Letters Home - England to Scotland
by Leslie Shalduha
January 15, 2025 Two Oregonians and a Norwegian
Hello once again from Scotland. Sweet, dear old Scotland. We have settled into a sit with Trudy, a rescue Greyhound that was raced in her younger years. It has been a bit of a rocky start, but we are now a couple of days in and I think we are all getting more comfortable. More on that after I have been here long enough to work up some good story-telling.
In the meantime, allow me to finish our England stories. When last we met, we had arrived at our Brighton sit, where we cared for Lola and Ada, two West Highland White Terriers, and Alex was due to join us soon. He did arrive, successfully, and was greeted by a very worked-up Emma as she had quite the exciting solo journey going to meet him at the train station in the city center. It involved a marching band of people in wild costumes, banging drums and carrying lanterns, a bus driver who forget to tell her where to depart, and walking along the dark backside of the train station before making it to sense and sanity. Poor girl.
We had a lovely Christmas, our first together as a family and Alex did a darn good job going along with our flow....I mean, the flow. Stockings were the name of the game because the last thing we need is more things to cart around. We prepared traditional holiday food (Gramma's famous meatballs, made with my own from scratch gravy, yay me!, bacon-wrapped dates, mashed potatoes, roasted veggies, cream cheese chocolate chip dip), ate too much, were lazy and watched Harry Potter movies. For New Year's Eve, we booked a table at our fave Indian restaurant, Mowgli, and celebrated with too much food and a couple of drinks.
One day we took a bus into town and walked along the coast and checked out the amusement park pier. It was open but no one seemed to be taking advantage of the rides. We spent a good amount of time down on the beach which is completely made up of very, very interesting rocks, smooth and tumbled. This was unfortunate as now we are hauling a bag of rocks around with us, too. The ocean was gorgeous, with green water, almost tricking us into thinking we were in the Caribbean, except it was freezing.
For most of the stay in Brighton, we wandered the streets and binge-watched shows, cuddled and walked the pups and cooked lots. We began to feel very eager to return to Scotland, but first we had one more England sit.
After considering how many trains and buses we would be taking from the south of England to the north of Scotland, I broke down and rented a car again. Sure does make things easy! We picked up our car in Brighton, and headed north towards Marple, just outside of Manchester, and beside the town of Stockport! Some of you may recognize that town name from our Ohio roots. We looked at the map to see if there were any interesting points to see on our drive up and decided we would take a two-hour detour to just swing by Stonehenge. Yes, you read that right. We thought, on the Saturday just after the New Year, to just swing by Stonehenge. It was a two-hour detour alright......for nothing. We spied it from the road before entering the parking lot. The entrance fee was approximately $45 a piece so we cursed Stonehenge and left. At least we did get a look at it from the road. Even worse than the entrance fee, was the fact that the ancient stones are roped off and one could not even get near them! That was a NO for us.
We arrived at our new sit with George, an 11 yr. old Tibetan Terrier and Sandy, an 18 yr. old cat. The hosts gave us a quick tour of the house before departing for a trip to London. The house (indeed all in this area) was brick, three stories and I felt like I was in New Jersey or Ohio. Emma and Alex had a room at the top of the house, since they are young and strong. The kitchen had a radio that automatically came on to the BBC at 8 am each day. We were only there for a week, so we did not get into anything too wild.
Within walking distance was the town of Marple Bridge, which was very sweet. A couple of nice pubs, a good cafe and very friendly store clerks at the store/post office. We visited the Norfolk Arms pub a couple of times and enjoyed the cozy atmosphere with a (stinky coal) fire burning in the fireplace. On January 6, we each ordered a whiskey and toasted Dan's memory here, though they did not have Pendleton, his favorite whiskey.
We attempted to enjoy the nearby city of Stockport with not much luck. Our first visit was on a Monday and nothing, I mean nothing, was open. This city is fairly large so it was odd. We returned on Thursday and found it much the same with a few more places open. Weird. Anyhoo, suffice it to say that we did not find much to interest us in this area and were very happy to leave on the Saturday and finally return to Scotland.
We had one night to spare before coming to Biggar for a month-long sit with Trudy. So we were oh so happy to head to Thornhill for an overnight with Sue, Tobin and Vee. They were anxious to meet Alex and of course, hear of our adventures since we had last seen them.
However, before we landed there we had to make a pitstop in Edinburgh. Emma had purchased a nice ring for Alex that was too big and that was the last day to exchange it. We also needed to eat as the drive between Marple and Edinburgh was barren. We grabbed lunch at Fat Hippo, a very tasty burger place that Emma and I have enjoyed several times. We went all out, big burgers, tater tots and even milkshakes (yay to a vegan one for me!). After filling our bellies too full, we went to the jewelry store, made the exchange and drove to Thornhill.
As per usual, they greeted us en masse at the door, only this time it was Alex who they were clamoring for. Sue and Tobin were dog-sitting their granddogs for the evening so we were delighted to see Blazer, a fat little spaniel and Ruby, a supermodel King Charles spaniel, as well. We were surprised to see the dining room table set in formal fashion, considering we had just gorged ourselves. Luckily they wanted to have drinks and conversation before dinner. I had made tea as soon as I walked in the door in order to be ready for immediate conversation. Much to my surprise, they intended to drink wine to celebrate our arrival so that's what they all did while I sipped my tea.
An hour or so later, it was time for dinner. They had a warming sideboard set up with dinner—chicken cooked on a bed of sweet peppers, eggplant, tomato and onion as well as roasted potatoes. And have I mentioned yet that dessert was also included? We were all stuffed beyond belief! I then asked if there was going to be any more drinking as I could go for a wee bit of whiskey. Tobin, Alex and I all enjoyed that together, though he poured mine the largest! After dinner, we gathered once more for tea and conversation until time to head to bed.
In the morning, we all sort of did our own thing, coming and going from the tea/visiting area until we prepared to leave. Alex, Emma and I went to our fave Scotland pub, Lion and Unicorn, for a big lunch before driving here to Biggar. It was about an hour drive, and very pretty, looking much as it does when one approaches Pendleton, Oregon, headed to Wallowa County. Upon our arrival, our hostess greeted us and we sat with tea while she filled us in on things and whatnot. She slept on the couch as she left very early the next morning for a month-long trip to New Zealand.
The next day, we drove back to Stirling to pick up our stored baggage at Sue and Vee's (no room the day before!). I left Emma and Alex in town while I drove out to pick up our luggage, had a spot of tea, then came back to meet them. We stocked up on groceries as there is not a great grocery store in Biggar and we return the rental car on Wednesday, did a drive through of the University of Stirling and the cute town at the base, Bridge of Allan, that will hopefully offer housing for these two in the fall. We had dinner at The Crown, the pub a few doors down from where we are staying and a very early night—I was asleep by 830!
I will leave you here and come back in a couple of weeks with more information about our experience here in Biggar (a town that a friend has ancestor connections and we discovered their graves at the cemetery today!). I am very happy to be sitting still for a whole month. I am looking forward to getting some work done with my website and writing!