BY the time you read this I will have spent the past fortnight ensconced in a cottage on Skye. The days preceding our departure were akin to a military operation. The planning. The packing. The panicked art of figuring out how to fit far too many bags into an average-sized family car.
Middle-aged holidays have an entirely different dynamic. In my twenties, I just threw a hotchpotch of items in a suitcase – adding a quick spritz of Febreze to anything hastily retrieved from the laundry basket – and hoped for the best.
Worst case scenario: arriving in New York to discover I hadn’t brought any underwear and was toting three left shoes, each missing its corresponding partner.
Fast forward a couple of decades and holiday packing resembles doomsday prepping. Binoculars. Bin bags. Toilet roll. Canned goods. Medicines. Warm blankets. Torch.
Our spare room morphs into a production line with me holding up each item to the light, examining it slowly before giving a sage nod and saying: “Yup, just in case.”
The travel snack bag could pass for the dressing room rider of an ageing musician. Then there’s the flask: an essential for any car journey longer than 45 minutes duration. Even though I have mentally pre-mapped every cafe from the central belt to the furthest reaches of the Highlands.
My poor husband is tasked with carrying all this assorted paraphernalia down the several flights of stairs from our second floor flat in huge, precariously balanced batches like a winning Crackerjack contestant. By the time the car is loaded up, an air of mutiny is threatening to descend.
Then my mother – oh, did I mention she was coming too? – decides to regale us with a mosaic of gathered thoughts and opinions from the inner workings of her mind as we meander north.
Typically, we take a scenic route following the Loch Lomond shoreline then up past Glencoe towards Fort William and beyond. This year a decision was made to mix things up and instead amble through Perthshire and the Cairngorm National Park before cutting across to Spean Bridge.
Google Maps will tell us the journey time should be around five hours. But that’s not taking into account a weighed-down car that looks like a jumble sale on wheels. It’s a slow-moving affair: more Driving Miss Daisy than The Fast and the Furious.
Not helped by the fact that we miss the turnoff at Dalwhinnie and end up on a single-track road for a good few miles. The cheer when Eilean Donan Castle finally looms into view, followed soon after by the Skye Bridge, is louder than the Hampden Roar.
Finally, we get there. Just as dusk is falling. Meaning we are in prime time to be eaten alive by the midges while unloading the car. The author Marian Keyes has it right: travelling = awful and arriving = lovely. I rummage through the bags for an emergency bottle of Sauvignon Blanc.
Digital detox
IT started out with good intentions. What better place to go off the grid than Skye?
I had been reading about Scroll-Free September, an initiative backed by NHS Scotland among others, which encourages social media users to take a month-long break from apps such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat.
The average person scrolls through 300ft of content on their mobile phone every day – which is equivalent to the height of the Statue of Liberty. This is not good.
I hatch a plan: I’ll put my mobile phone away in a drawer. Digital detox? Easy-peasy! Watch me unclutter my mind of all that jumbled, white noise.
First, though, just let me take a quick photograph. Then post it to social media. OK, I’m putting the phone away now. Wait! What was the restaurant we wanted to eat in? I’ll Google it. Did anyone check the weather forecast for tomorrow. I better look it up …
On and on it goes. Before I know it, I’m down the rabbit hole of likes and clicks. I hand my phone to my husband and tell him to hide it. Cold turkey it is.
Who am I kidding? I finally settle on rationed use.
Not everyone has the same idea. My mind has been blown at some of the crazy antics I’ve witnessed from folk armed with mobile phone cameras in recent days.
As lashing rain and gales buffeted the island, I clocked a guy scrambling up a treacherous-looking hill – selfie stick clasped between teeth like a dog refusing to relinquish a bone – apparently intent on getting a wind-swept self portrait. That’s a Darwin Award in the making right there.
The Fairy Pools at Glenbrittle were recently named as the UK’s most romantic spot by publisher Mills & Boon. Which is fine if you don’t mind sharing it with a steady stream of other people, many pouting into cameras like surprised carp or contorting their limbs at odd angles to nail that perfect selfie.
In other news, a full house in rain bingo beckons. Horizontal, swirly, feathery, spitting camel, gauntlet slap. We have seen it all. At least it has kept the midges at bay.
Pain in the neck
BACK in the day, a hotel room was merely a place to crash when you stumbled home from the clubs. Never mind that you were sharing it with 14 friends and two billion cockroaches.
Now it’s a mash-up of Goldilocks meets the Princess and the Pea. I do not exaggerate when I say a bad mattress can ruin an entire holiday. You roll into bed on the first night feeling grand only to wake-up the next morning convinced that you’ve been run over by a steamroller.
The following days are spent in muscle spasm hell, unable to turn your neck. Everyone else oohs and ahhs at the passing scenery while you sit there doing a good impression of a rusted Tin Man from the Wizard of Oz, having to take their word for it that there is a pretty waterfall.
Never leave home without your memory foam pillow.
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