Movements: Scotland, conclusion

This is one of my best "out and about" posts ever, in such beautiful and unusual places. 

It had been nearly six years since I was last out and about presenting as fully female. There are lots of reasons for that and I won't go over them again but suffice to say it's been an unsatisfactory situation. My previous post described my trip to Scotland up to the point I flipped and realised that I was sick of being merely a vaguely androgynous visitor and needed to be my real self again. Maybe staying with another transwoman was part of the catalyst, maybe a sense of greater security, maybe the pink fog just became a pink thunderstorm. Or all three.

I mentioned this trip briefly in May but I'd like to record it in more detail. If nothing else, Easter Ross and Sutherland are not a part of the world many people have been to, or even heard of, yet they are very beautiful and we were blessed with lovely spring weather.

Despite initial nerves, which you can imagine after so long out of the limelight, they gave way to excitement. My makeup and hair were not perfect, but OK. It's not like I was going to be on TV! They say there are four seasons in a day in the Highlands so, although the forecast was good, I chose something reasonably pretty for spring - a short floral dress that I've slimmed enough to get back into - but with sensible ankle boots and my faithful M&S Active leggings, which are not so close-fitting as they used to be. I think I need to buy a couple of sizes smaller now. Besides, you can never have too many leggings, I say. I took a fleece and a coat, which were sometimes necessary later. My outfit worked with the weather and locations. Roz is a less chilly mortal than myself and had a knee-length cotton dress on, but she took her smart pink coat too as a precaution.

We headed north, first to Tain, a small market town on the Dornoch Firth on Scotland's East Coast. The first photo was in the high street and this is my first out-and-about picture since 2018!

 

It's quite a nice little town and the main places to visit are around the local church, dedicated to local saint, Doothac or Doothus (that's Doothus, not Doofus, dear American friends!). 

 

Here's us two ladies on the "Happy to Chat Bench" in the churchyard.

 

 

The rose garden is also pleasant. 

 

The town's also known for the Glenmorangie whisky distillery, and the inevitable golf course.

Back at the car, a woman carrying a small dog buzzed around us. "I've lost my husband," she declared. We weren't at first sure whether to offer her condolences or take her literally and tut at her carelessness. She resolved the situation by stating, "It's OK, I'm not that bothered," as she wandered off. If only they all took it so well! I was simply pleased that someone interacted with us like any other women.

Onwards and northwards, across the Dornoch Firth ...

... to Dornoch itself, a delightful town with a historic courthouse, Scotland's smallest cathedral and a bishop's castle.

I particularly liked the green Victorian fountain outside the cathedral, with its hidden crocodiles.

The castle is now a hotel which has a lovely beer garden where we had a little bite to eat in the sunshine.

Miss Cheeky Chips

The shady back part of the castle garden was especially pretty.

 

And then there's the town's Historylinks Museum which packs a huge amount in a tiny space. My favourite bit was the diorama depicting local hero, the Earl of Sutherland, clobbering his Danish antagonist with the leg of a horse! They don't make heroes like that nowadays, that's for sure! Perhaps it's just as well that men are a little less wild today. What the horse thought of this is not recorded.

Food at the castle had been light so at this point I opted to visit local chocolatiers Cocoa Mountain where I indulged in an incredibly sticky croissant and a cup of thick hot chocolate so large and so drizzled with chocolate of all kinds that I have honestly never quite seen its like before. I should have taken a photo as this from their site doesn't do it justice. 

 

Gender sensible toilets and friendly staff, too. Recommended.

We also went down to the shore where there is a windy golf course and, in a private garden, a stone testifying to the execution of the last person tried for witchcraft in Great Britain. A woman, of course. It's almost always women who are accused of being witches. One Janet Horne, whose daughter suffered from a deformation of hands and feet so that locals accused her mother of having made them that way so she could ride her daughter like a horse at night. How much more enlightened we are now, with just flat earthers and shape-shifting alien lizards for rulers. Mind you, there are all those weird trans people about. Solidarity, sister.

North of Dornoch is Loch Fleet, a small sea loch. But I wanted to stop here as the inspiring Miss Twist had taken a particularly nice photo at this spot.

Then the sun came out properly so the coat came off!

Northwards still to Dunrobin Castle. I wondered if it's pronounced Dunroabin, like Dunroamin, in that the Earl of Sutherland who built it hung up his ermine robe once and for all; but Roz thinks it's pronounced Dunrobbin, which suggests the earl stopped stealing. One of his ancestors certainly purloined horse's legs, so who knows? (NB clan fans: this is all in the pursuit of humour; the honesty of the earls of Sutherland is not impugned.)

Partly unrobed

 

It was almost closing time for the castle itself so we wandered in the leafy park instead.

There were cannons to play with, too.

And on we drove through the old county of Sutherland with its rolling landscape of sheep and buzzards. We passed through Lairg, "crossroads of the North" with its railways station that's almost like an open-air railway museum. The village is also apparently the centre of one of the larges meteorite impact sites on earth. Striking!

We stopped to look across the river at Carbisdale Castle, now owned by trans woman Samantha Kane, Lady Carbisdale, the sort of trans person the British gutter press love to vilify for having dared not only to transition but to detransition and retransition. She owns a castle and a title, so I don't think she's done too badly. The British press really stinks.

And then we drove on to Bonar Bridge, which interested me because of the battles near there in 1650 and 1746, in the Civil War and the Forty-Five Uprising.

And from there to the wonderful views from Struie Hill across the Dornoch Firth. The wind was strong but the spring sunshine really illuminated the landscape.

A view inland

A view seawards, sitting pretty on a wall

Just as well it's a well-worn wig!

The Dornoch Firth and the North Sea beyond

What a wonderful day. And feeling my fem self properly again after all these years.

Many thanks again to my wonderful friend Roz for her hospitality, and to Miss Twist for her pictorial suggestions. For comparison, you can follow the latter's trips, including some of the places I visited, such as Loch Fleet and Loch Ness here, and Eilean Donan Castle here.

The next day I had to go back to the badlands of England so this was my last day in Scotland this time, and it was the best.

Sue x