Afterwards, we walked around the castle gardens a bit. They were pretty enough, and I enjoyed some of the more bizarre plants, but it’s hard for a garden to impress me. For all the gardens diversity, the most fascinating plant I saw was not even in the garden. Just by the docks where the tour boats launched, was a batch of trees leaning on the cliff. Their branches and leaves and even the entire trees leaned dramatically backwards, away from the cliff, not toward the ground, but perfectly parallel to it. Leaves and all, it looked perfectly as if it were held there by hurricane winds coming from the opposite direction. There was barely a breeze, but I fully plan on using the picture I took to convince people that we got caught in a hurricane. .

With a quick stop for lunch at a local pub, I once again made the mistake of ordering a hot dish with cheese in it with the assumption that the cheese would come melted. I’ve done this several times now. Before, I ordered a cheese and onion jacket baked potato in Glasgow. I envisioned a steaming baked potato with melted cheddar and friend onions. What I got was a steaming baked potato with cold lightly shredded cheese and raw onion. Without tasting it, I knew I wouldn’t finish it. In any case I ordered a Tetley’s with my dish, and much like Tennet’s, I’d be hard pressed to differentiate it from bud or miller.

Our hostess, Hillary, had recommended an hour long walking path that brought us around a very hilly area to find a wonderful view of a cove, with blue waters and islands right out of Pirates of the Caribbean, while also bringing us quite near the aptly named Coral Beaches. All this time, gazing at the scenery, I had fantasies of what it must have been like to have been a member of the highland clans. To climb, wander, and roam these hills and call them home. It would have been a rough life by any estimate, but I couldn’t stop looking up at the hills and picturing the people who used to claim them. Odd to think in such a peaceful magnificent land were people who led such harsh lives.

So when we decided to part from the path and make our way to the white sand beaches via some hill climbing, I was all for it. The hills had been calling me to climb them since we set out anyway. I’m not sure I can quite express the joy I took in climbing them either. I have never been much for hiking – oh I love being in serene places and longs walks through them, but only rarely hiking. It had just never appealed to me overly much, and indeed I am not in the shape a hiker must be (last time I went hiking, the entire group had to turn back because I couldn’t go on any further). But there was something about the hills that kept calling to me to play with them, climb them, bask in their majesty and wondrous views they provide. When I wasn’t climbing them, I was staring at them and day-dreaming of climbing them. It may sound a little dramatic in the description, but I was feeling quite dramatic at the time.

The point of all this is that I took a great deal of joy in perusing the hills on our path to the coral beaches. When we finally arrived there, the beach provided a most wonderful and unique view of the vast ocean, obscured almost entirely by a myriad of tiny islands, some rising abruptly with steep emerald cliffs from the water. It is a view I sincerely hope I will never forget.