When Google Maps tells you it’s about 5 hours+ to get from the north of Scotland to Glasgow, it’s easy for a Canadian to think, “Well that’s the same as driving from Toronto to Ottawa. Easy.” But, when you factor in: leaving early enough to make the ferry, plus the ferry, plus the stops for you and/or the dog (there is not an On Route every 66km in the Highlands), and (and this is the biggy) Google assumes you will be driving at the speed limit the whole way there. That is 70 miles an hours anytime it’s 2-lanes, or 60 miles an hour everywhere else. Sixty. That’s 100 km/hr. On highland roads. In the rain (it is Scotland after all) and, for the first hour of the morning and the last hour of the afternoon, in the dark. As the roads weren’t too busy, I didn’t have to pull into passing places to let those behind go by all that often, but I can guarantee you that I was rarely driving the speed limit.
I bundled Scout into the car at 6:30am at home, and we walked into the hotel in downtown Glasgow at 4:25pm. A hotel where the parking is a lot 2 blocks away. And it was pouring by the time we arrived. Sheeting down.
But we made it, and I was able to accomplish my number one goal: get a bank card. At 4:55 that afternoon I walked into the bank, a sorry, sodden, cranky mess, and 11 minutes later I practically skipped down Argyll Street, all because of a little square of plastic.