Laura looks for treasure on Ullapool’s shore on Loch Broom, Scotland
We’re in Ullapool, on the north west coast of Scotland, and my husband, our ten-year-old daughter Laura and I are beachcombing along the pebbly shores of Loch Broom. It’s a sea loch, which means it opens out into the sea rather than being enclosed by land and its water is salty. Who knows what treasures we might find here, washed up on these ancient shores?
My husband always casts a scientific slant on these expeditions. His natural reaction is to classify the rocks with their correct technical names.
“Ah, that’s an aggregate, ” he declares, dismissing a glorious hotch-potch of a rock with a single harsh word.
A couple of days earlier, on Nairn beach, I’d been pleased to find a heart-shaped piece of sea glass, particularly because I’m working on a story of lost love called “Sea Glass”. Its pale, opalescent surface, gently scoured by the sea, hints at secrets locked within.
“It’s only a basilisc pebble,” is Gordon’s reaction to my find.
I decide not to tell him how much I paid for a pair of delicate green sea glass earrings in Strathpeffer en route to Ullapool.
So where’s the rest of the house?
Although not all our beachcombing finds are so classically pretty, all are beautiful. Today I’m intrigued by a house brick, its once sharp corners softly rounded by the sea. Where is the rest of the house? I wonder. Has it fallen into the sea? How far has this brick travelled?
My daughter has tuned in to my thoughts.
“I can’t stop looking at all the pebbles,” she declares. “There are so many of them, and behind every stone there is a story.”
And every stone is different, ground to a unique shape and size by relentless, indiscriminate tides. The sea is an unbenevolent creator.
For a moment, I see myself as a pebble, tiny among a universe of pebbles that extends in either direction as far as the eye can see – inland to the far end of Loch Broom, out to sea where the loch broadens to segue into the sea, flowing out around the Outer Hebrides before rushing towards more distant lands. Its next stop: Canada and the USA, to whose shores so many impoverished Highlanders fled in the wake of the unspeakably cruel Highland Clearances. For most of these reluctant emigrants, these pebbly shores of Loch Broom would have been the last they ever saw of their beloved Home Country.
As Laura slips three carefully chosen stones into her pocket as bounty, I touch my sea glass earrings with renewed appreciation. We’ll treasure the few stones that we can, each in our own way.
If you’re off travelling this summer, be careful who you sit next to on the plane. You never know where it might lead. Here’s a cautionary tale from my pre-Hawkesbury days.
Geneva Bound
Sailing close to the wind on Lake Geneva (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
In my 20s, I worked as a journalist for a trade magazine in London, often travelling abroad on business. When going somewhere new, I always tried to add in a day’s holiday for sightseeing. One Sunday on a flight to Geneva, I opened the novel I’d brought with me: Boris Pasternak’s Dr Zhivago.
“Oh!” said the middle-aged businessman next to me. “What a coincidence! I’ve got that book in my bag too.”
So began a long conversation that lasted till we touched down and ended with us arranging to share a boat trip around Lake Geneva that afternoon. He seemed pleasant enough, and after all, we had something in common – Dr Zhivago.
The sun was shining, it was a glorious trip, and we followed it up with a drink in a bar, where he asked if I’d join him for dinner. All of a sudden, I started hearing what he was saying as if through the ears of my fiancé back in London, who would certainly not have viewed this man as a platonic friend with no ulterior motive.
I made a transparent excuse and declined. The man gave me a wry smile, we shook hands (our only physical contact all day) and parted forever.
Falling to Earth
The enigma of Doctor Zhivago (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Only later that evening, alone in my hotel room, did I begin to wonder whether I’d been hoodwinked. Had I just been the victim of a well-practised chat-up line, an opening gambit honed by years of business trips? Suddenly I realised: I never had seen his copy of Dr Zhivago. I suspect now it didn’t exist. And I never did tell my fiancé.
So, wherever you’re going for your holidays this summer, have fun, take care – and don’t talk to any strange men!
I blame you, Boris Pasternak (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
If you enjoyed this post, you might like these other tales of troubled travel:
Travelling Light – how to cope with your husband’s packing deficiences
With thanks to intrepid traveller and writer Laura Zera, whose call for stories of interesting people met on planes triggered this long-suppressed memory. Laura writes a fabulous travel blog too: www.laurazera.com. This post also appears in the July 2013 edition of the Hawkesbury Parish News.
On our tour of Luxembourg, we become more cosmopolitan by the moment. We’re soon used to being in a country at ease with three languages in its daily life (French, German and Letzeburgesch). So it doesn’t seem too much of a leap to visit the part of the country known as “La Petite Suisse” – “The Little Switzerland”. One more country for our collection will not go amiss.
Vianden has taken its pseudo-Swiss connections very seriously, with copious Swiss-style chalets nestling alongside its riverbank. Heidi, come out, come out, wherever you are!
Soaring above this little riverside town, reaching even above the spectacular mountain-top castle, is a chairlift, echoing Swiss ski resorts. The effect is charming, if surreal.
Portuguese Ambush
Should have taken this picture BEFORE I cooked and ate my steak
On the evening of our arrival, which happens to be our eleventh wedding anniversary, we eat out at one of thse chalets, a Tyrolean-themed restaurant called Das Heisses Stein (The Hot Stone). Not surprisingly, it serves dishes associated with Switzerland such as cheese fondue and – something new to me – a hot stone cooking system. My husband and I (but not our vegetarian daughter) are each provided with an oiled, heated slab of granite and a raw steak. We are instructed to slice the steak and set it atop the stone to sizzle to our preferred degree of doneness.
Well, you’re entitled to be slushy on your wedding anniversary
Our very helpful waiter, attired in authentic Swiss lederhosen, turns out to be Portuguese, speaking exellent English. What brings him all the way from the Algarve to La Petite Suisse? I enquire. His sister was already working here, it turns out. We find further evidence when we visit the town’s two souvenir shops next day.
In the first of these shops, alongside the badges and mugs bearing “Souvenir of Vianden” slogans and images, are handbags made of cork, cigarette lighters bearing the Portuguese national flag, and, for balance, a selection of Spanish and Portuguese flags on plastic sticks.
Shock Finnish
The second souvenir shop is unexpectedly called The Finn Shop. Once we step inside, all becomes clear. Here we find Moomin-themed gifts and badges emblazoned “I love Finland”. Not the obvious souvenir of Vianden.
Inside Das Heisses Stein – no place for a vegetarian
Surprisingly, there are very few souvenirs of Vianden itself. My daughter has to work hard to spend her holiday money on this trip, eventually settling for a plastic doll in national costume (phew!)
The multinational connections do not end there. In the Hotel Victor Hugo, named after the great French writer who spent some time in exile here, we are served by a young boy apparently of African descent, possibly with Belgian Congo connections.
You Say Orange, I Say Orange
That’s some castle
Touring the castle next day, we come across a large room lined with photos of world leaders visiting Vianden, from my own Queen Elizabeth II to Russia’s Gorbachev, from the Japanese Emperor Hirohito to President Allende of Chile. A family tree fills one wall of the room, explaining the direct blood relationships of the local lords with the Dutch and French royal families – but not close enough, it seems, to prevent the eventual Dutch owners dismantling the castle in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and selling stones for scrap. Shame on you, House of Orange! It’s taken the Luxembourgeois most of the twentieth century to restore the place to its former glory.
Such a cocktail of nationalities is bewildering. I’d expected this country to be cosmopolitan, but this complexity is beyond all my expectations. And all offered with such good, tolerant grace by these proud people who “woelle bleiwe wat mir sin” (“we want to remain what we are”).
So who invited the Viking?
And then it occurs to me: if ever there was a venue tailor-made to host the Eurovision Song Contest, surely Vianden is it? Luxembourg, I’d give you douze points any day.
If you enjoyed this post, you might like some others about our Easter trip to northern Europe:
There are worse places to break down than Echternach. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
In the middle of a little village on the German/Luxembourg border, our camper van’s exhaust pipe drops off (that’s our motorhome’s muffler to you, my American friends) and I gain another chance to prove to my daughter the value of speaking a foreign language.
It’s a blue-skied, sunny public holiday – Easter Monday – so I’m particular conscious that we’re disturbing the peace in this beautiful setting.
The locals are very forgiving. We chug noisily up a hilly street, emitting a sound so deafening that my husband and I have to shout to each other to converse. A large group of jovial chaps basking in the sunshine in their front garden raise their glasses to us, with a loud cheer. We smile and wave, heartened by their kindly reaction.
On reaching our planned destination for the night, the border town of Echternach – yet another Luxemburgish town separated from Germany by only a river – we call the English-speaking helpline of the European recovery service to which we belong. Soon, a tow truck from the town’s garage comes to our rescue, and a brace of mechanics disembarks.
In preparation, I’ve found a relevant double-page spread in our French pocket phrase book. It includes a diagram of a car, its important parts labelled in French. Actually, even in English translation it’s foreign territory to me. I don’t know my chassis from my carburettor. I’ve rehearsed in my head the conversation we will need to have, beginning “Nous sommes en panne”, which is rather stating the obvious.
At the Mercy of Mechanics
Arms of Echternach – more sinister than its people (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The stout grey-haired man, clearly the senior of our dynamic duo, crawls underneath the van to inspect the damage that the rescue service described to him. After a few moments of shifting around on the car park’s gravel floor (ouch!), he emerges happy. Dusting himself down, he rattles off his diagnosis in Letzerburgesch to his blond companion. I have absolutely no idea what he’s said. We – and our bank account – are at his mercy.
The blond chap nods and turns to us to negotiate. To our intense relief, he speaks to us in flawless, fluent American English.
“Don’t worry, we will make it safe for you to get home,” he says cheerfully.
“We’ve felt bad making such a noise going through your little villages on a public holiday,” I confess.
He shrugs and smiles.
“People need to worry less about things like that.”
It turns out they can solve our problem quickly and easily. They assure us that the van is safe to drive and that their garage is not far away. We are to follow them and not to worry.
Lured into their Lair
The garage is indeed just a few streets distant, tucked unobtrusively between a row of houses. If it didn’t have a sign on the outside announcing its purpose, we’d have thought it was just another residential building. Its large workshop is as cunningly concealed as a Bond villain’s lair inside a volcano.
Entering, we discover the place is so immaculate that you could eat your breakfast croissant off the floor. The distinctive smell of engine oil, characteristic of most garages, is strangely absent. How do they do it? I look round expecting to find a jumbo-sized Airwick, to no avail.
My husband is more concerned about the practicalities of the place than the aesthetics.
“Are you a Peugeot dealer?” he is asking. “Do you have a replacement part in stock?”
“We used to be, but not any more. Now we just do repairs.”
I immediately feel sorry for these pleasant people. What a shame to lose their dealership status. I hope they’re still able to make a decent living – and that our bill will not be inflated to compensate for lost business.
We’re invited to retreat to the immaculate waiting area, where we sit on smart leather seats beside a vast pile of upmarket glossy magazines. Opposite us, in a spacious and shining glass booth, a smartly dressed lady busily works on the accounts.
All of this scenario is the polar opposite of the garage we use at home, where the stench of oil saturates the air, and the waiting area is as cramped as it’s possible to be without qualifying for the Guinness Book of Records. Its flawless service and honest staff are what keep us loyal.
Back in Luxembourg, the pink-cheeked blond mechanic, clean as a newly-bathed baby, settles down contentedly on the other side of a counter that overlooks both the workshop and the waiting area. He has the leisure, it seems, for a chat about our travels. My husband remarks that the Mosel Valley, where we’ve just come from, was largely a camper van car park. (He’s exaggerating, as usual, but not by much.) Our spotless friend smiles.
“That’s how they make 90% of their money, from tourism,” he opines, with no trace of a grudge. “Only 10% from wine.”
As he speaks, my eye is caught by flashing lights in the service area underneath our van. Someone is wielding a welding iron.
Keeping Good Company
Echternach in 1918 – about the time the Rolls-Royce was being built .Photo credit: Wikipedia)
It is then that I spot the only other vehicle in the garage: a vast, ancient black Rolls Royce, bonnet (hood) raised and engine stripped back as if modelling for the diagram in my phrase book. It is stunningly beautiful. My jaw drops.
The blond one follows my gaze and smiles proudly.
“We are rebuilding it, piece by piece, for a customer,” he explains. “There are only eight of that model left in the world. It is worth 500,000 Euros.”
That’s approximately 50 times the value of our camper van.
“Does it belong to a museum?” I venture.
He shakes his head.
“Private owner.”
“There’s a lot of money in Luxembourg,” I murmur.
“I am from the Netherlands,” he replies, hinting that he was lured here by the money.
Immediately and unselfconsciously, he demonstrates his countrymen’s famous facility for languages by addressing the welder, now standing in the doorway, in rapid Letzerburgesch.
“All done!” he translates for us, looking pleased. “We have welded a sleeve around the muffler. Not only will it get you safely home, it will last a long time. No need to replace it when you get there.”
My husband produces his wallet, looking nervous.
“How much?”
The blond one consults his colleague in Letzerburgesch.
“Do you need a receipt?” he breaks off to ask us in English.
“No.”
“In that case, 40 Euros.”
My husband goes to pull out a credit card but I detect a flinch on the part of our blue-eyed friend.
“For cash?” I offer, suppressing a knowing grin.
“Yes, please!”
Aha, so there is a common factor with our scruffy English garages after all.
We drive on our way, oh so quietly, thanking fate for bringing us to a Luxemburger garage where our modest needs may be subsidised by a local millionaire.
Affluence in Echternach (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
For other reasons why we learned to love Luxembourg, read these recent posts:
All of our friends who have already been to Luxembourg warn us before we set off that it’s an expensive country. Expensive, exclusive and smart.
No excuse for litter in this Luxembourg City park
The minute we cross the border from Belgium, we’re inclined to agree. The place exudes affluence, order and solvency. There is not a speck of litter to be found, and in one park we pass through, in the centre of the country’s capital, Luxembourg City, we understand why: there are more litter bins than people.
The good burghers roaming the designer streers are all immaculately dressed. Leathers and furs protect them from the biting continental cold. Their children are well behaved and well marshalled. Even the dogs are in neat overcoats.
You’re never too old for a trip on a tourist road train
After a scenic trip through the city centre on the tourist road train, the driver effortlessly negotiating hairpin bends on the precipitous route down to the bottom of the gorge and back again, we stop at a public toilet on one of the main squares. It is as immaculate as a manufacturing “clean room”.
Driving through the City’s outskirts en route to the Moselle Valley, I’m struck by the quiet luxury of the substantial houses. Expensive children’s play equipment is in every garden, smart cars on every drive. These Luxembourgeois know how to spend their money.
Luxembourg = Luxury
Next day, we stop for a couple of hours at Remich, a pleasant, spacious resort on the banks of the Moselle. As we park in one of the many immaculate free car parks, it occurs to me that the parking spaces are designed to accommodate very large cars. For once, our camper van does not protrude beyond the white lines. Affluence is assumed here: everyone is expected to drive a big car.
But we are not affluent, and as we cannot run to Luxembourg restaurant prices, today’s lunch is frites from a Friture van, parked discreetly in a corner of the car park. I translate Friture loosely for my daughter as a “chippery”. As I wait to be served by pleasant chefs, I notice how spotless their van is. One chef is carefully slipping a knife into a pork cutlet to make sure it’s properly cooked. I’m impressed: no risk of food poisoning here.
Child’s Play, Luxembourg Style
Wondering whether the ostrich will go faster than the horses
Along the riverbank are dotted tasteful, shiny new entertainments for children: playparks, mini-golf, go-karts, a traditional carousel.
The carousel’s music is not the usual brash hurdy-gurdy kind, but tinkling classics played on a silvery glockenspiel: Tschaikovsky, Handel and Bach. Laura takes a spin on an ostrich to the sound of Mozart.
Border Order
Over to Germany…
Strolling on through the town, we realise that if we walk across the nearest bridge, we’ll be in Germany: the Moselle serves as the national border. As Laura has never been to Germany, she’s keen to go, so we set off. At the apex of this gently sloping bridge are two signs featuring the flag of the European Union (a circle of yellow stars on a royal blue background), each with the name of the country you are entering at its centre. Laura hops incessantly from one nation to the other, so that when we get home she’ll be able to say she’s visited each country lots of times.
Spot the Difference
… and back to Luxembourg (again)
After the obligatory photos, we continue to the other side. I’m not expecting it to seem much different, so I’m startled to find a grubby, litter-strewn parking area bearing a strident yellow “Parking Verboten” sign amid piles of rubbish. Just beyond, giving dubious new life to the now redundant border control huts, are down-at-heel businesses, half-heartedly plying downmarket trades: a bar, a kebab house (spelling “kebab” in two different ways on its signage, indicating an indecisive or illiterate proprietor) and, inexplicably, a shop full of garden gnomes. I wonder if they’re illegal in Luxembourg for making smart gardens look downmarket, hence their sale on the borderline. Perhaps after nightfall there’ll be a surge of Luxembourgeois making a dash for them, under cover of the dark.
As we stroll back across the water to Luxembourg, I notice that only the German side of the bridge bears graffiti. Even the abundant swans on the river are favouring the Luxembourg bank.
Alles in Ordnung?
“Parking verboten” in this, er, parking lot
I am perplexed. My memory of Germany, where I lived for four years as a teenager, is of Order with a capital O – well, Ordnung, to be precise. I cannot reconcile this bleak, shabby no-parking parking lot with that recollection.
As we head off up the Moselle, intending to cross the border once again at Trier, where the river drops the final le to become the Mosel, I wonder what other surprises might lay in store…
More musings about our trans-border travels will follow shortly – click the “Follow” button on the right to make sure you don’t miss them!
Other recent posts about our Easter tour of Belgium, Luxembourg and Germany:
