Findhorn Scotland

Off to a new adventure - Findhorn, near Inverness Scotland. A good solid day of travel commencing with a 7AM departure from our happy home in Knockbrown, with the offer of a ride to Cork airport from our kind and generous neighbor, Pauline.

Then Ryanair didn't bat an eyelash at our 4 (!) oversize, overweight duffels, 4 rollarounds, 4 backpacks, 3 purses and assorted shopping bags. On we went to Dublin. In Molly Malone's fair city (well the airport, which isn't really the city at all) we changed planes for Aberdeen. Now Ryanair is a point-to-point airline (a method they make a point of noting), so changing planes involves collecting your luggage (those 4 overweight duffels) and schlepping them up to the departure floor and checking them in again - another chance to charge us for overage on our luggage that they didn't take.

Landing in Dyce (somewhere near Aberdeen they tell us), we partook of some Scottish cuisine at the airport (about as you'd expect) and found an oversize cab to deliver us to the train station - which turned out to be just a platform with some uninformative signs.

Fortunately we didn't have to carry the baggage over the bridge to the other platform, and pretty soon we were rolling along on steel wheels in decidedly better style than most of the trains we've been on. A helpful conductor and several friendly locals get us on and off going the right direction and at the right station.

But arriving at Forres we find a closed station, no taxi's and almost nobody around - except a privatish looking small bus. As I walked over to see if the driver could help us, he starts to pull away! I managed to tap on the window, which got his attention (since he only had two passengers, one of them canine). He says, "Well no, the taxis are all in town, but I'm going that way and I can call you a taxi. And I'll drive around the circle and pick up your luggage." What a guy! Turns out Helmut lived at Findhorn for some time, asked us to say hi to KayKay for him, which is who we're staying with later in the week. He proceeded to call a largish taxi for us "Big enough for luggage for Africa", which was waiting at the bus stop downtown when we got there. With some juggling, pushing and squeezing we manaqed to get all of us and the horrendous baggage into a Citroen Berlinga.

After checking into the trailor (locally, caravan) we set off to explore Findhorn and hopefully find some grub for the kids. Tired and hungary, we stumbled into the community center which was in the process of serving pizza and salad to a group of some sort. But they turned us out; we weren't the right sort, or didn't pay enough or something. Informed that there was food available in Findhorn town we set off to walk the mile to town. On the way we noticed a center for healing and compassion, obviously associated with the Findhorn center. The hypocracy of that juxtaposition was a little much. I'm afraid, whatever other postive attributes the Findhorn foundation may have, the follow-the-rules particularness of the kitchen personnel put us off Findhorn quite a bit. Maybe tomorrow will better.