Right down the road was the village that Jim's ggg grandfather came from. We have to go there I said. There's nothing there, he said. He was wrong.
When we arrived at the B&B, the landlady asked, "So why did you come here?" It seemed an odd question for someone in the hospitality business to ask.
"We're ghost hunting," I said. She and her husband looked momentarily startled and I swear both of them involuntarily glanced upstairs.
No, no, I mean his family came from here, I explained. His ggg grandfather probably had a pint with his mates at the pub across the street before he left for Canada and never came back. So in a way, we're ghost hunting.
The landlady has a personal understanding of the Scottish diaspora; her mum lives in Capetown and her brother in Saskatoon.
We walked, yes, walked, six miles up the road to the next towns, Birnum and Dunkeld. (After the C2C, we've sort of come to feel that if you don't walk at least six miles a day, you really haven't done nothing. )
The day was misty, but you could feel the weight of the invisible mountains around us. The towns around here are terribly historical, and lovely and when you're on foot, let me tell you, you tend to really look at things.
There's a wood in Birnum that Shakespeare wrote into MacBeth. He gave the line to a witch, "Macbeth shall never vanquished be until Great Birnam Wood to high Dunsinane Hill shall come against him." The trees actually were rather spooky. If they came marching up on your castle, if would be pretty clear that things were not going to end well.
The leaves are changing already and the gray days get dark earlier. I like the way the locals say about fall, "the night comes down ."
As for the ghosts that we may or may not have come into contact with today, that may or may not be upstairs, I'm going to stay under my duvet until the misty morning comes
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