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This would seem to be an appropriate moment to reflect on our recent expedition to Scotland, with a view to identifying how successful was the trip and, indeed, whether or not it lived up to our hopes and expectations.

The first thing to say was that we had a really good time and enjoyed ourselves enormously. There is nothing that we had wanted to do that went undone – and no element of the adventure that disappointed. It certainly more than made up for the setbacks of 2023, the which were thoroughly (and exhaustively) documented within these pages at the time.

The Girl and I had been talking about visiting Scotland for some considerable time, starting many years before we took wing from the UK and set up home here on the west coast of Canada. The irony of the deferment of the trip to the point at which it became a major operation is not lost on us.

That the staging of this expedition was so obviously important to us both tells a tale. Given my ancestral roots and The Girl’s desire to revisit in my company magical places that she had encountered but once before (and that prior to our meeting) the quest was necessarily imbued with added significance. Could the reality possibly live up to the mythos?

Now, I must be honest and admit that – for my part – I ventured to the land of my fathers with the hope and expectation that I might identify further connections to my heritage; to gain some renewed sense of familial roots. In truth, of course, given that I am already in possession of the ancestral research that my father effected before his passing and the fact that there are considerable practical difficulties in pursuing any such leads beyond the dead-ends that had already been reached – this was always going to be something of a long shot. There are other avenues that can – and should – be explored but it became clear this particular journey was not really the time nor the place so to do.

So – if that turned out after all not to be the main theme of our tour – then what did? As so often in these scribblings that is going to have to wait for an unanticipated and unexpected second installment of this missive…