Thanks so much, Vonda, for having
me here, and thank you for allowing me to share my daughter’s rather unusual
travel experience to Scotland.
Even as I put this together for
you, I had to giggle. It seems like yesterday, even though it happened a long
time ago! (No, it was not that long ago, there’s no way she’s that old!
Impossible. That would make me…never mind… I’m not old enough to have a
daughter that age.)
When my daughters were in the fifth
grade, they had to do reports on a European country. My oldest got the
Netherlands. The teacher asked that they do something beyond just a report and
they were expected to read the report to the class. Well, a friend of mine had
the little Dutch cap and some wooden shoes, and I made my daughter a
traditional-looking dress. Wearing her costume, and a few extra pairs of socks
so her feet would stay in the oversized wooden shoes, she added to her report
by bringing a copy of Hans Brinker; or, the Silver Skates: A Story of Life
in Holland, and taking some Dutch chocolate for everyone to sample.
With her blonde hair, she looked adorable and got an A for her report and
presentation.
But when the younger child was
assigned a country, she got Scotland. We were living in a different school
district and this teacher said no general report, they had to do
something that showed they had researched the country, and it had to be
presented to the class. The younger one whined because she didn’t have the same
access to things such as clothing as her sister did. Not a kilt in sight! Oh
dear.
No home access to the Internet in
those days (and it wasn’t then what it is now), so I suggested she get on the
phone, call a travel agent, and ask if they had any brochures she could have
for her report. She called several. We got wads of stuff in the mail! Mixed in
with the normal tourist stuff and airfares were several brochures on biking and
youth hostels. Her little mind went into overdrive! A trip to the local library
yielded books such as visiting Europe on ‘X’ dollars per day.
She decided to write her report
like a diary, as though she had visited the country. She figured out how fast
she could ride her bike and how many miles she could travel in a day by riding
around our neighborhood for an entire day. With a good road map of Scotland, she
planned her trip, stopping along the way to sightsee, watching for Nessie in
the lake, and doing all the important tourist stuff including visiting castles
and museums. We also put her on a tight budget, which meant she couldn’t use
fancy hotels.
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| Loch Ness (where Nessie lives) photo by Vonda Sinclair |
She did some careful calculating.
It was very meticulously mapped out in a loop of the country. She’d sit there
with a ruler and worked on it every night. Didn’t get to do everything she
wanted because she couldn’t bike that fast!
All of it was worked out on 3 x 5 cards,
and believe me, she worked on it! What she thought she could do, she soon
discovered she really couldn’t. She had to modify that trip several times until
she managed to stay within budget and time restraints. We did suggest to her
that things don’t always go as planned and she needed to make allowances for
it. After some groaning, she went back to her cards and made some careful
changes.
It rained and she didn’t get as far
as she hoped. Then she caught a cold and wound up staying an extra day in a small
town. She counted her money and took the train, a very expensive luxury, to
make up for lost time because she wanted to see a particular castle (Dunrobin)
in the far north. (Rumored to be the one Walt Disney used as inspiration for
his castle.) She couldn’t afford a sleeper car, which meant she slept in her
seat and was “surprised” that she had to pay extra for her bike.
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| Dunrobin Castle photo by Vonda Sinclair |
Each day, the diary had an entry in
the margin of money spent, including stopping at banks and getting her American
Express Travel Checks cashed with conversion rates, etc. And most importantly,
how much she had left.
Using a theoretical amount of
money, she “bought” round trip airfare, including special fees (and that box)
for the bike to fly, which dropped her to a very tight budget, and she spent
about two weeks in Scotland.
As she wrote her little log of her
“journey”, she cut up those brochures to show the places she visited, gluing it
next to the entry for that day. She carefully made a map of Scotland and her
journey. She used real hostels that were advertised, and it was quite accurate,
including the fare for the train.
She began her diary when she left
Washington, DC with her bike packaged for air transport and saying an excited
but tearful goodbye to her family. After arriving in Glasgow, she wrote about
renting a locker in the airport to hold the box so she could package her bike
for her return trip.
With her bike and backpack, she
“visited” Scotland. Each entry was a different day. Some of the hostels
required extra money for things such as showers, including additional money for
hot water for those showers. She wrote about not washing her hair or being able
to wash her jeans. She wrote about food, what she had bought along the way,
what she was fed at the hostels, other “children” she had met at the hostels,
and the places she had visited. She “bought” souvenirs for herself and her
sister.
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| Edinburgh, Scotland. Photo by Vonda Sinclair |
It included things about the
weather, traffic, getting lost in the city, getting soaked in the rain, as well
as all items in her backpack, whining about things that had gone wrong, such as
a flat tire that she had to get repaired, body parts that ached, and anything
associated with traveling, such as seeing the stacks from a nuclear power
plant. Her whole report was sprinkled with emotions, from feelings of anxiety
to being totally enthralled.
Within the brochures, there was a
town with a calendar of events. One of the events was a street fair and
carnival. She planned that into her trip. Gathering her courage, she bought
blood pudding from a vendor at the carnival and tried it. (I let her see a
recipe for it and she decided there was no way she’d ever eat it!) Another
place talked about a special bed and breakfast, so she treated herself to a
nice comfortable night, complete with a hot bath and high tea.
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| Pitlochery, Scotland, photo by Vonda Sinclair |
The diary was well written and her
map showed where she had “traveled” and spent the night.
After neatly transcribing
everything into a new composition book (the kind of notebook that is bound with
sown string), she took the book outside and scraped it on the sidewalk to give
it a well-used appearance. Using a spray bottle, she misted it to make it look
as if it had gotten wet in her backpack.
She marked a road map, showing her
route, attractions she visited, and where she had stayed, and made a key of the
places. Then she very carefully drew a smaller map that fit on a single page.
Her father took her map to work and made black and white copies. She glued her
colorful copy into the back of her notebook. She went one step beyond and typed
everything into a neat report, minus all the pictures.
When the day came to do her report,
I fixed her a tureen of Scotch broth (a hearty soup made with lamb and barley),
and she took a box of Walkers Shortbread cookies for everyone to try. She
ladled some soup into plastic cups and gave her teacher and classmates a taste
of soup, along with a plastic spoon, napkin, cookie, and a copy of her map so
that they could follow along. She handed the teacher the typed “diary” and she
read her “diary” to the class. From what she had said, no one stirred in their
seats. She handed her picturesque diary to her teacher.
The teacher asked her a few
questions. She just smiled and answered as if she’d really taken the trip.
(Little actress!)
She found the whole thing to be
funny when she realized that everyone believed that she had gone there, except
she never got her report back. But she did receive an A. According to her, the
rest of the class had the usual boring stuff.
The afternoon of her class
presentation, I had a phone call from the teacher. I thought it was a joke, so
I played along. “Of course I let her go, why not?” It was all in her mind.
“Kids over there stay in youth hostels all the time. It’s a great way to
travel!” Yeah, if they are eighteen!
That night was a PTA meeting. I
went and the principal collared me. “Did you really let her do that?”
Again, I laughed it off. “Yep, she
had to keep very careful track of her money. Planned the whole trip by
herself.” (Technically I wasn’t lying. She did plan the whole thing, and she
did have to track her money to do it.)
I’m probably darn lucky Social
Services didn’t come knock on my door. Really, does anyone seriously think I’m
going to allow my young daughter to run around Scotland by herself at that age?
She was eleven years old! I wouldn’t let her jump on her bike and travel two
miles to a friend’s house. And I certainly wouldn’t have allowed her to travel
there alone!
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| The road leading into the Scottish Highlands. Photo by Vonda Sinclair. |
Anyway, that report must have been
passed to every teacher in the building. It was several weeks later when a friend,
who was a teacher at that school, called me about something unrelated, and then
sheepishly asked me about my daughter traveling alone.
“Heavens, no! Think about it. If
she went in the summer, she would have been ten. The child owns a two-bit used
clunker, not a lightweight mega-speed touring bike. And can you even remember a
time when my daughter wasn’t home? And what were the odds that she would have
gone to a country that she had to do for class?”
“Oh.”
By the way, my daughter is now a
grown woman, and she’s never been to Scotland. At one point, I expected her to
run off and do it, for she had talked about it several times while in her
mid-teens. But instead, she married young and had a child. It wouldn’t surprise
me if she took off one day for an extended visit. I don’t think she’d do it by
bike or stay in the hostels, but she fell in love with the country as she wrote
her diary. And she loves the Walkers Shortbread cookies! (Who doesn’t?)
But the really scary part of all of
it, for me as a mom, was the fact that I believe she really could have made
that trip. And if I had even hinted that she could have, she probably would
have taken off and done it! She might have survived, but I doubt I would have.
Both of my girls did well in
school, especially if it required a report or writing. I can’t imagine where
they might have gotten the gift of putting words to paper, but they did. Yet,
neither one has ever expressed any interest in writing. But there’s still hope
for my youngest one, who wrote a book, To Catch a Unicorn, in the first
grade, and won a literary contest in her school, and then convinced an entire
elementary school that she spent two weeks alone in Scotland when she was ten
with only a handful of money, a bike, and a backpack.
E. Ayers is a multi-published
and Amazon best-selling author of western and contemporary romances. Her books
are never too sweet or too hot. She writes down the middle. She is proud to be
part of the Authors of Main Street, an elite group of award-winning and
best-selling contemporary authors.
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