Back to normal...

How can September have gone so quickly, yet been such a long month?  Fully back into the swing of things at work, it has been a month of planning, not only for day to day work but also two other major projects: our school production of 'Oliver!' in February, which will be staged just a month before I hand in my final dissertation.  Work on the novel is temporarily suspended, as planned, while these two events take over my life for the next few months. 

Because of the dissertation, I had to investigate the horrors of Skype this weekend - I cannot think of anything worse than being able to see the person I'm phoning but it is the most obvious solution to the problem of being two hundred plus miles away from the university and my supervisor. The web cam is my least-favourite bit of IT kit of all time. I am debating wearing one of my commedia masks when I use it!!

However, it's not all bad.  My favourite new 'toy' is a planning tool called Scapple, which is currently in beta for Windows and is fabulous.  I've always been a spider diagram kind of planner, but I tend to go through several versions of the diagrams until I get it just right, by which time I've wasted so much time I have precious little time left to actually do anything else with the diagram.  With Scapple, you have an infinitely flexible and endlessly editable page - if you want to add or amend your notes it takes only seconds and you don't have to waste time redrawing the diagram because you realised you missed out something vital the first time round.  You can drop in photographs too and the size of the planning sheet is even expandable, way beyond a sheet of A4. It has been an entirely brilliant tool for clarifying my thoughts about first the novel and then the dissertation. 

The programme is incredibly easy to learn to use and at the moment, while it is still in development, it is entirely free of charge.  I will be buying it as soon as it is launched: a month after discovering it, I can't imagine how I ever managed without it!  The same lovely people are behind Scrivener, another favourite bit of writing software I also bought this term.  I think all this software shopping may be the online equivilent of the annual 'back to school' stationery shopping trip!  Except, of course, I did one of those as well...!

Best cake for a good long while was a big slice of Bakewell Tart at the Charles Dickens museum in London.  I was there to pick up on the Oliver vibes and we ended up sitting in the garden (which is little and lovely!) drinking strong black coffee and putting the world to rights!  I was already in 7th heaven, having seen the wonderful Adrian Lester in Othello at the National Theatre the night before - the cake just made me float a little higher!



The G&P road trip

Day three dawned murkily: from my bedroom window Fort William town was lost in mist and it had obviously rained very heavily during the night.  After a second epic breakfast (this one ended up lasting us most of the day!) we set off to retrace our steps through Glen Coe which was looking much more characteristically gloomy.  It was like driving into a Tolkien novel.



Looking back towards Fort William
 

It was much colder than it had been all week - the temperature here was only 9 degrees C and we'd got used to temperatures well up in the twenties this summer.  There were lots of hardy souls setting off into the smirr, but we decided hills looked better from the bottom! Back down to Tyndrum and then off for the final leg of the trip - the part I'd sneakily planned! I'd realised, when we started planning the trip, that we could come back via Loch Earn, which I've wanted to visit for a long time.ages.  As I've said before, Hamish can't live in a real place - it wouldn't feel right - but I did want to ground his made-up glen in reality.  After a bit of research last year, I discovered that Loch Earn seemed to tick the most boxes as a possible inspiration: it is in the right sort of location - on the very edge of the Trossachs - and it has a good mix of landscapes as well as being reasonably small: I needed a loch the characters could see across without too much difficulty!  I've taken lots of liberties with the details and some of the locations I'm using aren't anywhere near Loch Earn at all but the view, generally, would look something like this:

 

It's rather bonnie, isn't it? (The building you can see the roof of in the centre of the picture above is actually the police station and the vehicle parked on the road is a police car!)  It was quite a strange experience visiting somewhere that looks a lot like the place I've spent the summer describing.  I found locations for most of the loch-side events of the story so far and took a lot of pictures for reference - a tip I picked up from Elizabeth George's book.  We only stopped there for about fifteen minutes or so before heading off to Crieff for coffee, but it was enough to soak up the atmosphere - and to seriously envy Partridge and Marmalade their new home!

 

Author pic for my Amazon page. 
If it really existed, you could see P & M's cottage from here!

We drove on through Comrie (where, with hindsight, we probably should have stopped - it has a Macintosh building which we drove past!) and then onto Crieff.  I remember Crieff from my teenage years as a bustling busy market town but the high street recession seems to have hit it hard and there are nowhere near as many independent shops - or interesting shops - as there used to be.  After an embarrassing scrabble for car park change  (we had exactly the right money but the machine didn't like one of our 20ps!) we visited the excellent tourist information and then went to Delivino on King Street for coffee and some scrumptious cake (www.delivino.co.uk):

The aromas of lunch were fabulous but we were still stuffed from breakfast and so cappuchino and carrot cake was all I could manage - huge portions and absolutely delicious!  After a slight detour (caused by a serious lack of road signage!) we headed back south, cutting past Stirling and then Edinburgh, impressed that both iconic castles were clearly visible from the road.  The landscape became much more 'lowland' than 'highland' as we moved onwards, past all the roads that wanted us to head back to Edinburgh (the Botanic Gardens! the festival! the castle! the Royal Yacht! the Zoo!) and on, eventually to Coldstream.

 

Coldstream has never really appealed to me much - I had a bad experience with an unpleasant sausage roll there aged seven which has lingered long in the memory even though the shop that sold it is long gone.  When we arrived there, it seemed just as grey and inhospitable as I remembered it and the local 'jobsworth' official (complete with hi-vis jacket!) was locking up the public toilets for the day - at half past three in the afternoon!  However, we'd passed a sign for a craft and tea shop just on the outskirts of Coldstream, so we retraced our steps and found ourselves in a gorgeous parkland estate - The Hirsel - which belongs to the family of  Sir Alec Douglas-Home. Here the toilets, cafe and little independent craft shops stayed open till five and we were entertained by another family of baby swallows!  It really redeemed Coldstream and we intend to return in rhododendron season!

 

Back on the road again and we slipped over the river and into Northumbria without any fanfare at all.  England seemed somewhat - dull - by comparison and were home within two hours.  A magical three days - we'd covered about 650 miles all told - restorative and soothing.  I love Scotland, quite ridiculously!

 

 

The Great G&P road trip part 2

Of course, the reason for our visit wasn't Grouse or Partridge at all, but this:

 

You can travel on the same line from Fort William to Malaig on the ordinary everyday train and it doesn't cost as much - but it's as much the ride on the steam train as the scenery we go for and anyway, they don't hold a raffle for a bottle of whisky on the ordinary train, or sell you a lovely scenic map showing you where you're going!  Many people on the train were travelling specifically because of this:



The Glenfinnan viaduct actually exists - it wasn't painted or CGId on the films - they didn't need to because it is entirely magical in its own right. You can just see the front of the engine on the far right of the picture as it starts to go round the bend of the track.  The little boy opposite us on the train really believed we were going to go past Hogwarts - although as he said we wouldn't be able to see it because we were all just Muggles!  We nevertheless spent the tunnels worrying about Dementors...

 

At Glenfinnan station we had a fifteen minute stop - autumn colours just starting here but I'd love to go back late September some time and see the real blaze of colour the deciduous woodlands would make. Then on to Malaig where there was time to raid their second hand bookshop and sample the delights of the delicious scones in the Tea Garden tea rooms (we'd had too much breakfast to manage the fish and chips we'd promised ourselves!)  As I'd expected, the sight of Eig, Rhum and Skye almost within touching distance did make me want to leap on a 'bonnie boat':

(I resisted. There are plans afoot for next year already...!)

 

On our return to Fort William we went in search of Neptune's Staircase, a ladder of locks which comes towards the end of the Caledonian canal, designed to enable cargo to travel from the North Sea to the Atlantic ocean without having to 'go round the top bit'!  It was a cool, breezy but fine afternoon and the walk up and down the lock side gave us more of an appetite.  I was particularly impressed with the views of Ben Nevis and the hydroelectric system - the cloud makes it look as if the top of the mountain is missing here:

Day 2 ended in the same fabulous restaurant we'd eaten in the night before - we figured that it had been so good it was pointless looking anywhere else for food!  It was a fabulous experience and something we'd all really enjoyed doing - we've been talking about it for years and it was worth the wait - it has to be one of the most beautiful routes in the country!  However, the excitement caught up with all of us: I retreated to my room at 10pm and had the earliest night I think I've had for thirty years.  Day 3 held the promise of finally seeing Hamish's wee glen 'in the flesh' as it were...

 

(By the way, we didn't win the raffle! Maybe next time...)



As promised - The Great Grouse and Partridge Road trip 2013 Day one

Tomorrow, life goes back to being real and earnest and I have to start working for my living again.  However, it's been a fabulous summer and we rounded it off it true style last week with a three day drive-fest around Scotland, which somehow managed to combine taking my father away for his 70th birthday and a quick reconnaisance of Grouse and Partridge related places!

The original plan was to travel up to Fort William to ride on the Jacobite Steam Train over the incredible Glenfinnan viaduct (as seen in Harry Potter!).  It's something we've talked about doing for a long time.  However, Fort William is quite a distance from home so we split up the journey into stages, many of which happened to have G&P significance.  I'll deal with the three days in three separate posts, if I may.  That way I can share more photos!

Our first stop on the way up (for a late breakfast!) was Gretna Green, (which you may remember holds some romantic significance for Grouse!)

Gretna is just over the border into Scotland and it gained fame as the place that eloping couples from London would gallop off by coach to get beyond the English marriage laws. Nowadays it has become a coach stopping off point of a different kind - large white buses full of tourists  - but it retains much if its twee charm charm as well as a number of canny outlets selling everything Scottish from Shortbread biscuits to Harris tweed jackets!  We weren't the only family there refuelling before a long journey: this lot were waiting for their mum to come back with food!

 

From Gretna we headed west towards Glasgow, resisting the lure of Mackintosh Country - although we did see Scotland Street School from the Motorway as we passed!  (We also went past Uddingston - famed home of the Tunnock's factory - and as you know, Tunnock's Caramel Wafers have long been my writing fuel of choice!)  From there, it's just a short drive into the 'Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park' and a stop at Loch Lomond shores at Balloch - where we sampled some very fine Apple Tart after a walk around the bottom of the Loch.

 

Going to Loch Lomond was a 'love at first sight' moment when I first visited it and it still gives me goosepimples.  There's something about standing at the end of the loch and looking up towards the Highlands that just makes me weak at the knees.  It is beautiful, but it also feels like a gateway to adventure, crammed with the promise of good things just along the road.  And on Tuesday lunchtime it was looking at its atmospheric best:

 

Shortly after we'd taken this, the sun came out and it became incredibly warm - and it also rained!  That's Scottish weather for you - it can change in seconds!  Much as I could have lingered all afternoon and explored the footpaths (and the antique sellers!) in the area, we had, in the words of Robert Frost, miles to go before we slept so we set off again, heading north right up the side of the Loch, past Luss (see my post on Grouse and Partridge Country for the significance of Luss!) and on past Tarbet and Ardlui, driving through bright sunshine. Last time we'd ventured up here, we ended up in Killin - and I ended up with the entire plot of Scotch Pine - so this road always feels like a lucky road. 

Up past Crainlarich, we resisted the call of Killin and headed up to Tyndrum and the fabulously named Green Welly Stop - a chance to top up with petrol and admire some of the fantastic motorbikes which tour this route.  I'd love to be able to tell you we saw a vintage Tangerine Dream Bonnie - but we didn't: mainly modern Harleys, looking much more comfortable to ride than Grouse's bike!

 

 



I'd never been further north than this - from here on, I was on uncharted territory as we realised that what we'd considered to be mountains were really quite insignificant in comparison with what was ahead of us.  Glen Coe is awe inspiring - and we were lucky to see it first in glorious late afternoon sunshine.  (Photos of it on Day 3 to follow - a very different look!) Around each bend of the road, the landscape seemed to change, from the glittering waters of Loch Tulla and Loch Ba to the wild and bleakly desolate Rannock Moor and then finally climbing up into the Glen itself, past the 'Three Sisters', crossing the place where Loch Leven meets Loch Linnhe.  Photographs cannot do it justice...

Finally, we reached Fort William, found our lovely guest house and I discovered that this was the view from the bedroom window:

All in all, a pretty spectacular day, rounded off by a fabulous meal at the Alexandra Hotel in the town centre and a local pipe band who entertained us royally in the front street for over half an hour!  There's something about being in Scotland which makes me want to write about it, so there were several pages of scribblings in my notebook before I finally admitted defeat and crashed into sleep.  (And only one nibble by a midge!)