If there's a theme tune to the trip to Oban - this would be it. The piano hammers bouncing harder the higher we climbed in our borrowed car, further and further into the mountains and away. Hearts lifting and lightening with every mile. The weather level: Scottish. We laughed in the face of gale force winds, we cackled at snow-rain-sleet. We were going on holiday damn it, even if it killed us. Those were the kind of giggles ringing round the metal and then out the window into the wind; swooping over lochs and bridges, and down into the valleys.
Weather. I'd already vowed to buy plastic trousers by the time we'd swam across the carpark at motorway services outside of Ecclefechan.
I went to the wild West (of Scotland) for new year, with one of my wisest, kindest, lucky-to-know-her friends from way-back-when. And we chugged into the mountains, and ate cheese sandwiches by the loch in Luss where the river path was more river than path.
We pressed on, further than we'd ever been before, under clouds that trap red and yellow light on the snow-capped mountains. We chased a triangle of blue sky all the way to Oban. Which, by the way, is something to behold. The A85 ripples over one final hill before she reveals the treasure cove below. By the time we got there the town was full of glittering lamplight allure. It had finally stopped raining.
The next day we walked. Into the town and then out of it. The light. The light under Scottish skies sings colours. The light clangs against your pupils and makes your head ring like a bell.
Unlike the whisky. Which, when taken correctly, as prescribed, will cure all matters physiological and philosophical.
New Year's Day meant walking boots, two castles, one mystical rock, nine miles over beach, hill and road, dodging children on quad bikes, acres of air, only a bit of rain, and two blisters.
And then crash-bang-wallop we're back in the car and heading South, but not down, because these are the places I will always go - later this year when reality bites back, these are the places I will always go. I am on my way. I am on my way. I am on my way back to get things started...
