Slog to Joy
August 10-17, 2023
Like everything else, the cost of travel became significantly more expensive in 2023. Our friends the CWs decided to come out and visit us in Berlin, and since we knew we wanted to travel elsewhere together as well, we let the cost of plane tickets to different hubs in Europe help guide our decision of where to go. The cheapest flights from Seattle went into Edinburgh, and as it happened, that was one of the places all of us were most keenly interested in visiting. It did mean that the CWs had to endure a pretty brutal 3-leg trip to reach us in Germany, but we met them at the airport with beers and homemade pizza in hand and began our first joyous welcoming of friends to Berlin since before the pandemic.
We’d been dying to show people our favorite stuff from the last few years, so Cream and Peebs laid back and let us curate a tour of all things Berlin. For Kirb, that meant eating all of the French butter and unpasteurized cheese that you simply can’t get in America. We rented bikes from a shop in Schillerkiez on a busy summer Saturday and got the last pick of the dilapidated relics in the basement. Cream named his “Rusty” and immediately wrote it a jingle that he sang for the following week. Peebs got a purple big-kid bike with fluorescent aftermarket mud guards and stickers on it. Though not the prettiest models, the bikes worked well enough to take us on a huge loop of parks, bakeries, and markthalles to pick up all of our favorite things to eat. That night, in classic Berliner fashion, we drank at the späti around the corner from our apartment until 4am and then found the only open kebab shop in the neighborhood for a ceremonial drunk döner.
It’s easy to sell the gloriousness of Berlin summer to friends back home, and we definitely hyped up the sunny days by the canal and warm evening bar crawls to our friends before their trip. But when they arrived, the weather did not want to cooperate with our boasts and promises. For the majority of July leading into their visit in early August, the weather in Berlin was dreary, gray, and muggy with daily thunderstorms; too hot to wear raincoats or long pants and perpetually, uncomfortably moist. We had big Sunday plans to go to flea markets and Mauerpark, but when we woke up groggy to find it pouring rain outside, we weren’t particularly sad that it was going to be a slow, inside sort of day. Thankfully, the weather cleared by the evening for a visit to the Dark Matter exhibit:
A parallel cosmos of expansive light installations in which the boundaries between the real and digital worlds blur. In the pitch-black rooms of a former factory site, the visitor embarks on a journey through seven partly interactive works. Light, movement and sound merge into emotional choreographies of bright shapes and colors.
We all thoroughly enjoyed this exhibition, staying for hours to experience every moment of each individual installation.
We spent the next few days trying to do all of the quintessential Berlin things that the weather would permit. We explored the ruins of the abandoned spy tower Teufelsberg and watched from the highest point in the city as winds whipped across the treetops in Grunewald forest. We rode bikes all over the place. We saw the exhibit Devouring Lovers by Eva Fàbregas at the Hamburger Bahnhof National Gallery and got yelled at for touching the artwork inappropriately. We ate way too much Yemeni food. It was really lovely to have an excuse to act like tourists in our own city again after such a long time.
Peebs is a planner. Since this was her big international summer trip, she wanted to make sure she got exactly what she wanted, which was great for us: It meant we didn’t have to plan anything. It was a rare treat to have a weeklong vacation in a new country and have no real idea what each day was going to bring. We caught an early flight out of Berlin and landed in Edinburgh, then hired a £100 (€116/$125) car to drive us over an hour to the town of Drymen, our first leg of the West Highland Way. Our intel said there was a B&B called the Glenalva at the trailhead, but when Peebs knocked on the sliding glass window to see if she could use the bathroom, a very stern woman in a bathrobe answered. She was decidedly not pleased by our presence, responding in a thick Scottish accent, “I don’t have any idea what you’re saying.” With tails between our legs, we walked the 15 minutes into town to get some water and find No Public Restroom signs posted outside every open business. Eventually, we decided to stop and get breakfast (and be able to use a bathroom) and the Scottish Porridge that Mazz ordered was so good it quickly became a thing of legend in her mind. It tasted like birthday cake and was made with some sort of “double cream” that seems unsourceable outside of small Scottish villages.
Once we hit the trail we found the countryside filled with purple thistle and heather and vibrantly-colored butterflies. We also found gigantic swarms of tiny flies that for some sections of the path wriggled thick like a living blanket over the dirt. The bugs seemed particularly interested in Mazz; she almost instantly got a bite in the middle of her chest that swelled into a mound and stung like an acid burn. We lamented the store in Drymen being sold out “Smidge,” the local deterrent for the 40 different types of swarming, biting insects that the Scottish all refer to as midges. About an hour into the trail, we were able to borrow some bug spray from some better-prepared hikers, but Mazz still needed to put on a jacket to keep the insects at bay. It was warm, so she got that outer layer nice and smelly on the first day of the weeklong hiking trip.
Once we finally trekked all the way to the top of Conic Hill, there was enough of a breeze that it kept the bugs at bay and we could sit in peace and enjoy the sprawling panorama of Loch Lomond below. To get off of the hill, we took a quicker, steeper route down that forced us to run screaming through a literal swarm of flies that clung all over our clothes. Dozens of them were stuck in Peebs’ hair. We were thankful to clomp into the cute lakeside town of Balhama and find that the midges weren’t an issue anymore once you got off the trail.
When we booked our August accommodation two months earlier in June, there weren’t a whole lot of options left on the West Highland Way, so Peebs had to get creative and often just take what was available. Our first night at the Oak Tree Inn was the poshest of the entire vacation, and it might have set our expectations unfairly high for the rest of the trip. The lake-facing rooms were luxurious (TV in the bathtub!) and the food was by far the most delicious we ate in Scotland. Mazz was stoked to find the restaurant offered a full gluten-free menu and had GF beer on tap. We both got fish and chips with mushy peas and it was arguably the best version of the dish we’ve ever had. We were not surprised to learn afterwards that the Oak Tree had won the title “Best Pub in Scotland” several times. There was a comprehensive breakfast spread the next morning where Kirb inadvertently ate haggis for the first time. He thought it was crumbled up black pudding and he ate a whole pile of it with his scrambled eggs. It was delicious!
Day two on the West Highland Way was sunny and mild and we picked up some sunscreen and Smidge at the single shop in town before continuing on the trail up into the trees and down to another edge of the lake. Loch Lomond is the biggest lake in the UK and we definitely hiked along its shore for an entire day without feeling like we were anywhere close to a change of direction. We showed up at our next destination, Rowardennan, before it was time to check into our hostel, but found there was little more to the “town” than the Clansmen Pub. Thankfully, after a long hike, that was the only establishment we wanted or needed.
Lots of oak growing right next to the water on this trail
The Rowardennan Lodge Youth Hostel was about a 15 minute walk further down the lake, passing by some camping spots and a long-dilapidated ferry dock. The hostel is housed in an incredible old building all by itself on the water and we had a room just for the 4 of us because we paid for all 6 beds. We’re adults. We’ll stay in a hostel, and we’ll sleep in the same room as our friends, but we’re much too old for random strangers in our bedrooms anymore. The hostel was offering some kind of chili bar for dinner that night so we walked back to the Clansman for more local fare instead. Every menu in Scotland had the same few items: fish and chips, meat pie, and a confounding dish called “Haggis, Neeps, and Tatties.” Once we saw the dish come out of the kitchen the name finally made sense: three piles of mush consisting of haggis, turnips, and potatoes. Mazz got three whole langoustines for £12 and it felt like the first “cheap” food or drink we’d found in the country. Eating out in Scotland is expensive for Berliners; the Americans weren’t fazed by $8 beers.
The next morning the rain was pouring and we had to get to the other side of the lake. A small boat took a handful of us across while the skipper provided some history of the region through a distorted loudspeaker that couldn’t get louder than the engine; he said something about Richard the Bruce and how the lake was very deep. The port town of Luss on the other side was incredibly cute, but even in full rain gear we were soaked within minutes of walking around outside. To escape the rain, we sipped tea and sampled some sausage rolls in a little cafe while we waited for a bus heading north. We’d been advised to eat these local specialties, but in this establishment, a “sausage roll” was just a starchy slab of sausage between two pieces of white bread. Quickly, we learned that the addition of HP Brown Sauce, which was provided on nearly every table, was essential for enhancing the flavor of most Scottish dishes. Tangy, slightly sweet, and full-bodied, Brown Sauce is an excellent utilitarian condiment for cuisines lacking in…nuance.
We were picked up on the side of the soggy highway by a posh jetliner bus which carried us past the northern tip of Loch Lomond to the town of Tyndrum. Here we found our first proper Scottish whiskey shop and picked out a bottle of Speyburn 10 Year for around £35. It was worth every penny. After a properly forgettable lunch in a very crowded pub, we hit the trail to the Bridge of Orchy. We were now in the edges of the highlands, with grassy fields rolling off into the distance and waterfalls streaming down every hill.
The rain held off for most of the afternoon until the final hour trudge into town. When we arrived, we had to act quick: A bus was coming at any moment that could take us close to our next hotel out in the mountains, or we could eat dinner in Orchy, get some post-hike beers immediately, and try to summon an Uber later on. We decided to let the bus drive on by. Inside the restaurant, we were informed that there was no room for us to dine that evening, Ubers don’t actually come to this place regardless of what the app says, and another bus wasn’t arriving for several hours. There was nothing left to do but peel off our raincoats and start drinking. As it turned out, someone who just got off their shift at the restaurant was also a cabbie, so after a few pints they drove us to our final destination for the evening: a lavish hotel in the absolute middle of nowhere.
The Kingshouse Hotel is all alone in this secluded area of the mountainous highlands. There is posh lodging in the main building with an all-wood panorama-view bar and restaurant. We, however, were staying in the bunkhouse, which was essentially just an upscale hostel, with the four of us sharing two sets of bunk beds in a single room. We cracked open the scotch in the communal kitchen and found a Spanish hiker named Anna posted up there; she had hiked all day to reach the Kingshouse only to find it completely booked. Accommodation was full everywhere on the West Highland Way during our trip. It is not the sort of place you can travel spontaneously during high season and expect to find a room. Anna was just going to sleep on the padded benches in the kitchen that evening and asked if we minded. Of course we did not, and offered her some of our scotch after a long and difficult day of travel.
The restaurant at the Kingshouse Hotel tried to be fancy, but everything was so disorganized inside that the chaos came across as more humorous than annoying. We heaped praise on a teenage bar back who seemed to be keeping the entire operation from crumbling into pieces and he didn’t quite know what to make of us. The next morning when we returned to the restaurant for breakfast, we were haughtily shooed away to a separate area for bunkhousers. Here, a single guy was tasked with creating custom breakfast rolls and making coffees for dozens of low-cost lodgers. The bacon, mushroom, and potato patty sandwich slathered in brown sauce was a hearty and delicious way to start a long day of trekking.
Our moods brightened immediately upon hitting the trail, seeing that we were now in proper sweeping highlands that spread off endlessly into the distance. After an hour or so following the road into the mountains, the trail veered inward and started going steeply up. “The Devil’s Staircase” is the highest part of the West Highland Way at 550 meters, named for some locals who died in the 1900s using the route for a whiskey run. This area was particularly beautiful, covered in purple wildflowers with babbling brooks cascading alongside the path. At the top, you can see down into several valleys and along the long, snaking ridge where the trail continues on the other side. For some reason, Cream prefers to practically run up hills while hiking, and when the rest of us made it to the ridge, we found that he had accidentally continued on a side path all the way up to the very top of the mountain. Apparently, when he arrived there had been a group of hikers laying down directly on the trail, so he thought he had to keep going up. We were already leisurely having lunch in the grass when he made his way back down to find us.
The rest of the hike follows a ridge through a stunning section of unspoiled highland before descending down through a mossy forest to the picturesque river town of Kinlochleven. We like to more-or-less run down descents, so we sped out ahead of the CWs after lunch and beat them to the pub by a pint. The Devil’s Staircase was our favorite hike of the trip and probably in our top 10 favorites of all the hikes we’ve done in Europe.
That night, out of necessity, we stayed in a stuffy B&B in some older gentleman’s home, as it was the only lodging option available to us when we booked in June. There were three places to eat in town but it was unclear if we were going to be able to eat at any of them without a reservation, so Cream went around to check them out and was assured at one pub that we could just show up and get a table. The place was completely packed with hikers and locals alike when we arrived, and we were indeed served something resembling food, but we left Kinlochleven thinking that the place looked a lot nicer than it felt to visit. In this town, we also transitioned to a new variety of midge - a very small cloud of tiny black specks that leave red dots on your skin if you let them surround you for more than a moment. All of the hikers we passed at the campsite in Kinlochleven were wearing netting over their heads. We were happy to have lodging indoors, even if it was in a stuffy, expensive B&B.
The Devil’s Staircase hike took us 4-5 hours to complete and we were exhausted by the end. The next section of the hike was supposed to take 6-½ hours; none of us particularly felt like that was a thing we wanted to do. So, we grabbed another bus north that skipped us all the way to the end of the West Highland Way in Fort William. We decided not to have breakfast at the stuffy B&B and instead try our luck in a larger town and were happy to find a cute little cafe called the Kilted Camel that served “Wee Scottish Breakfasts.” This meant it was the same eggs, toast, bacon, sausage, mushrooms, and beans that every other establishment in the country served for breakfast, but in a much more-reasonably-sized portion. This town had a proper street with shops and we picked out a new bottle of local booze for the night: some “scotch amaro” made in Glasgow. A £10 cab got us out of Fort William to the base of Ben Nevis, the tallest mountain in the UK.
Though it wasn’t time to check in yet, the Ben Nevis Inn let us ditch our bags so we could spend the afternoon hiking up the mountains more comfortably. Turns out, nothing was really going to make that hike particularly comfortable. Though it’s not on the actual West Highland Way, the hike up Ben Nevis is a huge attraction in the area and was far more crowded than anywhere else we’d hiked that week. The trail consisted solely of stone stairs that ascended up and up the side of the mountain, the peak of which was completely socked in with clouds. Again, Cream took off in a sprint up the hill while everyone else trudged behind. Peebs and Mazz decided that the “slog-to-joy ratio” of this hike was far too lopsided and gave up early, retreating back to the bar for early afternoon beers. For some reason, Kirb kept going up, and when he finally found Cream at the ridge that marked the halfway point of the climb, he was thoroughly uninterested in walking up another step. Peebs caught the two of them on film through the binoculars as they entered the final stretch of the descent to the inn: two Bombadills trekking along in step, staves in hand, faithfully returning to their Goldberrys.
Though the Ben Nevis hike was so maligned that it instantly became the group’s new barometer for awfulness, everything about the Ben Nevis Inn was fantastic. The restaurant had a much more forward-thinking approach to the same traditional dishes we had seen over and over in the other restaurants. Everything we ordered there was fantastic. Our room in the bunkhouse below the tavern was spacious and modern with a perfect table for playing games and our own small kitchenette that looked out on a grassy terrace. After dinner we drank our whiskey amaro on ice as the sunset gave the surrounding countryside an enchanting yellow glow.
We tried to find a bus the next morning that would take us from the hostel across the river to a nearby trailhead, but there wasn’t anything marking a stop where google maps insisted it should be. We walked 15 minutes down the country road looking for any sort of proof of a bus stop, asking local teens along the way, and eventually had to frantically run and flag down the tiny bus when it stopped seemingly at random to let someone off at a campsite. The hike that day into the Steall Gorge wasn’t particularly demanding - much appreciated after the previous days’ steep, fruitless plodding - but the scenery was fantastic. After a slow, steady climb up into a valley, we emerged into a huge open field with a towering waterfall in the distance. The slog-to-joy ratio on this hike was perfect. We caught the same bus back into town from the parking lot a few hours later and got the front row seats in the top of the double-decker, laughing giddily as the too-tall roof was smacked again and again by tree branches that stretched out into the road.
The best lodging option available to us in Fort William was another B&B, but this one wasn’t quite as stuffy as the last, and the old couple who ran it seemed to have a good sense of humor. Our room was gaudily adorned with velvet everything and an antique four-post bed; an odd match for its dirty, stinky inhabitants. Still, it was comfortable and clean and conveniently located between the shops and the train station. We spent the late afternoon buying souvenirs, and when we went to try and eat at the restaurant we had chosen, there was a line stretching out the door. It took a long, hungry hour to get inside the Geographer, but once we did and ordered burgers and a giant bowl of mussels for the table and were glad we had waited.
The train ride from Fort William back into Glasgow came highly touted and was just as gorgeous as it had been hyped, with huge expanses of wilderness stretching out the windows for hours on end. From Glasgow, it was another half-hour train ride through small villages until we ended up back in Edinburgh for our final night. Lodging was particularly expensive for the Wednesday we were trying to stay in the capital city: the average hotel price on booking.com for 4 people was €750. We jumped on the last available 4-person room at the Edinburgh Backpackers Hostel for a third of that price. Located in the heart of the old city, the hostel is enormous, and we laughed as we drug our packs up 8 flights of stairs to find our room at the very top.
Edinburgh is such a great city! We had no idea. Generally, we’re not city people, but we liked the vibe of Edinburgh so much that we could see ourselves living there if the stars aligned. The Fringe Festival, the biggest performing arts festival in the world, was in full swing when we visited, so the streets were packed with buskers and tourists and people handing out fliers for shows. We went to dinner early and got seats right away at a popular restaurant called Makar’s Mash Bar that specializes in foods that are - you guessed it - mashed. You choose a protein, one of ten-or-so mashed options to pile it on, and then a sauce to pour over the whole thing. The food was good but not quite what we expected for a place with 4.8 stars out of 5000 reviews on google. Looking around at the other tables, all of the Scottish people were eating haggis, neeps, and tatties. We wondered if we had ordered the wrong thing.
We spent the rest of the night on a pub crawl, starting with a bar our waiter recommended called the Black Cat. It was great for a first drink and perfect for moving on to a number of nearby dives. One in particular called Dirty Dick’s caught our eye, a dank cave filled with dusty bric-a-brac, and though it was packed with people we were quickly able to snag a table. The whole place smelled like fish and chips and was covered in fruit flies and we loved it all the more. We ended the night with a final round at a bar by our hostel where a one-man-band was covering pop songs for drunk tourists. We took guesses at what he was going to play next, and Kirb was right: he was absolutely going to play some Fleetwood Mac.
We got up with the dawn, said goodbye to our dear friends the CWs, and began our trek back to Berlin. Returning home, we found our poor ground floor apartment had not fared well from an extra-humid month of rain paired with double the daily showers from visitors. It was a real mold pit. Kirb’s Macbook - which we have used to make every post on this website until now - also fared poorly while we were away. It went to sleep while its master was off traipsing in Scotland and never woke up again. The computer coroner said that there was visible water damage on the logic board, but we’re not aware of any water being spilled on it. Kirb is convinced the crazy humidity inside the apartment somehow condensed inside the frame and dripped down onto the circuits. Mazz, who is a scientist, insists that this is highly unlikely. We’ll never know for sure.
Why did it take us so long to get to Scotland? It’s great there! We had a blast on this trip and would definitely come back for more. Most of all, it was a true joy to be able to travel with dear friends again after years of separation from the pandemic. When we first planned this trip, we asked the CWs if they wanted some time to themselves, as this was their first big international trip without their son Emmett, who was being shipped off for two weeks at summer camp and grandma and grandpa’s house. They didn’t even hesitate before saying no. They wanted to spend as much time in our immediate vicinity as possible. We were happy to oblige. We spent two weeks right up in each other’s areas, scrapping and yelling and mixing it up, loving every minute with that damn crew. The slog-to-joy ratio was perfect.