Scottish Crannog Center

We spent Friday relaxing and unpacking—reveling in clean clothes, our own mode of transportation that didn’t involve a color-coded map, and plenty of space. David and I caught up on Colgate work, and Emma and John spent hours constructing a fort for their growing collection of stuffed animals (Scotty the Scotland Bear met Langdon, the London Bear, and they are getting along famously so far…)in the guest bedroom upstairs. The formidable pile of laundry continued to diminish, and it was such a warm breezy day that I hung most of it outside to dry. At one point, the kids were occupied and David had gone to the grocery store, so I took a moment to sit down in the sunroom and flip on the telly. The Glee episode about Justin Bieber was on, and I really got into it. Halfway through Sam’s cover of “Baby,” I noticed that I was not alone in the room. I turned around to see John standing in the doorway with his arms crossed over his chest and a disgusted look on his face. “Really?” he said, “Justin Bieber, Mom?” Apparently, I was busted…for watching tv during the day AND for having less-than-discriminating taste in pop music.

Another moment of bad judgment on my part became obvious on Saturday morning. After having been surrounded by terribly thin, young and stylish women for a week in London (I saw only one other woman wearing a pair of Keens, and was not at all surprised to hear her speak with an American accent—though I DID notice that her Keens weren’t as cute as mine, if that matters!), I decided that it was high time I step up my fine-line-skin-care-regiment. On the train home, I carefully studied the section in my British beauty mag “Red” for Over-40s skincare (apparently, just like in the US, beauty can be realistically achieved only in one’s 20s or 30s, and after that, it’s all just maintenance until death…) and came to the conclusion that I needed some more alpha-hydroxy on the “delicate eye area.” So I went to bed with a generous coating around my eyes, then woke up in the morning with such swollen eyelids that I could barely see. Emma and David joked about it, but John was so appalled at my misshapen face that he couldn’t stand to look at me without shuddering. I wanted to point out that with such swollen eyes, my fine lines had completely disappeared, but figured that wouldn’t matter to him, and instead retreated to the kitchen in search of some ice.

Though we have just been traveling for two weeks, we all have the sense that our time in Scotland is starting to come to an end (the day we left for London with our students was officially the half-way mark for our semester abroad, by the way…) and we need to make the most of our weekends to see all the things we haven’t yet seen. So we packed an overnight bag and a cooler on Saturday morning, and headed out yet again! This time, we drove west and north a bit, to the area around Ben Lawers and Loch Tay. We stopped at the Scottish Crannog Center, which is a reconstructed loch dwelling that were found in Scotland 5000 years ago. A crannog is a big timber roundhouse built on piles over a heap of man-made “land” in the middle of the loch, and connected to the shoreline by a timber walkway. When we arrived, we joined a group of other families and a costumed guide who took us into the crannog and showed us how people lived during Scotland’s Iron Age. She gave each of the kids tasks that they might have performed had they been residents of the crannog.

John was pleased to be assigned the task of hunting, and Emma (as one of the older kids in the group) was given the job of cloth weaver and child minder, tasked with making sure none of the “wee ones” toddled off the side of the crannog into the water. The guide also explained how people and animals lived side by side in the crannog, which was divided into sections by wattle fencing, and the timber floor was kept clean with a fresh layer of bracken that was mixed with fresh flowers every few days. After she demonstrated the ways the families would cook over the hearth and showed the kids some of the dishes they would use to make butter, we went outside and back on land, where she demonstrated various Iron Age tools that would make holes in stones or turn wood. She enlisted Emma to demonstrate how to weave thread, and let Emma keep the wool-thread bracelet that they made together, and then let all the kids try to make fire with a wooden dowel threaded on a big bow (we all managed to make lots and lots of smoke, but that’s about it…) Overall, the crannog was a big hit, and we spent well over the two hours there that our guide book had suggested.

Finally, we hit the road again, and drove down the road that goes along Loch Tay. Once it curved around the end of the loch, it ended in a big waterfall, and we quickly pulled the car over to let the kids scramble around the rocks. Then we continued, up over Ben Lawers, which was a beautiful drive, but incredibly treacherous…one of those single-lane deals that are all over Scotland that are about as wide as a golf cart path but full of hairpin turns and (not kidding here) painted signs posted along the road that at one point probably offered a warning to motorists about some precarious situation ahead, but that hadn’t been repainted in so many years that they are now essentially just blank white pieces of wood. Along both sides of the road were pastures full of sheep and baby lambs, many of them just learning to walk, so we had to keep pulling over to take photos! It was quite beautiful, and we passed through several quaint villages on the way to Comrie, where we were going to stay for the night in an old farmhouse that had been converted into a youth hostel and campground. The kids absolutely loved this, because not only were there chickens running all over the courtyard between the stone farmhouse and barn and huge pens of sheep with their lambs and one with four huge horses in them, but because there was another family staying there with kids about their ages. While David and I unpacked and made dinner in the

communal kitchen, they played football outside with the kids, who spoke English but were from Spain. After dinner, we took a walk up the hill to a pond, then as it got dark returned to the croft and watched the first Harry Potter movie with the Spanish family and another group of Scottish toddlers who were travelling with a collection of adults, some of whom were camping in the teepee-style “katas” outside and others who were staying in the farmhouse. Since it’s now light until almost 8:30 pm, it was quite difficult to get the kids away from their friends, the football, the sheep, etc…and into the camp-style bunkbeds that were in our room!