Drunk on visions of silver lochs, kilts, castles and general Scottish fantasy, my husband and I crafted our Google maps loop, in great anticipation of cinematic car journeys connecting each turreted hotel with the next Victorian coaching inn or swishy treehouse. We fancied ourselves a bit of a Highland fling — a two-week absorbing the incalculable majesty of those craggy, soaring peaks and losing our city cortisol somewhere in the soft, watercolour landscape of the glens. We wanted our minds to be rattled by the winds and our eyes stretched across the inky spines of distant hills, occasionally broken by a roaming stag.
I wanted to wear , to peel back the thick tartan curtains of a laird’s four poster and dress my children head to toe in the stuff, like an American losing their mind over their Scottish lineage. But most of all, I wanted to explore the resplendent stretch of the Highlands surrounding a lonely white house on the metallic Loch Maree, where my Great Grandfather and the extended family once escaped to for long weekends, and later, A.A.
Gill, who wrote evocatively about his stalking trips there. Dividing and conquering, my husband drove from London to Edinburgh with our luggage, hitting the pillow somewhere north of York, while I drew the short straw and chugged it up from Euston to Edinburgh (our road trip launchpad) on the train with two lively cubs, aged one and three. Courtesy of its hilly character, Edinburgh’s homogeneously austere, grey houses always se.