Scotland Forever

The Northern Lights of old Aberdeen are home sweet home to me... Scottish folk song

Challenges for the solitary traveler are many , but sometimes they can be as simple as “Is the hostel on Suchandsuch Road or Suchandsuch Street?”

That was my problem some 25 years ago, walking from the main bus station in Aberdeen with an enormous backpack and wondering where I was supposed to go, and not a lot of people around to ask. I figured I had it sorted. Until it became pretty clear I didn't.

Travelling solo takes a certain mindset – the type of person who likes to set an individual schedule, change it on a whim, and motor on in a direction opposite the madding crowd. It's a huge attraction for the independent, or the impatient. Nothing worse than standing by the door jiggling keys in your hand waiting for road companions to get their acts together.

It's lonesome, though. No one to laugh at a particularly witty observation, or share a “Did you see that?” moment. Those moments pass without response and wind up noted in a journal paragraph. If you remember to write it down.

But the road provides. Temporary companions, or even co-conspirators depending on the appetite.

Back to Aberdeen, and that slightly chilly September morning and my burning question of wherethefugami – I examined my bare-bones tourist map to try to suss out where I was and where I had to go. Couldn't do it.

A tall grey-haired bespectacled man passed me, turned and came back.

“Do you need help?” Boy, did I. I explained that I was looking for the hostel.

“Ah, you're headed the wrong way. I'll take you there.”

So, I went. Sounds weird nowadays–go along with a complete stranger? But, he was wearing a Masonic ring, and my Dad was a Mason so I reasoned he had to be a good man. Faulty logic? Maybe. But I was right.

After dropping off the Backpack of Enormous Size, my tour guide, showed me the glittering Silver City in a way I'd never have managed on my own.

We wandered the Old Town, had the classic meat pie and chips lunch, saw famous spires of Marischal College, the heraldic ceiling of St. Machar's Cathedral, and on down to the harbor where tiny homes are built right into the North Sea wall. Thundering waves just the other side of a four-foot thick wall behind the headboard. Incredible.

All because a spiritualist minister told me his Native American spirit guide told him as he passed me on Union Street that morning “Help her. She's lost.”

You don't get that on a packet tour.