When winds frae off Ben Lomond blaw, An' bar the doors wi' drivin' snaw

While winds frae aff Ben-Lomond blaw,

An' bar the doors wi' driving snaw,

An' hing us owre the ingle,

I set me down to pass the time,

An' spin a verse or twa o' rhyme,

In hamely, westlin jingle.

-Robert Burns

 

I took the train to Inverness yesterday. Why, you ask? I had a train ticket to use, and pretty much all trains lead to Inverness. Even that is a 2 1/2 hour trip one-way. Train travel may be smarter in some aspects, but it's still very limiting. So I took the 8:01 out of Helmsdale and arrived in Inverness around 11:45(there were delays because it snowed) and stayed all day to take the 5:54 out of Inverness and get home at 8:30. You would hope that all this walking would toughen me up, but it still just wears me out.

 

I visited Tomnahurich Cemetery first, since the weather was iffy. It had snowed during the night and everything was wet and squishy. The cemetery is very large but not very old. There were lots of Victorian era Celtic style crosses. The grounds are formed around a high hill, and there are paths up to the top that would make for a very nice walk in the summer.

 

And then I went shopping. It's so hard to find anything that smacks of Scotland for a reasonable price, and I am trying to find presents for family at least. It's killing me! Inverness itself is not very large: it's smaller than Omaha, if that means anything to you. So I walked hither and yon and bought a few presents, and it snowed and blew and sleeted.

 

I stopped in the Cathedral of St. Andrew(be shocked: I would have gone in the Presbyterian Church, which is much older, but they keep it locked) which is a Victorian age building and what the Reformers would have called "popish." Pretty, but not quite the type of building I would want to worship in.

 

 

I was glad to rest and warm up a bit.

 

Then I said goodbye to the warm popish church and headed out towards the train station with a stop at the afore-mentioned Inverness Museum(mainly because you have to pay a pence to enter the "water closet" at the station, and I'm not one to spend money loosely) where you can see fascinating things like:

A great Auk egg.

And then I went home and went to bed.