Many moons ago… way back in 1995, BigSal, Bluddy Mary and I went on an extended ‘Grand Tour’ of Europe. We spend 70 days hanging out with certifiable lunatics on an old Top Deck double decker bus called ‘Freckle’ on the contintent and another week with a different gang of lunatics on another double decker Top Deck bus travelling around Wales and then we hired a car for about 6-7 weeks to troll around Ireland, Scotland and the rest of England.
The tour around Europe was one of the best things I’ve ever done. I saw amazing places and it has inspired me to want to keep travelling (in spite of the absolute horror that is long haul flights for someone with my nasty back problem). it was an amazing trip and took us to France, Spain, Monaco, Italy, Greece, Turkey, Romania, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Austria, Germany, Lichtenstein, Swizerland, Holland (and I think I’m leaving places out) and because it was 10 weeks we went to all the major tourist highlights as well as many out of the way places too. There’s nothing like travelling when someone else is setting the itinerary and all you have to worry about is not missing the bus – which you couldn’t because well you were sleeping upstairs on it!
The trip around the UK was obviously less formal. We went to Ireland first then headed to Scotland straight to the Edinburough Tattoo and Fringe Festival before pottering around the rest of Englands’ Lakes District and then down to Penzance and the Salisbury Plains etc. Anyway I am getting distracted from my purpose here (as per usual). I was thinking about Fingal’s Cave when I started writing this.
One of the things on my ‘Must See’ list was Fingal’s Cave on the uninhabited Island of Staffa in the Scottish Inner Hebrides. In fact it was just about my only ‘Must See’ in the whole UK… everything else was stuff that BigSal was keen on and me and Bluddy Mary were along for the ride. For the record BigSal makes one helluva tour guide – she picked some amazing places to take us to that we never knew existed 🙂 We had a couple of wild goose chases (don’t mention the Men-an-tol!!) but mostly it was great.
Well Fingal’s Cave looked like an amazing place, crazy hexagonal rock formations that are similar to the ones seen at the Giant’s Causeway in Northern Island…. and home to puffins!!! Now I have no idea why but I REALLY wanted to see the puffins!. There were boat trips leaving from Oban I think (?) and unfortunately on the two days we were in the area the weather was too rough to go out to Staffa. I was upset… we were so far away from home and it was unlikely I’d be back in the forseeable future. So Bugger. Poo. Bum. Piss Fart. :S
I have no idea where the fascination with the puffins came from. But I thought they were totally cool little birds, they hang out on the cliffs where they lay their eggs in rather vicariously situation nests and they don’t look particualrly aerodynamic but somehow they get their fat little bodies to fly and they’re covered in beautiful bright coloured beaks and are basically just one of natures little oddities (well so it seemed to me anyway). But alas, there was no puffin sightings for me except at the Edinburough Zoo… which just isn’t the same thing at all.
I was reading a science article today that mentioned that puffins are monogamous… they meet up with their mate at the same time each year to lay one egg that they both take responsibility nurturing and then they go their separate ways until they meet up again at the next breeding season. Bizarre. No doubt the whole monogamy thing is a lot easier when you only have to see each other once every breeding season!
Well I had no idea puffins subscribed to such a ridiculous concept! Why it goes agains every evolutionary ideal to deliberately retard the gene pool by continuously breeding with the same bird year after year! I’ve lost all respect for them now! Why would they choose to be monogamous when they don’t have a religious or societal expectation or imperative to do so??? It makes no sense! And you know I could never admire a creature that is out of it’s wits!
😛