rest of the trip. Even our brief time spent at the mercy of the midges the night before as we set up the tent resulted in tiny bites that didn’t stop itching for a week.
Here we are hiding inside the car from the midges.
In the morning, we set out to climb Ben Nevis, the highest peak in Britain. I’ve climbed Mt. Whitney, the highest peak in the continental US, and ascended dozens of smaller peaks over the years, so I thought that one measly little British peak wouldn’t pose that much of a challenge. In some ways I was right—but while the elevation gain probably wasn’t enough to deter a hiker who takes decent care of himself, the weather kicked our butts. It was beautiful, of course, even cold and wet as it was. As we began our ascent a halo of mist encircled us, the slopes of the mountains disappearing into the mist's hazy embrace. Higher on the mountain, the mist swallowed everything, and then omnipresent drizzle turned into a pummeling deluge. We were a little over halfway before we decided that we were unprepared for the weather and risked hypothermia if we tried to gain the top. (Or maybe we would have been just fine. We’ll never know now, will we?)
In other words, Scotland as a whole pretty much pulled up its kilt and mooned us. Nevertheless, when we finished our time in Scotland, we were left wanting more. Four days is too few to spend in such a remarkable place.
On the final day in Scotland, we visited Loch Ness and several of its attendant Nessie exhibits. This yellow submarine was used back in the '60s to search the depths of the loch for the monster and gave us all a chance to make any Beatles references we'd been holding onto the whole time.
We had a pleasant night’s sleep aboard a sleeper train from Inverness back to London, where we spent two more days. In those two days we managed to finish up our list of London to-dos, including the British Museum, seeing The Phantom of the Opera in the West End, the Churchill War Rooms, and the Imperial War Museum. Phantom is the timeless story of the love between a possibly underage girl with father figure issues and the creepy, sociopathic stalker guy who lives in her basement. But seriously, folks, the moment when the chandelier rises from the auction room floor, blazing to life to the keening accompaniment of the organ, is pure delight.
After a week and a half in this wonderful, scenic, friendly, slightly overpriced land, we came back to the States. Someday I'll return to ride the London tube and walk the highlands of Scotland again, but until then, I'll just have to drive on the left side of the road occasionally and pretend it's Britain.
