Cliches are cliches for a reason, and usually because they contain a kernel of truth.
In the same way you can’t love without loss, neither can you look forward to something without the knowledge that it will remorselessly slide from the future, to the present and into the past. This trip, and this week with the Wolfes / Blebys / Franklins here in Grantown-on-Spey has long hung around our future, all-too-briefly lit up our present, and must now be burnished into our past.
It’s been good.
Actually, it’s been much more than good. This has been the 6th instalment of these trips – taking us to NZ, the Blue Mountains, Austria, Kangaroo Island and Mauritius before now. Each of them comes with a multitude of memories, but for me it’s the group photo that tells the story best. Three of the members of this year’s trip didn’t even exist for the first one. All of us have changed, grown, evolved as characters and as visages. Funnily though, when we are together it doesn’t really feel like anything has changed. Precious are the times like these, that they punctuate our lives with their power to become memorable waypoints on this journey of ours. I have to look up the older photos when we get back, and see just what has changed.
So, Scotland, what of Scotland? What a cracking place. My first observation was just how friendly and genuine the people were, and that will be my abiding memory (assuming no disasters getting out of the joint tomorrow morning!). From start to finish the Scots have been an absolute joy. Friendly, personable, genuine, confident and welcoming. They have given the indication of being proud and keen to host us, assured and relaxed, with no need for bravado or patronising “tourist experiences”so much as a humour and knowing feel for how to display their culture to visitors. I expected the inspiring landscapes, but didn’t anticipate the human warmth I’ve experienced. To be frank, it’s been sadly lacking in a lot of the world recently, and it’s educative that it seems so apparent after the current feel of Australia.
We just heard that mum has arrived at Glasgow, where we meet her tomorrow to hop a flight to Reykjavik. It’s only the thought of what’s to come that makes me ok with the sadness of this first week finishing. I do try to keep a ‘glass-half-full’ approach to life as much as possible, but the glass really does feel half full tonight, and not just because we have to eat and drink the kitchen down to bare bones in the next 12 hours.
Not sure how often the blog will get updated as we travel round Iceland. I know we have internet access for the last weekend in Reykjavik, but I’m not sure what it will be like in the little places we stay on our circumnavigation. I guess time will do it’s thing, and by this time next week we will all know the answer to that.
Oh yes, and the cliche was wanting to use the word ‘bittersweet’.
Everything in one place 