Taking the Low Road

Get the U.K. Highway Code booklet – and read it!

Sorry, this definitely should’ve been part of Tip #1. We had to order our booklet by post for our first trip but – lucky you – you can get yours online: The Highway Code : Directgov – Travel and transport.

Driving on the left side of the road from the right side of the car would make driving a bit of a challenge even in your own city – where you know the traffic rules and you’re familiar with the streets. Plop yourself . . .

• into an unfamiliar city,
• with slightly different traffic rules,
• traffic signs of unfamiliar icons with no words,
• streets and roads the width of our sidewalks,

and you’ve got an accident waiting to happen.

We – rubes, that we were –  thought that because we were all speaking the same language, our traffic rules would be similar, too. Turns out, we were wrong on both counts.

Roundabouts – while becoming more commonplace in the U.S. – are still an unknown commodity for many U.S. citizens. Large-scale roundabouts with all kinds of exit options are almost non-existent here and ubiquitous there. Just how does one negotiate a large-scale roundabout? The code booklet tells you how.

You’re on a sidewalk-width B road in the country. You meet on oncoming car. No room for passing. What do you do? Hint: the answer includes the word “lay-by” – a word you’ve never heard. But you would’ve known all about it and the correct action to take if you’d read the Highway Code booklet.

Still unconvinced you should read this little 100-page booklet? Okay, Smarty-Pants, what does a large white circle with a red border mean? Don’t know, do you? It means the street/area is off limits to any vehicles except bicycles being pushed. Not being ridden – being pushed. Yes, well. I don’t make ‘em; I just try to abide by ‘em while I’m there. You should, too, and the Highway Code booklet will help you do it.

Let’s say you ignore this Driving in Scotland Tip #6, get your rental car onto the streets of Glasgow, and notice there are just no policemen or troopers about. “Whoohoo! Even if I screw up, who’s going to know?” Don’t be an idiot: the U.K. Department for Transport relies almost exclusively on cameras to catch people like you. Aim your rental car down a street with one of those red-outlined circles and very shortly, you could be shelling out the US dollar equivalent of £100 because a discreetly placed camera caught you.

So. Up to you. But the smart money’s on learning about the traffic rules before you get there and doing your best to obey them once you’re there. Saves adrenaline. Saves dings and the predictable hassles with the rental car company. Saves traffic fines. Saves visits to foreign ERs. Saves lives – maybe yours.

Keep your eyes peeled for brown-and-white signs.


As in the US, there does seem to be some consistency in signposting government-owned or sponsored tourist destinations in these colors. You’ll be surprised how fast your reticular activating system will catch on; you’ll be an expert at spotting brown-and-white signs, no matter how small, by the time you fly back across the pond.

That said, many of the homes, castles, and museums on your must-see list may well be privately owned. If so, their signs will look however they jolly well please and will be posted just about anywhere. (See Tip #3 and #4.)

Signs in areas where we Yanks would expect only vehicular traffic may be positioned and/or sized for foot traffic.


The sign scenario I mentioned in Tip #3 was complicated by the fact that the one – and only – sign was about eight inches wide, two inches high, and about 18 inches off the ground. If we’d been walking, we no doubt would’ve seen it. But it was almost invisible to us while sitting in our car, traveling 35 mph. While 35 mph isn’t fast, it’s too fast to see such teensy little signs.

In general, signage is considerably smaller than the comparative billboards we’re accustomed to reading as we find our way in unfamiliar parts of the US. If you wear glasses or contacts, make sure you have your most current Rx in your glasses or contact lenses because, honey, you’re gonna need to SEE teensy little type as you’re driving down those B roads.

Dual carriageways, on the other hand, have signage comparable to our interstate signs – most of the time.

Signs aren’t always visible from both directions.


Get used to rubber-necking it. When you see the back of a sign on the opposite side of the road, as soon as you pass it, quickly whip around and read it.

We learned this the hard way on our first trip to Scotland. We must’ve driven the same road five times before we noticed one teeny little sign pointing the way. We’ve encountered this phenomenon many times. Don’t know if it’s misguided thriftiness, careless maintenance, or what.

Doesn’t matter: your job is to pay attention to ALL signs – the ones facing you and the ones facing the oncoming traffic. A sign facing oncoming traffic may be the only sign you’re going to find telling you where Castle —– is located.

Streets change names.


If you live on our East Coast in an older city or town that sort of evolved higgledy-piggledy over the two or three centuries of our nation’s brief history, then you’re already accustomed to this.

We live in the West, where most towns were carefully platted in nice, neat squares. Newly annexed properties and subdivisions are very carefully, for the most part, mated into the original town or city plan. Very seldom do streets change names in our neck of the woods.

You can imagine our surprise when we kept coming across new names every other block or so. Apparently, in the UK and Europe, this is rather common. Streets, especially in Edinburgh, can – and do – change names A LOT. Look sharp. As some streets intersect others at odd angles, we assumed, when we found a different street name at the next block, that we must’ve unknowingly left the street we meant to stay on. Most of the time, we hadn’t; the street had just changed names.

We haven’t used GPS in the UK yet, so I’m not sure how accurate GPS devices are, given the multiple intricacies of older UK cities. If you have, we’d like to hear about it.

Pay Attention to Tour Guides’ Rotation . . .

. . . especially when information hasn’t exactly been forthcoming.

My husband and I have met and known more Scots than your average American tourist. We’ve toured Scotland 17 weeks altogether. We’ve stayed in 15 (that I can remember) private homes and met many of the owners. While shopping for groceries, petrol, and trying to work out the washer-dryer thing, we’ve met their neighbors, relatives, friends, and fellow villagers. We’ve struck up countless conversations on trains, waiting in the ubiquitous queue, in shops, on great-house tours, while staying in B&Bs, you name it.

What have I learned? The Scots are . . . a lot like us. Much more so than the English. That may be because so many Scots immigrated to this country that our collective psyche has been subtly, yet deeply, shaped by this proliferation of Scottish descendants. (Read Born Fighting to see what I mean. James Webb says it much better than I ever could, so I won’t even try to paraphrase him.)

Because of all this immigration, many Scots have a built-in affinity for us, viewing us kindly as American cousins they haven’t yet met. They’ve also heard the stories, handed down by previous generations, of family members who immigrated to the U.S. and – sure enough – made good on the American Dream.

They like us. They really do.

When someone likes you, it’s easy to communicate with them. Good news for American tourists: most Scots want to tell us any and every thing they know about our shared heritage – Scotland’s wonderful country, history, and culture. And if you’re the least bit enthusiastic, they’ll tell you things they don’t know, making it up as they go – if you happen to be conversing in a pub.

Now, as any thinking person will realize, I’ve been speaking in generalities. There will always be the odd man out. And for some quirky, mysterious reason, the exceptions to the rule about friendly, talkative Scots seem to show up from time to time as . . . tour guides.

Yes, well. I don’t understand it either. My best guess is that those employed by the National Trust of Scotland and Historic Scotland to hire guides for their bazillion properties must be very busy indeed. I’m quite certain they don’t intentionally hire someone so ill-suited to the job. I think they’re just distracted – not entirely paying attention – when they hire the people who will be paid to give out information about their properties. No other way to account for the occasional hiring of someone who isn’t terribly fond of parting with knowledge . . . or good will . . . or even a tepid smile.

I’m just telling you to be forewarned. You will eventually encounter one of these types, not very often, but enough that you need to be prepared. We’ve toured literally hundreds of sites, and here’s the score.

Friendly, Informative Scottish Tour Guides: 544
Unfriendly, Tight-mouthed Scottish Tour Guides: 2

Which, when you think about it, is a w-a-a-a-y better score than we’d have here in the States.

Here’s how you cope, which is not to say it’s how I coped. When it’s obvious, by their terse one-liners, they’re not about to give you answers to your innocent questions, stop. Like an idiot, I just kept asking questions, thinking maybe he didn’t understand my American accent or maybe if I just demonstrated my sincere interest, he’d relent. I persisted in this till hubby yanked me into the next room and hissed, “SHUT UP.” You, profiting from my faux pas, will know to stop after the second rebuff.

And you’ll also know – because I’m telling you – that all is not lost. The unfortunate hiring of Mr. Tight Lips does not mean you will never get your questions answered. No, no, no. Just keep your eyes peeled for that very discreet rotation of the tour guides from one room to the next. (NTS and HS do this, I suspect, to ensure their guides are cross-trained and to alleviate their boredom.) Once you see the changing of the guard, just cycle back to the room where your questions went stubbornly unanswered and lo and behold, you’ll find a fresh, new face. And I’ll just bet she’ll be delighted to answer your question about the type of wood in the great hall’s overmantel or the origin of celluloid toiletry set of the eighth laird’s wife.

I can’t tell you how close I came to mailing the scathing letter I wrote to the NTS about a tour guide at Falkland Palace. In the end, I dumped my letter in the dust bin, figuring one so ill-equipped for a job wouldn’t last long – with or without my indignant letter. There are just some things you don’t do, in the interest of downplaying the Ugly American reputation. This was one of them. Let the Scots complain about their own, I figure – and you may want to follow suit.

Let the tour groups go ahead of you.

Don’t try to beat them. Trust me, they’re traveling faster than you, and they’ll flatten you when they finally catch up to you. And when 20 of them join you, even a spacious great hall can get a trifle claustrophobic. When they all crowd around the tour guide in the chieftain’s library, trust me, you don’t want to be there. The £15 ($20-$30 USD) entry fee you just paid will have been very poorly spent, indeed.

Allowing yourself to be crammed together with a large tour group is a sure-fire way to get as little as possible from a tour. Often these groups are given one guide from the property or site, and that guide travels with them from room to room. The guide’s job is to answer as few questions as possible and keep the group moving along at a fairly fast clip – so that the tour bus can get them to the next site on time . . . and the next one . . . and so on. If you’re with them, you’ll be hastened along at the same ridiculous pace.

Far better to hang back when you see this lot ahead of you. No one can make you join them, and it won’t take long before they’re at least one or two rooms ahead of you. Make good use of the wait time by reading all the free literature you’ve just been handed or by checking out the booklets and information in the site’s gift shop. If you’re feeling peckish, have part of your snack or lunch.

When you’re sure they’re well out of range, begin your own tour. The resident guides will be more relaxed, more willing to answer your questions in detail, and very relieved to be dealing with only two tourists instead of 20. Having them all to yourself (or at least not sharing them with 20 other tourists) will ensure you get the most possible out of the absurdly high entry fee you just paid.

Skip the glitzy tour books.

Almost every great house and castle worth its salt has compiled a rather impressive, glossy, full-color booklet for which they charge the equivalent of a U.S. hardback book. While you’re there, under the spell of that magical place, it’s hard to resist the temptation to buy one of these marketing marvels. “After all,” you reason, “it’ll help us get so much more from the experience.”

Maybe. If the glossy book is about your clan castle or has anything to do with your Scottish or Celtic heritage, buy it. In fact, buy everything you can get your hands on in that gift shop. It’ll easily fit into your luggage because you, smart traveler that you are, aren’t buying a bunch of tchotchkes to lug home. You may have a very hard time finding such site-specific information elsewhere (even on the Net) and if you do, you may have to pay dearly for someone else’s incurred expense of shipping it across the pond and paying duties.

But if you have no personal connection to the site, I advise skipping the glitzy booklet. If you’ve done much research before you left home or you’ve accessed the Net each night before the next day’s touring, you may already know the bulk of what that glossy bit of fluff has to say. If your trip is very lengthy, you may (as we often do) find you can barely absorb the facts related by the tour guides and the information paddles in each room. Any information beyond that is overload.

Here’s our rule-of-thumb. We gladly accept any free maps, flyers, and handouts and use these as we tour the site. We scan the pricey, glossy booklets after the tour, looking for anything that wasn’t covered in the tour or free handouts, or that we don’t remember reading online. We ask ourselves, “Will we need to know this bit of arcane information?” Sometimes our answer is “yes” because of what we do – paint and sell Scottish artwork online and supply viewers with pertinent history and background about it. If you’re not in the same (or a related) business, you need to know way less than we do. If we skip these expensive books most of the time, you definitely should.

Long before we ever began traveling abroad, some well-traveled friends were taking us on an informal travelogue of their recent trip to the U.K. By the stack on the dining table, it appeared they’d bought every booklet available at every place they’d visited. I asked them a question about something in one of the books. They didn’t know. “Oh, we never read it.” “Not even when you were there?” I asked. “Nope. No time,” was the response. “How about when you arrived home?” “Nope. Trip was over, and we forgot all about it.”

Lesson learned – and for once – not the hard way! Skip the fancy-dancy guidebooks.

Buy NO gifts.

What?! No gifts for Sis . . . Mom . . . the kids. . . the grandkids?? Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying.

Again, this is a lesson hard-learned. During our first two trips, we agonized over what to get various family members. In fact, I’d be embarrassed to tell you how much effort, time, thought, and money we put into this activity. Were those carefully bought gifts appreciated? They were not.

Why? Here’s our best guess: our family members didn’t go to Scotland (nor, apparently, do they particularly care to). When we buy souvenirs on holiday, we have sights, sounds, tastes, and smells that are part and parcel of those souvenirs. A glance at my pewter and copper brooch transports me back to a Canterbury museum gift shop on a cool fall day – and all the other sites we saw that day. If I were to give that brooch to any family member, she’d have no memories of anything so pleasurable tied to it. And that’s true for just about any souvenir you’d care to name. A souvenir’s value-add (and sometimes its only value) is the buying event itself – in a unfamiliar place – and the memories that event can trigger.

Don’t believe me? Okay, what did you do with the little gewgaw Aunt Laura brought you from Germany? Or the hand-carved knick-knack your friend hauled back from India? I’ll bet you graciously thanked them and promptly relegated these items to the back of the odd-sock drawer – after displaying them for a few days or weeks. Or, gasp, re-gifted them. You ungrateful wretch!

No, I take that back. It isn’t that you’re ungrateful or that our recipients were ungrateful. It’s simply that other people’s trip souvenirs can’t mean much to you because you weren’t there. You didn’t haggle with the shop-keeper. You didn’t watch the carver finishing up the details. You don’t remember the whiff of curry in the air while you paid your rupees for the silver bracelet.

If you need to thank someone for walking the dog, watering the plants, etc., back home while you were traveling, that’s handled easily enough; buy something you know they really like after you’re back in the States. Save your money and your time while on your trip. Remember other people didn’t take your trip and souvenirs you collected on your trip will mean very little to them.

Here’s my one exception to this tip: when someone has out-and-out asked for a very specific item, by all means, buy it for them if you can find it.

Limit each traveler to the amount of luggage he/she can easily carry.

For us, it’s two pieces each, period. A 22” x 14 x 9” main piece of luggage that, on international flights, could be carried on if we chose. But we don’t. We each wheel that sucker up to the luggage check-in and let the airlines deal with it, especially if we have very many connecting flights. Add to that a small carry-on daypack for each of us, which can be zipped to the top of our main piece of luggage. That’s it. Whether we’re touring for two weeks or five, these are the only two pieces of luggage we each take. No more!

And we do not overpack them. Three is the magic number: three pairs of slacks, three long-sleeve shirts, three short-sleeve shirts, three pairs of socks, three sets of undies . . . . You get the picture. Throw in a wool sweater (possibly two), and you’re set. If you travel as we do – to see and learn about the culture – you don’t need a wide variety of clothing. One type of clothing will take you anywhere you want (or can afford) to go.  Three of each gives you one to wear, one that’s just been laundered, and one that’s airing out.

As you well know, airlines are piling on all kinds of extra charges for second bags, extra weight, etc. And since we’ve already ascertained you really don’t need that many clothes, it just makes financial sense to take as little luggage as possible, thereby incurring as few additional charges as possible. You can also save yourself tips by having luggage that you can obviously and easily carry by yourself. Struggling with a great whopper of a suitcase or corralling a multiplicity of bags and boxes is a sure-fire method for setting yourself up for a trip-full of porter tips.

Addendum: We have yet to try this, but I just learned this tip, which I’ll pass along. If you’re checking your main piece of luggage and are traveling with someone close – close enough to throw your undies together with no embarrassment – mix your clothes. Some of his trousers, some of your slacks, some of his shirts, some of yours, some of his undies, some of yours. You get the picture. If the airlines lose one piece of luggage and not the other, you’ll both have enough clothes to keep touring.