Here's some more.

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I guess there have been a lot of people anticipating entries and unfortunately we couldn't pull through for everyone. However! I am commited to having everyone up to date by Saturday, when we leave sunny Scotland. I use the word 'sunny' lightly, even though today has turned out beautiful.

Let us continue...

To my own horror I realized I'd left out the most important detail of our trip so far: August 3rd we saw our first Heilan Coos (highland cows). These are pretty much the coolest animals on the planet.

August 4th
This was an eventful day. Woke up, had three cups of coffee and some Shreddies, felt like a million bucks. I had just started having a chat with the hostel owner when his wife decided to almost burn the hostel down with some innocent looking toast. Disaster was averted but their kitchen was covered in thick black soot. Melissa wasn't feeling too hot and we were already a couple days behind, so we decided to head to Stirling and hop a train to Stonehaven.

Only took us a few hours to get to Stirling and we stopped a few key places along the way. A statue of David Stirling, founder of the SAS, afforded one fo the nicest views of the Scottish countryside. We also couldn't avoid stopping at Doune Castle, where all I could picture were men with coconuts and flying cows. Yes, that's right, this is where they filmed parts of Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

Finally got to Stirling only to realize that there was some festival of sorts going on there was absolutely nowhere to stay. This is where the helmet thief comes in. I put my helmet on my bike and popped into the information centre for a moment and when i came back out my helmet was gone. There is now a special place in my heart for Stirling, right next to the one for Toronto. But anyways, a few phone calls later and Mark was one his way from Cumbernauld to pick us up, which happened to only be about a half hour away, and was awefully generous. We crammed our bikes into his wee car and stayed with Lillian and Leo and also visited with everyone throughout the night. Good fun.

August 5th
Dismal day, lots of rain. Puttered around Glasgow for the day, got some train tickets to Stonehaven for the next day and bought some stuff.

August 6th
Hopped a train to Stonehaven. The train happened to be stocked with some of the most foul mouthed and beligerent youngsters I've met since being over here. Which is quite unfortunate, because most people here, in Scotland anyways, are quite the opposite. (I'm convinced they were English).

Got to Stonehaven and even though the campsite was full, the nice folks there let us pitch our tent. Then we took a nice bike up to the war memorial and Dunnotar Castle, saw some bunnies. Dunnotar Castle is where William Wallace burned a church down with a bunch of English soldiers inside, that's pretty intense. We biked back into town and got some fish and chips from the "UK Fish Fryer of the Year," and my god it was good.

August 7th
Packed up, hit the road. Well actually, we weren't quite sure how to get to Aberdeen by road, so we got on another train for the quick little hop. From Aberdeen we made our way north, eventually making our way to a little town called Newburgh. Newburgh was a bit out of the way, but we decided to go there because the map said there was a campground there. We got there and as we stared at ten brand new houses, we realized the map had lied. Melissa went into the hotel that was next to the fictional campsite and the gentleman in there said that it used to be one but was evidently not anymore. But not wanting us to cycle in vain, the owner let us camp on a patch of grass behind the hotel and showed us where to get water. Melissa felt obliged to go into the hotel bar for a drink, that wasn't a tough sell for me.

August 8th
Our goal for today was Turriff, that was until the early afternoon when my front wheel decided to eat itself. The hub seized and started chewing its way through my fork, making it a little difficult to cycle. We ended up walking a couple miles to another wee town named Maud where we hopped a bus to MacDuff because it was the nearest town with a cycle shop. The bus driver informed us he wasn't supposed to take bikes, but admitted that having only had 3 customers since 8am (it was now 4pm), he didn't see it being a problem. Got into MacDuff too late to get a new wheel, so we made dinner and packed it in.

August 9th
Using some incredibly obscure and practically unintelligible directions, I finally found the cycle shop. They had nothing of the proper size, but being the only shop within a day's ride, I bought the closest thing to right size and hammered it into place. It was an overpriced piece of junk too. We got a late start and puttered down the coast to Portsoy where we set up in a little campsite on the beach. Melissa had her first 'nugget' (ice cream on a marshmallow wafer) and got it everywhere in a futile attempt at eating it.

That is all for now. Tune in next time when we look for another mystery campsite and learn just how crazy Spaniards really are.

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