It’s finally here, our last day in Scotland. The Highlands & Islands has been a tour that few will forget. As we take breakfast, the conversation is somewhat mute and the mood is one of both restraint and weariness, for the journey has been long as have the days. Before this day is out, Barry will have borne us over 900 miles including four sea crossings.

Alex has one last opportunity for us. Though our final leg calls for a trip down the A9 through Perth and then on to Glasgow, he offers us another castle. This time it is Scone Palace, once the crowning place of the Kings of the Scots, for in those days, it housed the Stone of Destiny. (Also known as the Stone of Scone. Let me take a moment to point out that while stone is pronounced just as you would expect, Scone is pronounced not as the biscuit-like pastry, the scone, but rather it rhymes with spoon. So leave it to the Scots to play with our minds and take two words that are pronounced neither like “Stōne of Scōne”, nor like “Stoon of Scoon”, but rather “Stōne of Scoon”. Hmmmm.)  The Stone of Destiny was taken by Edward I in 1296 and remained in English hands until returned in 1996. (It was stolen briefly by four college students in 1950 and smuggled to Scotland but was later returned to England.)  Today, the original Stone has been replaced with a “stand in”. Though not the original stone, you can still imagine the ancient Kings of the Scots sitting upon it to accept the crown.

The site of Scone Palace (not really a castle) was originally that of Scone Abbey, an Augustinian monastery. It was here on Moot Hill (also called the “Hill of Credulity”) that the Kings of Scots were crowned including Robert the Bruce.

Leaving Scone, the mood was quite somber as we rode our last few miles to Glasgow. Traveling south on the A9, we passed through Perth where we happened upon a wedding party posing for pictures along the banks of the River Tay. Barry honked and we all waved at each other.

Further south we passed Stirling Castle rising from it’s basaltic crag commanding the countryside. In the distance is the Wallace Monument, raised for that hero of “Braveheart”. We are in the heart of Royal Scotland as we make our way to our final stop on this tour. It is somehow fitting that we pay homage to the Kings of the Scots on this, our last day in their country. The entire coach was unusually quiet as we drank in our last draught of the Scottish countryside.

Gathering in the bar for dinner, our last time together as a group, we were all quite festive. We all agreed that this had indeed been a most excellent tour and we were fortunate to have a berth. As we finished dinner, several of us took a moment to share with the group. John Holmes, as is his wont, recited several original and, I must add, very appropriate limericks. (The last time had heard him do such was, most appropriately, in Limerick, Ireland.)

Malinda Anderson recited a pair of poems by Robert Louis Stevenson that she felt were quite apropos. The first was an ode to the long summer days and short summer nights that had caused more than one sleepless night.

Bed in Summer

by Robert Louis Stevenson

In winter I get up at night

And dress by yellow candle-light.

In summer quite the other way,

I have to go to bed by day.

I have to go to bed and see

The birds still hopping on the tree,

Or hear the grown-up people's feet

Still going past me in the street.

And does it not seem hard to you,

When all the sky is clear and blue,

And I should like so much to play,

To have to go to bed by day?

The second poem was an elegy to our luxury coach and the ever passing landscape, “...a glimpse and gone forever!”

From a Railway Carriage

by Robert Louis Stevenson

Faster than fairies, faster than witches,

Bridges and houses, hedges and ditches;

And charging along like troops in a battle,

All through the meadows, the horses and cattle:

All of the sights of the hill and the plain

Fly as thick as driving rain;

And ever again, in the wink of an eye,

Painted stations whistle by.

Here is a child who clambers and scrambles,

All by himself and gathering brambles;

Here is a tramp who stands and gazes;

And there is the green for stringing the daisies!

Here is a cart run away on the road

Lumping along with man and load;

And here is a mill and there is a river:

Each a glimpse and gone forever!

Alex offered a couple of parting songs including honoring me with a verse of “Tramps and Hawkers” that I had composed some years before after parting Scotland.

Now I must gang ta Sammy’s Lan’, my time ta leave is nigh

But I’ll return ta ye someday and ta the Isle of Skye

To tramp again the Cuillin Hills in the mist o’ th’ mornin’ dew

An’ sing o’ amber waves o’ grain when I come back tae you.

Feeling the rare desire to express myself, I decided that a little Scottish philosophy would be appropriate. Though Scotland is replete with philosophers and scholars, I elected to draw on a well known southern philosopher, Jeff Foxworthy and so offered the following:

You know you are in Scotland when...you walk out into a rain that is blowing sideways and one of the locals says “Looks to be a braw day, eh laddie”.

You know you are in Scotland when... you walk in the bar and see a Big Orange T and you are not in Tennessee!

You know you’re in Scotland when...for the eighth day in a row you have Fish & Chips and Tennents for lunch.

You know you’re in Scotland when...you ask a local where a good place to eat is and he says “Th’ pub doon the strit has guid HAGGIS”. And you order Fish & Chips.

When you take one more photo out the window of the coach and write in your log “#785 - Another damn castle”...you know you’re in Scotland.

You know you are in Scotland when...you step off of the coach in the Cairngorm Mountains with the fragrance of heather all around and, while you have one foot in this world, the other must be in Heaven.

And you know you are in Scotland when...you walk out of the hotel on the first day and there sits our Deluxe Luxury Coach and, at the entrance stands, without a wrinkle on his shirt (or a hair on his head), the finest Coachmen in the Highlands, the Islands, the Lowlands and the Borders - my friend Barry Austin.

Alex closed out the evening with thanks to us all. And he left us with a thought that I know is important to him. He left is native land over forty years before, coming to America to make a new life. He was proud to say that, unlike anyone else in that room, he had become a citizen of the United States of America out of choice. With that, he bade us all a good night.

Tennessee to Glasgow

Scone Palace (pronounced “Scoon”), the crowning–place of the Scottish Kings and home to the Stone of Scone (the Stone of Desiny).

Inside the Chapel

We came upon this bridal party in Perth