Cultural Notes

Here are a few of my learnings:

 

·       Highland Games  This is Kyle Randalls.  

 

       

 

     Not only is he huge, he is incredibly personable. And he is a major champion when it comes to the traditional Highland Games, that we learned about on our last day of the Backroads tour.  One of the most important things he told us is that Highland Games competitors are required to wear something underneath their kilts. Then, he demonstrated several events for us, the craziest of which is the “tossing the caber” event.  The objective of this is to flip the caber over itself and have it land aligned with the thrower (scored as landing at 12:00). Hopefully, this video of Kyle doing this will load to the blog and you can see his amazing strength and accuracy.  

 

 We witnessed his demonstration at The Braemar Highland Game Center, which is described like this:

The Braemar Gathering, held in September, is the most prestigious Highland games event and enjoys the annual attendance of the royal Family. Its origins are Royal too.  

The contests of strength – jumping, running, throwing and riding – were introduced by Malcolm III (also known as Malcolm Canmore, meaning ‘great head or ‘chief’ in Gaelic) during the 11th century as a means of selecting the most able men for soldiers and couriers.

·       Tunnock’s wafers and teacakes are delicious and traditional Scottish treats.  Tunnock’s claim to fame is that the company has not compromised in the quality of its chocolate coverings whereas other candy makers have been shrinkflating and/or substituting inferior ingredients.  We’ve sampled several offerings and can attest to their tastiness.

 

·       “Known” Scottish writers include Robert Burns, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Sir Walter Scott.  But I’m happy to have recently learned about Nan Shepherd who wrote poetry and prose.  Her book, The Living Mountain, was not recognized or published until ~30 years after it was written.  I haven’t sampled it yet but it’s on my reading list and sounds like it might be a bit Mary Oliver-ish, being described as “a work of poetic prose exploring her close relationship with the hills.”  I’m also eager to read something of Robert Fergusson, a poet who was born within the Edinburgh closes and ultimately became an influence on Robert Burns.

·       Newcastle Upon Tyne We’ve spent a few days between cycling tours here in this Northern England city that was the recipient of ¼ of William Wallace’s body after he was drawn and quartered after being convicted of treason after a sham trial. His story is, of course, depicted in the fictionalized film Braveheart starring Mel Gibson. Following Wallace’s gruesome death, Robert de Bruce ultimately succeeded in winning Scottish Independence with the Treaty of Edinburgh signed in 1328 before dying himself in 1329.  That treaty didn’t last; the struggle / debate over Scottish Independence persists to this day.

Newcastle is also the starting point of Hadrian’s Wall, built at the behest of the Roman Emperor, Hadrian, to “separate the barbarians from the Romans.” Yesterday, we walked alongside its unremarkable remains and the Tyne River for a spell. Newcastle itself seems to be an industrial city with neighborhood row houses that look like those I’ve seen in every TV series depicting working-class Brits.  I gotta say, despite there being trash bins and dumpsters everywhere, there is trash and litter all over this gritty city. 

Today we walked through town and stumbled across the football stadium which may be the pride of Newcastle.  

 

Tomorrow we start phase 2 of cycling.  We're ready!