Drink the Beer and Not the Water

Our Highland tour was this past Saturday. We left at 8:45am and returned shortly after 5pm, so the trip was not a long one. Much of what we were to experience were very entertaining and well-told bits of Highland history from our tour guide and the beautiful scenery out the bus windows. Since I manage to get road sickness just by looking at a bus, my concentration was not out the windows but on the stories and the upcoming curves and bends in the mountainous roads. It rained the entire day, but our guide explained us to always expect rain in Scotland. That way, we will rarely be disappointed, and besides, if Scotland wasn’t pretty in the rain, no one would ever visit. She also pointed out the estate where Mary Queen of Scots was born and recounted her history for the group. I’ve heard Bloody Mary’s story more times than I can count (especially since Queen Elizabeth I is my favourite English queen!), but it was interesting to hear her history from the viewpoint of a Scot. The whole trying to take the English throne and ruthlessly killing Protestants parts were left out.

Our first stop was the William Wallace monument in Stirling. Our guide compared historical facts to bits and pieces of Braveheart, but overall, she said the movie was pretty accurate (for Hollywood, of course). The most disappointing discrepancy is that Wallace would not have worn a kilt; kilts are specific to the lowlands, so an ordinary highlander would not have sported such an ensemble. Just as we pulled into the parking lot at the bottom of the monument, Mel Gibson’s battle speech played over the speakers in our bus. Kate, Anna, and I finished the speech with the PC fight song, fitting since Saturday was PC homecoming. We hiked (and I do mean hiked) to the top of the mountain to see the monument itself. The view was beautiful!

Our next stop was to see Hamish, a very large Highland cow (apparently named after Shelley McKay Baynahm?). Kate was pretty excited to take pictures for David, her stepfather/a cattle farmer. Funny story: One tour guide used to do a trick where he would put a biscuit in his mouth and let Hamish eat it. Gross? It gets better. The tour guide fell very ill, and his doctor could not diagnose what was wrong with him. Not a cold. Not strep. Not mono. During one of his visits, the guide mentioned his work, and the doctor was curious to hear about the various stops the tour made. The guide was sure to tell his doc about his popular feeding trick with Hamish, and the doctor was quick to take one more test on his patient. Diagnosis: bovine herpes. Henceforth, the tour guides are no longer allowed to feed Hamish by putting biscuits in their mouths, and the tourists are advised not to kiss the cow.

Our final stop was the Glen Turret whiskey distillery. We got a tour of the facility and learned how whiskey (the national drink of Scotland) is made and what the difference is between single malt whiskey and a whiskey blend. Neato fact: At one point in the process, this very alcoholic beer sits in vats for several days, giving off huge amounts of carbon dioxide; distilleries bottle the CO2 and sell it to "fizzy drink" companies, ie: Coke and the famous Scottish IRN-Bru. The tour was finished with a taste of Famous Grouse whiskey and a trip to a room with a video and an interactive floor. When the film boasted Famous Grouse will cool you off when mixed with water, the floor became a stream that rippled where we stepped. When mentioning that the whiskey will warm you when served over ice, the floor turned into a frozen pond that cracked when we stomped on it. Entertaining…to say the least. Good tour.

I was disappointed in the ghost tour we took a few weeks ago (since there were no scary ghost stories included in the tour), so I jumped at the chance to go on another last night. Only… this tour wasn’t a scary ghost tour either. Kate, Anna, and I met Angela the Canadian on High Street for the Mary King’s Close tour of the Edinburgh crypts. It may not have been a scary tour, but it was really cool! If you ever find yourself in Edinburgh, take this tour. Here’s the gist. Until the 18th century, Edinburgh was densely populated in Old Town with very narrow streets and very tall buildings. When the city grew and built new buildings, they demolished the top levels of the buildings, allowing the rubble to fill the “closes” (these narrow streets that ran off High Street) and used the bottom stories as an already existing foundation for the new structures. So, much of the city is built on buildings! Our tour took us down to parts of Mary King’s Close, these houses and streets that exist below the city.

Our guide reminded us over and over again to drink the beer and not the water. Since women could not be hanged, they were drowned in Nor Loch, a manmade lake that used to surround the castle, as a means of execution. When people thought cats and dogs were the sources of the plague, all pets were drowned in Nor Loch. All the filth gathered on the streets—mud, household garbage, human waste, remains from slaughter houses, etc.—would eventually be washed down to Nor Loch. Since this lake was the main water source for the people of Edinburgh, it makes perfect sense why you would want to drink the beer and not the water. I suppose the city eventually realized the sheer filth of the lake did not do much to help the state of the city and its inhabitants, so it was eventually drained. The beautiful Princes Street Gardens now fills the former Nor Loch. It’s no wonder why the grass, flowers, and trees are so luscious there…