Wednesday, May 18, 2005
part deux
Sunday, we went to the village of New Stirling… what a long trip! Meant to be an hour by train, and then 10 minutes by bus, but- train tracks are being worked on, so bus takes us the rest of the way... very roundabout.. I took a nice long nap and missed out on greenness. And then decided to walk down the 1.5 mile hill since the bus would be a half hour… Fine, right? It was pretty... I'll give em that..
The only proper attraction we managed to see was this creepy ride… it’s on these hangy tracks and you sit down and it takes you through… tells you a story (?) in the eyes of a 10 year old. From 2200. a time traveler. ??? it was sooo awful! Didn’t tell you much at all about mills, history, etc. Touched upon child labor, then stated that the man in charge here had schools for kids and sold cheap food to laborers. that was the extent of the history lesson. Then it went on and on about how her friends from Africa and Japan were coming via teletransport to come walk in the forest that we kindly planted in 2005. This soooo pissed me off.. surely scottish people don’t believe that all Asians or Africans or Scots will remain in their own neat little parcels of Earth in the next 200 years? and… um? Teletransport? Hmmm.
Next up was better though- a working spinning mule. Very cool. They even sell the yarn produced in their shop. I saw what looked like thin roving on rolls being spun and then wound up onto spindles (shown in the foreground)… not sure how they get the roving into such thin wraps.
Next was the adventure of getting home. Lady in the shop that consulted the bus timetable was wrong, so we stupidly decided to walk ALL THE WAY up the very large steep hill. great workout… the bus to the train was nice- great scenery (Scotland is SO green!)… slept on the train back to Glasgow… rushed to hotel where conference was, then on to the Glasgow City Chambers,
where a welcome reception was- free wine and a couple speeches thanking us for spending our money in Glasgow… then in search of food (Indian :)… then collapsing in bed.
The only proper attraction we managed to see was this creepy ride… it’s on these hangy tracks and you sit down and it takes you through… tells you a story (?) in the eyes of a 10 year old. From 2200. a time traveler. ??? it was sooo awful! Didn’t tell you much at all about mills, history, etc. Touched upon child labor, then stated that the man in charge here had schools for kids and sold cheap food to laborers. that was the extent of the history lesson. Then it went on and on about how her friends from Africa and Japan were coming via teletransport to come walk in the forest that we kindly planted in 2005. This soooo pissed me off.. surely scottish people don’t believe that all Asians or Africans or Scots will remain in their own neat little parcels of Earth in the next 200 years? and… um? Teletransport? Hmmm.
Next up was better though- a working spinning mule. Very cool. They even sell the yarn produced in their shop. I saw what looked like thin roving on rolls being spun and then wound up onto spindles (shown in the foreground)… not sure how they get the roving into such thin wraps.
Next was the adventure of getting home. Lady in the shop that consulted the bus timetable was wrong, so we stupidly decided to walk ALL THE WAY up the very large steep hill. great workout… the bus to the train was nice- great scenery (Scotland is SO green!)… slept on the train back to Glasgow… rushed to hotel where conference was, then on to the Glasgow City Chambers,
where a welcome reception was- free wine and a couple speeches thanking us for spending our money in Glasgow… then in search of food (Indian :)… then collapsing in bed.
