(By Chris – to start anyway.)

This trip has at times brought great shame and at other times immense pride. I am ashamed to only now be blogging about our three amazing weeks touring Scotland. I am proud of the obscure SNL-based inside jokes that I’ve been able to teach my children. They have become a Marsh family inside joke still in use two countries later. If anyone is not familiar with the immortal Mike Meyers portrayal of a Scottish shop keeper this is worth the next 6 minutes of your life. If you don’t have 6 minutes, here is a summary from your favorite traveling four year old. Since they’ve been properly educated, our children frequently and publicly call out the lack of Scottishness in each other and whatever else seems to be bothering them at the moment.

I had just planned to list the highlights and share a few pictures but the kids’ home school teachers (Angie and I) are real sticklers and decided it was time for more home school journal entries. The boys each took a turn journaling on one of our activities while touring Scotland. Angie also wanted to share her reflections on a neolithic excavation we saw in the Orkney islands. Read on for our first quad contributor post and let us know whether or not you think our writing is Scottish

We started in a small town called Thurso

Thurso is on the north coast of the British mainland and is actually the surfing capital of the UK. The name Thurso means “Thor’s River” and came from Viking invaders in the 8th or 9th century. Our apartment in Thurso was two blocks from a spectacular (yet cold) beach. We spent the week exploring Caithness – which is the north-eastern most district (county?) in Scotland.

Thurso highlights included:

An attempted visit to the Queen Mother’s castle which was closed to the public – possibly because of a visit by the Royal family… (The police officer at the gate strongly suggested we not take photos)

Asher’s Journal Entry:

I went to the Highland Games Saturday July 29. The Highland Games are outdoor games in the Scottish Highlands. I saw caber toss, shotput, and hammer throw. The caber toss is where they throw trees. In the hammer throw the guys swung hammers – heavy metal balls with long wooden sticks around their bodies and threw them more than 100 feet. There were also bike races and foot races. They let me run a race for 6 and 7 year old boys. In 5 days I was turning 8 so I had an advantage. I won the race and the 6 pounds prize. Pounds are the currency they use in Scotland and England. It was fun.

Dad’s footnotes:

I have always wanted to see a real Highland Games. In making the schedule for this trip it was one of the first things I Googled. The games in Halkirk are one of the more prominent in the Scottish highlands which is why we booked an Air BNB in Thurso only five miles away. The atmosphere was a lot like a county fair. There were games for kids, carnival rides, food trucks and whisky tastings! There were more than 100 events ranging from typical track and field (e.g. high jump, long jump, various sprints) to unique family friendly open events (e.g., sack races, three legged races, kids races). Of course there were the traditional and uniquely Scottish events for the “heavies” or kilt wearing strong men.

Alexander won two coconuts at a games booth sponsored by the Thurso Rotary club. Chiara enjoyed the tea cup ride. I picked up one of the 103 KG stones for the farmers walk which I was pretty proud of doing. Angie even made friends with the wife of one of the heavies who had traveled from Nebraska to compete in the Highland games. Overall a great time was had by all.

Angie’s reflections on the Orkney Islands

On one of our last days in Thurso, we decided to take a guided tour involving a 45 minute ferry ride and then a day (10 hours) of touring a set of islands off the northern coast of Scotland. The area is called the Orkney Islands.

Through the day we saw a number of sites that grouped together are a UNESCO world heritage site (recognized to be of importance in history).

The Ring of Brodgar and the Stones of Stenness were both sets of ancient stones arranged in particular patterns. Both sites were thought to be created nearly 5,000 years ago. The slants on the tops of the stones were hand carved for a specific purpose. It is thought the sites may have had ceremonial use.

We also saw Skara Brae, a Neolithic (stone-age) village that was created 5,000 years ago. It was built, used and abandoned long before the pyramids were created and hundreds of years before Stonehenge. The village was buried by sand until 1850, which is what kept it remarkably preserved for so long.

We debated whether to do this day trip as we thought it might have been a really long day for the kids and it was pretty expensive, but I’m so glad we did. It’s not often, even in daily travel, that you get to see something so unique.

Also in the Orkney Islands, we drove by a current, active archeological site. What a day!

Our second week was in a remote cottage near Inverness

Back to comments from Chris. Definitely the most relaxed week of our three in Scotland. We found an Air BNB about half way between Thurso and Edinburgh and reasonably close to Loch Ness.

Inverness Highlights included:

Here is a bit more on our trip to Loch Ness as only Alex can tell it…

Alexander’s Journal Entry:

When I wake up, I wonder is this a dream or am I living the life? After that I do the things I like doing, brushing teeth, getting dressed and coming down to breakfast. After breakfast, we got into our car and started the drive to Loch Ness. Now normally we would do Bible in a Year, however since it was Asher’s birthday, he choose to skip it.

Now we had been driving for a long time and I see two things: 1) there is a road closure sign 2) people walking across the closed road. After a short time of driving through a field with Google trying to direct Dad back to the closed road my little sister had to use the bathroom. To make a long story short we survived the road closure festival (as my Dad called it) and finally got to Loch Ness and realized we were late and our tour reservation had been skipped.

We talked to the workers at the Loch Ness Center and they set us up for 12:50 ( a later reservation) so we went to the cafe and came back at 12:50. When we started the tour, it was very fun and it taught me that there have been multiple sightings of the Loch Ness Monster “Nessie” although we did not get to touch the water or see Nessie I was starting to be a believer. The tour was very well done.

Then we had lunch, I bought a pen and we called our cousins. After the call on our way to leave, we tried to touch the Loch Ness lake. We couldn’t. You had to pre-book to get even close to the water and we hadn’t done that so we went home.

It was just another day in the life.

Dad’s Footnotes:

The Loch Ness visitor center is an immersive museum experience built in the hotel where the first modern siting of the Loch Ness monster was reported by the hotel manager in the early 1930s. It is actually about two miles from the loch so we couldn’t touch the water as Alex points out. In one hour guests are guided through a serries of rooms that explore the Legend of Nessie from every angle (Mythology, Journalism, Biology, Geology, and Paleontology). Angie and I were thoroughly impressed and the kids were reasonably entertained.

My personal favorite factoid from the experience is that St. Columbia, an Irish Monk, had a documented encounter with a “water beast” near Loch Ness in the 6th century AD. According to the report St. Columba banished the monster by making the sign of the cross. Here is an article about St. Columba’s fight with the Loch Ness Monster from the National Catholic Register.

After leaving the visitor center we tried to drive to Urquhart Castle on the banks of Loch Ness. It turns out that if you want to visit Loch Ness in the high tourist season you need to book ahead. Sadly there were no tickets remaining for that day. On the way back to our Air BNB we pulled over and got a picture but unfortunately we didn’t get a clear picture of the monster…

Our final week touring Scotland was in one of my most favorite cities in the world – Edinburgh

Fortunately, or unfortunately, our schedule had us arriving in Edinburgh in the middle of the world famous Fringe festival. Fringe is an intense clustering of performance arts that overwhelm the Scottish capital every August. There are literally thousands of shows all day every day spread across many dozens of venues. It is a very exciting time to visit – also very expensive and very crowded. This was the first Edinburgh Fringe for all of us and we spent a day watching street performers and also bought tickets to a couple of great family friendly shows: “Beats on Point” a mashup of Ballet and break dancing and “360 All Stars” a high energy show of BMX biking, Trick Basketball, beat boxing (achepella rapping) breakdancing and acrobatics.

Aside from the Fringe Festival, Edinburgh highlights included:

A meet up with my Cray colleagues at the U.K. National Supercomputing Service at the university of Edinburgh. Pictures were not allowed but a huge thanks to Martin, Felipe, and Greg for showing us around. For more information about the system and the work they do, check out www.archer2.ac.uk

Our time in Scotland was topped off – quite literally – with Chiara’s 4th birthday party on our last day in town. We went to an indoor play center, which is called “soft play” in Scotland, and the kids had a blast. Then we had cake with party hats! Thanks for reading our long post – stay tuned for shorter posts about Berlin and Krakow in the near future.