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Naturally, there was plenty of other local food and drink sampled!
It was coming to the end of our Scottish odyssey and one of my final jobs was to help collect and chop wood for the coming winter at the cottage. The outside fire is the main source of heat and with an abundance of wood from storm-felled trees, it was a bonus to have free fuel in a country that was suffering an energy price crisis. South of the border, there are a lot more laws and restrictions and you need a special type of smokeless wood which is very expensive.
I had bonded with Scotland much more than I expected and enjoyed staying there more than in England. The people are very friendly whereas they won’t even look at you in the south of England. The roads and traffic are not a problem, you can park where you like, the food is fantastic, and the scenery is superb. Many of these factors are due to a much lower population density (16% of what it is south of the border in England), which makes it a much nicer place to be based in the summer and autumn months where the wet seasons mean incessant rain in Thailand.
On a miserable Thursday ( Sept. 8 ) we left our base in Scotland that I’d really become attached to and made the long drive back to Manchester as reports filtered through on the radio regarding the Queen’s health. That evening news broke that Queen Elizabeth II had died in Balmoral at the age of 96.
