Past is prologue

Last Wednesday I was finally in the air on a long delayed trip to Scotland to hike the West Highland Way. The trip had been suggested by my friend Albert after his family’s trip to Scotland a couple of years ago, when he had learned of the trail. Originally we’d thought to do the trip last year, but I was busy wrapping up my working life and Albert was busy with other trips. As a consequence we didn’t get around to starting to plan it until maybe six months in advance, at which point I realized this wasn’t enough lead time.

Ordinarily it probably would have been, but our chosen strategy for hiking the WHW was not to “wild camp,” but rather hike from accommodation to accommodation. We would just carry what we needed for each day, and utilize a service to transport our additional luggage to each spot. Because this trip was structured as a hike on a specified path, there were only a certain number of discrete villages or towns to stay in each night. And then additionally of course only a few choices of accommodation for each village. This made the planning logistics pretty tricky, and to be successful I came to realize it really needed to be done a year ahead of time.

Molly would be coming also, so Molly and I used a few days at an AirBnB in Jenner last September to workshop and lock down most of the accommodations. She was a brilliant collaborator, helping us to steer clear of the more dodgy choices!

Unfortunately a couple of months ago a family crisis arose, and it became clear Molly would need to be available at home. But things stabilized sufficiently that eventually it looked like I at least could stick to the plan. Albert meanwhile was adjusting and firming up his own plans: he would now be joining me at about the mid-way point of the hike. We would then continue on to Skye, and finally wrap up in Edinburgh.

In the last month or so I was in slow drip prep mode, trying to think through everything I would need, and putting my kit together. Then just a week before departure a growing loss of appetite and stomach discomfort resulted in a trip to the Emergency Room and a diagnosis of diverticulitis. OMG. But it wasn’t a severe case (thanks to Molly ensuring I had had it looked at in time!), and with the Doctor’s blessing and a prescription of antibiotics it seemed hopeful I could still make the trip happen.

And indeed through the miracle of modern medicine I quickly improved, and things were back on track! Man, thank goodness I didn’t just think to “power through” the discomfort and thus precipitate a health crisis in Scotland!

Eight miles high

So yeah, like I said, finally last Wednesday I was in the air headed for Scotland! We had booked with British Airways, and their Premium Economy on an Airbus A380-800 is actually pretty comfortable, I have to say! Pretty good legroom, and I had a decent fellow Ben as my adjacent seat-mate (but sadly reminding me it should have been Molly 😢).

I’d woken up the morning of departure around 4:30 am (because excited/nervous), and the plane was in the air around 5 pm (runway work at SFO slowed things down).  BA was warning of possible problems at Heathrow due to a systems failure (which I then learned caused absolute havoc for folks), but it was luckily pretty cleared up by the time the plane landed at Heathrow. I had maybe had a couple of hours sleep on the 10 ½ hour flight, max.

Heathrow was a bit of a maze I had to negotiate in order to get to the departure gate for my connecting flight to Glasgow, which I boarded about an hour and a half later. This was a much smaller plane, and we were really crammed together, but hey, only one more hour to endure!

Pretty persistent floor of clouds the whole way up, and approaching GLA I was sure hoping the pilots had a better idea of what was below us than I did! The outer suburbs of Glasgow became briefly visible as we dropped, and suddenly it was throttle up and we were climbing back up! A moment later the pilot came on the PA and explained we were having to do a fly around, apparently due to a seagull on the runway… my thoughts inevitably drifted to imagining the worst, and wondering if I could just be grateful for the life I’ve had and simply keep my shit together should, you know…

But second approach was the charm, and the plane did a very short sharp deceleration, and we were on the ground in Scotland!

New guy in town

The trip from the airport to the AirBnb went pretty smoothly. There’s an airport bus that runs frequently, and from the bus stop at Buchannan Street in the center of Glasgow it was a short walk down into the subway station. A few stops on and I was at Kelvinhall Station in the West End. It took me a bit to orient myself on the sidewalk trying to figure out which direction to walk in—I sometimes find Google Maps directions don’t really work to sufficiently orient me to my surroundings, and I didn’t know where to look for street signs either. Also the host had set up a bit of a treasure hunt with a lockbox with the keys attached to a railing across the street from the actual flat. But I’m happy to report I finally figured it all out, and was finally situated in what was billed as the “Bright West End Pad.”

After a shower I found a funky-cool Thai place to eat (Ting Thai). There I had a pretty amazing serving of Pad Thai (HOT right out of the wok), with a pint of a local Pale Ale (which was delicious).

Back at the flat I think I finally wound down and got to bed around 1:00 am. I’ve lost track of the cumulative hours I’d been up (if you don’t count the nap on the plane). I was psyched to be in Glasgow at last, but feeling stretched pretty thin.