Adventures in the Scottish Countryside

A friend from the department and I decided to go on a bike adventure today. We were going to go to the Secret Bunker (where the Scottish parliament would have gone had there been full out Nuclear War during the Cold War) but after finding out that it would cost us over 6 pounds to get in we decided to go on a different adventure instead. There are all these "standing stones" throughout the British and Scottish countryside and so we decided to go visit one. I borrowed the bike of someone from my residence and off we went. It was great fun but since the borrowed bike belonged to someone slightly shorter than me, biking uphill was a little bit of a challenge.

We biked out on the "B road" because the "A road" is much busier and since people here drive like maniacs, we figured it would be safer. We found the turnoff and biked up this little random road through farms and such. It got to a point where the road got pretty sketchy so we decided it would be best to leave our bikes behind and just walk. Apparently we missed the "standing stone" because we ended up in this little wooded area with a bee farm.


After exploring a bit, we headed back to the road and wandered back to try and find this "standing stone". We finally found it, right smack dab in the middle of this farmer's field and so off we went, treking through this field to get to the stone. Very cool, and definitely strange because you would never be able to do anything like that in Canada. However, here in the UK, you can basically walk through anyone's property to get to an archaeological site.

I'm glad I was able to get out of the town today. I don't think we'll be able to go biking for much longer. The weather is starting to change and it's starting to get dark around 6:30-7. I guess I should really think about buying a bike in the spring so I can do more of this. There are so many neat places to go around here.