Dublin, Day One:
For three years we've toyed with the idea of touring the coast of Scotland on the motorbike and at last we've booked the hotels and there's petrol in the tank and we're going to do it.   We were packing until two o'clock in the morning and rose at seven, are we totally mad?   By midnight I had spent two hours moving the knee protector on just ONE LEG of my trousers.   When my putative beloved approached me, I told him curtly, "Don't even think of asking me anything!'   Not an auspicious beginning... and I'm worried about these trousers, they're old and well-worn but I can't afford new gear.    

On the way to the ferry we stopped outside Newry at the Hein Gericke shop, 'for coffee', he said.   We departed thirty minutes later with their promise to post those old trousers home resounding in our ears.   On the ferry, I realized I could have got these new  trousers a size smaller, had I thought to adjust the Velcro straps on the waist, but perhaps I'm better off going on holiday in generous trousers!  

I certainly feel more confident in these.  Once again, my man has demonstrated that a simple superpower like telepathy is the secret to a great marriage - or at least augurs well for a holiday together!

There's a moment - the first of many, I fear - there's just a moment, when we've stopped on the ramp from the ferry, while he walks back to pick up the glasses he dropped as we un-parked.    In that moment, I ask myself, 'What on earth am I doing here?'.   With no answer I can articulate adequately, when he returns I take a deep breath and smile.

Troon, Day two:
Just watching the new Sherlock Holmes on BBC and thoroughly enjoying it.  His website!   The perfectly-tuned text messages!   'Aunt Sally' playing his landlady - not his housekeeper!   .... And Tim, from 'the (original) Office'.   Who could ask for more?    I'm reading Neil Gaiman's collection of short stories, 'Fragile Creatures' and there's a story here with some remarkable similarities to the programme.   Of course, I haven't checked the credits but I wouldn't be surprised if he's had something to do with the script.  So, at least that's Sunday evening viewing sorted when I get home...

Today we travelled from Troon through the Tassochs and the Forest of Argyll, by the shores of Loch Long and then Loch Lomond, to reach Loch Leven and the 400-year-old Loch Leven Hotel.  It was bemusing to hear my middle-aged husband whooping as we rode through switchbacks and past vertiginously beautiful landscape.   At once petrified and exhilarated I was relieved that my answering grin was invisible to him.   Sometimes I wonder have I married Jeremy Clarkson...

 It's a tale of three lakes on this day-trip: Loch Long, Loch Lomond and Loch Leven.   We were going to by-pass Loch Lomond according to the itinerary my husband had planned!   When I realized it, I asked for a detour so I could at least view the lake from one viewpoint.   It is truly beautiful: broad and imposing, the countryside leaning into it in majestic curves outlined in flushing currents of tarnish run-off.   We could have taken a tourist walk to view the hydroelectric station in the woods beside our viewpoint but, hey, we were wearing motorbike boots!   Instead we admired the swans and their ugly-duckling progeny; I denied myself an ice-cream with due pridefulness.    It was worth losing my earring when I removed my helmet to take a photo.   In fact, it was so lovely we decided to continue along its shores to our next bridge - oops, I mean waypoint, of course!

Isle of Skye, Day three:
Weary, wet and knock-kneed.

Helmet-haired as well, but that's not so much a problem as an inconvenience.   Why couldn't I have made time to get my hair cut, as I'd hoped?   At least I brought a great conditioner, so my flat hair feels babysoft!

Today we came from Loch Leven, via Fort William and Loch Duigh.   The local television weather forecast warned of 'heavy showers from the west' although the temperatures were high across the map on-screen.   I decided to wear my down ski jacket under the motorbike jacket and hoped for clear intervals.

Riding pillion, I could enjoy the natural beauty as it unfolded around us.   While my other focussed on the road and the driving, I admired the changing landscape and the magical chameleon quality of the colours as they reacted to the weather and the light.   The down was a sensible choice because the rain fell like Irish rain, in the form of a wet mist, what my darling called, 'wet air'.   He reminded me of the Padraic Colum poem, 'A soft Day', had he studied it in school as well?   I could only remember the first line, 'A soft day, thank God!...'

I told him it was like riding through the clouds, driving into those sweeping white wisps driven ahead of the rain.   Looking at these mists coiling out of the valleys ahead, it was easy to imagine Tolkien's Middle Earth or to picture Donaldson's anguished Stephen, beset by the forces of nature and climate as much as his own tortured self-recrimination.   I wondered had Shakespeare seen these clouds, if they had inspired his witches roiling wickedly in the Heath, stirring and conspiring unseen within their ethereal concealment?

 We passed a sign: two crossed swords indicating an historical battle.   'Braveheart' recalled.  Some miles later, we encountered signs of a contemporary battleground.  The Commando Memorial at Spean Bridge...

I surprised myself with genuine tears.   The tributes to old soldiers, the dead of long-forgotten wars, worn-out pensioners and 'dearly-beloved granddads', all these I had expected.   What I had not expected were the twenty-somethings, the young and darling dead of Afghanistan.   I looked around at the mementoes, photographs and poems from a new generation, names and faces of a new regiment, fighting and dying as their forebears had done and I wept.  

Above the small garden of remembrance the proud memorial loomed, ringed by red silk poppy wreaths.  The mists drew in and we drove on....

Tonight we're on Skye; tomorrow we'll go to Coral Beach to catch some whales and seals.   The barman suggests walking to some of the viewpoints but we grin at him in beguiling denial.  This is the story of my Scottish holiday, riding pillion around blind corners with my whooping boy....

Isle of Skye, Day four:
It's twenty degrees and wet but we suit up and head for Quiraing, a series of geological features south of the castle we're staying in.   I'm not sure what I can accomplish in terms of climbing and hiking but 'nothing ventured nothing gained', as they say...

The landscape is much more natural here, with none of the Victorian demesne designers' giveaways.   Although I love the rhododendron and fuchsia, they have invaded the areas where they were planted, choking out the natural flora.   They proliferated on the roadside around Fort William, marking the borders of the various estates we passed.   I was amazed by the size of some of these 'shrubs' which challenge the equally alien and invasive stands of conifer and other evergreen trees for space and light.    Here on the island, there are only native plants and trees that struggle against the harsh weather, wind-carved apostrophic shapes that shelter and sustain island life.

This is a geography class for the senses: fragrant strata of heather, moss, lichen and limestone in frantic coalition against the rushing cascades of bog-runoff.     Another hiker tells me of visiting Scotland in the summer of 1976 when England experienced a famous drought. She was astounded by the water everywhere here then and, chatting with me on that same mountainside today, our conversation was scored by the same tympanic rippling.

Indeed I could not go far on the hike and had to cry off at a slippery waterfall whose opposite side was manifestly impossible for me to reach, motorbike boots or no.    I settled myself into the hillside to wait for my significant - and taller - other to return, content to observe and admire.

While staying away from the wildlife, of course...

 (Apparently the APA conference has presented a paper declaring that 'rest and relaxation does not make people as happy as sex and talking. R & R leaves people as low in happiness as working.'  Thanks, drkholmes on Twitter, but "no comment!")