To Tour or Not To Tour.

Today, Cro of Magnon's Meanderings, wrote a post entitled 'Itchy Feet', It's not as long and boring as this one might be so it's worth popping over to get the background reason for me writing this post.

Yorkshire Pudding said in response "I think it is very possible to be rooted to one spot like your old neighbour and to be wiser than somebody who is well-travelled. Some people travel without really seeing. The notion that travel broadens the mind is often fallacious."

A friend who is coming this evening to stay with me for the week is one of the most widely travelled people I know. She and her recently late husband travelled extensively in India and the Far East as well as in Europe and did it the 'intimate' way. They travelled by train from Scotland to Hong Kong and from Scotland to Moscow. They were rarely 'tourists', always travellers. They also lived the later years with houses in both Scotland and France dividing their time between the two. I cannot recall them ever, in the 45 years since we met, going to the USA except possibly when travelling around the world but even then I think they missed it out. Even in his last months when he was terminally ill and wheelchair bound his wife ensured that he was able to travel in Europe. 

My brother, on the other hand, has taken the view in life that there is so much to see in Great Britain that he has never even wandered across the channel (despite his degree being in Librarianship and French and doing his dissertation in French and being pretty good at the language). 

All of them had excellent careers and are/were very interesting people. 

I have never been on a 'hotel holiday' or a package holiday. My wife and I and two children spent a number of years reciprocally staying with German friends for a month each year in Germany and weeks with Dutch friends in The Netherlands. I holidayed for many years after I retired with the friends mentioned above at their house in France. I have travelled by car through a lot of Western Europe and stayed in Italy enough times to have seen a great deal of Tuscany and Umbria. I also lived for 10 years commuting between here and New Zealand as some of you will know from 'A Hebridean in New Zealand'. I've holidayed in Australia too, and stayed with family and friends. 

I think that I have managed to get a feel for the people and cultures where I have stayed that I might not have got as a 'tourist'. However I accept that even that experience has been limited. 

I think, therefore, that there is a distinction to be drawn between those who 'go abroad for a sunshine holiday' and those who go abroad to travel to experience and see other cultures and places. To that extent I can agree with YP's remark that travel does not necessarily broaden the mind.

As for wisdom I think that travel is irrelevant. 

A Profusion of Wild Flowers and Insects

The East Dumbartonshire Council on the East side of Glasgow have been planting small open spaces like roundabouts, bits of verge at junctions and the like with wild flowers. It's lovely to look at and great for the environment. The insects love them. I stopped with CJ and Anna in Lennoxtown  at the foot of the Campsie Fells on our way back from an enjoyable lunch in the Courtyard Café in Fintry up in the Fells.

Here are some of the photos from that brief encounter:

A small view from above

A bumble bee getting close and polleny

A bee on a cornflower

Linum grandiflorum, Red flax

Painted Daisy, Ismelia carinata

Marmalade Hoverfly above Painted Daisy, Ismelia carinata

Hoverfly (Scaeva selenitica ?) on Cornflower

Greenbottle on Cornflower

If You Can't Beat Them ......

I recently bought a bottle of wine when I was in Bishopbriggs. I thought, when I picked it up, that it was a New Zealand wine. I think you would probably make the same assumption.

I didn't look at the back of the bottle and took it on face value noting that, as is the habit in New Zealand, it was a Sav Blanc and was therefore being sold to be drunk young.

When I got it back to Anna's where I was staying I noticed that it wasn't a New Zealand or even a New World wine. It was a French one.

This is an on-line product sales description for this wine:

"Get the best of both worlds with this crisp and easy-drinking French-Kiwi wine. Made in France but with New World modern know-how, this fresh, zinging Sauvignon Blanc is great with any kind of salad: green, pasta, fruit, tabouleh, you name it! 

So here's a turn-up for the books: a French wine that looks just like a New World one. The kiwi in question refers to the fruit rather than the geographical location."

Please excuse me if I sound rather disbelieving. The French have obviously realised that there is money to be made in misleading people into believing that they are buying a Kiwi wine instead if a French one.

Don't get me wrong. This was a very acceptable Sav Blanc. And it was (almost) good enough to have been a New Zealand wine but at less than the usual price of a New Zealand wine. 

I suppose that one has to hand it to the French and this particular deception if a pretty flattering 

Summer Gales

It’s early August. It’s Friday. It’s nearly midnight. I’m just in bed. I put the Spring/Autumn duvet back on before I got into bed. The wind is howling round my very thick-walled old house as if it were the middle of winter. I can hear things being blown around outside. Things that don’t need tying down in the summer. I hate to think what sort of devastation is being wreaked on my garden. This is the Outer Hebrides. We are used to wind. But not like this in August. It makes me apprehensive for the winter. I don’t like hurricanes any more.