Monthly Archives: June 2022

Flush with the success of our first two parkups we decided to venture further and start driving north. This required retracing our steps back through the traditional boatbuilding center of Port Glasgow and across the bridge over the Clyde.

Along the northern riverbank is a 240 foot high volcanic basalt plug called Dumbarton Rock that has served as a fortress since at least the 5th century. Our parkup app told us we could spend the night at the base of the Rock. That sounds good to us.

We turned toward the river and inched our way down a residential street and past a construction site before we spied the rock. We both leaned forward to peer upward through the windscreen, seeking the top. Holy cow! There, almost in the clouds, we could see the battlements of the stronghold perched so close to the edge it almost seemed cantilevered.

Our pitch for the night was directly beneath the sheer cliff wall. We quickly locked up the camper and headed toward the entrance. There was extensive fencing which became more dense the closer we came to the entrance. It gave us that sinking feeling.

Sure enough, closed again for masonry inspection. This one hurts. Joiners were chiseling a mortise into massive timbers right on the other side of the fence where intricate scaffolding reached up to the sky.

We walked along the river for a better view of the fortress.

We had a quiet cozy night, all the while wishing we could get inside the castle, and especially climb the rock to see the view from the top.

The next morning I glimpsed a man with large pads strapped to his back disappear around the back of the rock.

“I think they must do rock climbing here,” I said to Jack, and we jumped out of the camper and tried to follow where the man went. That lead us past a football club, through the woods and around the land side, all the way to the river on the other side, giving us a few more tantalizing peeks at the fortification at the top.

We found a couple of men bouldering, then a man and his father with their dogs, just shooting the breeze enjoying the view on a beautiful day. We stopped to chat, got a few tips on places to go, and they told us there was a break in the fence at the riverfront where we could see the castle better. They also said there were a few women climbing further around the rock.

The women told us this was the place for climbing and bouldering in the Glasgow area, and that on most days we’d see many more people there on the various walls.

We asked about the Queen’s Jubilee and if there were any events planned nearby. They looked at each other and shrugged.

“We’re not really royalists here in Scotland,” one of them said. Fair enough.

The path around the rock came to an end at the water’s edge, passable only at low tide, and we retraced our steps back to the parkup.

We found the break in the fence the father and son told us about (how had we missed it?) and finally got a better perspective on the castle and the fortress. It made us want to explore it even more, but I guess our record of closed castles will remain unbroken for now. You can read the history of the place here.

We walked into town to a place called Bangin’ Pizza for takeout and all the employees threw out their favorite places for us to visit. We’re acquiring quite the list of destinations to add to our already numerous Google Maps flags.

We woke to our stunning parkup after a peaceful night. The view over the river Clyde was just as beautiful in the morning light as it was when we arrived and we had to pinch ourselves that the Instagramable moment we’d hoped for was achievable.

Part of the dream was having our morning coffee-with-a-view and we bounced out of bed, dug out the Aeropress, put a pan of water on the hob. That’s when we realized the burners don’t have a sparker. What? We checked the little grill/oven. It has a built in sparker and fired right up. But the burners? No. We need a lighter, which we have not got.

This, for the Schulzes, is a disaster. Morning coffee is more than a habit for us. It’s a ritual, a long process of waking, savoring, planning, and most of all, taking the beginning of the day to appreciate what we have and contemplate what lies ahead. Ok, it’s only coffee, but we panicked.

“We could twist a piece of paper, light it on the grill, then light the burner with that!” suggested Jack with enthusiasm. I was reluctant to risk a fire on our first day out. Besides, we had a “no open flame” policy on our boat and I prefer to continue that policy while living in a big tin can with limited egress.

“We need a lighter,” I said, and I looked out the window to see if any cars were approaching our roadside overlook. The night before several carloads of young people had gathered for a few hours, enjoying the evening, sharing a few beers and a smoke. They were gone by about 9pm and didn’t bother us, but it made me think this little lot could be a place where people come with their takeaway breakfast, or just to enjoy the view. And a smoke.

“Fat chance,” said Jack. “It’s Saturday morning.”

A few minutes later a car pulled in. It was a single woman, and I leapt out of the van and approached her with a smile. She rolled down the window and I told her we just bought the van and can’t make coffee because we don’t have a lighter for the hob. She instantly handed me a disposable lighter and I asked it I could borrow it.

“Keep it,” she said with a smile. I thanked her and skipped back to the camper. Within minutes we had coffee in our cups, breakfast on our plates, and all was right with the world again.

We watched as the nice woman got out of her car and appeared to be digging around in the boot, in the backseat, all over the car. After a while she knocked on our window. “This one’s got more in it,” she said, and handed us another lighter. This clearly was a woman who understands the importance of morning coffee, even in a country of tea drinkers.

So ok, we’re missing a few essentials. We made a list, but we were reluctant to leave this gorgeous long distance vista, especially after spending much of the last month in cheap hotel rooms with views of the parking lot.

The other thing we learned on that first night is the importance of a level parkup. We were only tilted a few degrees, but we had to call up our dormant sailing skills to navigate the inside of the camper without incurring the hip and shin bruises familiar to most sailors. We moved the van across the lot to a more level space in the corner, then pulled the wheel ramps out of the “garage” and experimented with placement. We got it closer to level, and vowed to be more mindful in the future.

We stayed another night at that first place, learning how the heater and refrigerator work, moving things around for convenience, adding to our list. On Sunday we drove back down to the big retail park and once again went from store to store to store, this time with a little better idea of what we need to be comfortable and functional.

I found another parkup that looked promising, this one down along the riverbank, with a cafe across the street. We can’t believe our good fortune. We know we won’t always be able to find free places to spend the night, but we’re glad we held out for a camper that’s set up for off grid wild camping. We know we can last a week or two before we have to find services like fresh water, gray water dumping, and toilet cassette emptying. We have just enough solar power to keep things working, so far. Life is good.

I woke up and immediately had one of those where-the-hell-am-I moments. The room was missing most of its furniture, and pulling aside the blackout curtains didn’t help much. It was sunny but cold with lots of traffic. I picked up the plastic room key and everything but the lack of furniture fell into place. Today is Campervan Day, and we’re in Glasgow. Unfortunately, the mechanic doing the servicing on the van was hungover from a football game and apparently he was moving kinda slow. We scheduled official handover for 1900 hours hoping maybe the frenzied Glasgow rush hour traffic would be a bit more kind at that hour. We booked another night in our sparse room because we weren’t ready to hit the road and the hotel said we can park our van in their lot.

Next order of business was breakfast. Nothing was open for blocks. Finally we settled for a place called Julie’s Sandwiches, no waiting, no chairs, just across the street. At the appointed hour we Ubered over to get the final instructions, got the keys and I climbed into the driver’s seat.

The 6 speed manual transmission Fiat Ducato drove nicely. It’s amazing how many vehicles have manual transmissions in the UK; it’s got to be around 70%. We made it back to the Travelodge despite the rain, safely parked for the night. Heavy sigh of relief.

Running errands in a twenty foot long camper van is a little nerve wracking at first but that’s exactly what we needed to do this morning. We knew that we’d have to do it before leaving Glasgow where you can find a concentration of shops where you only need to park once. What we really needed was an IKEA new homemaker startup kit. Two of everything, throw it in to a big blue tarp bag. We made do with stops at Tesco, B&M, Marks and Spencer, some kind of Home Center, and TK Max. We felt pretty well equipped.

In the meantime Marce found a parkup in what Europeans call wild camping, in America its called boondocking, meaning no services, self contained vehicles only. We hoped that the 180 watt solar panel on our roof would keep us in power over night. There were two routes up to the small car park, high above the Clyde. We chose the less steep route, pulled in and gaped at the view.

Our first wild camping and we get to wake up to this view. Not bad.

First dear readers, you’re going to want a little back story. When we arrived at Heathrow back in April we decided to keep luggage handling and missed connections to a minimum so why not keep everything on rails? We spent an hour on the tube to King’s Cross station, where we’d catch a train all the way to Sheffield, then pick up a cheap rental car. All things considered, an excellent plan. Not as comfortable as you might imagine, nevertheless it worked very well until an unintelligible message delivered at breakneck speed (people of Europe, please slow down) came over the intercom on the train. We’d been talking to a nice young man who reacted negatively and stood up frowning.

“Here, I’ll help you with all your bags, we’ve been terminated!” he said.

The loudspeaker continued to emit garbled noise and our friend could see we were spent and uncomprehending. He told us to stay put and he’d find out what to do. It turns out there was a jumper down the line and we were going no further on these tracks. We were rerouted to another train and our friend and another young man helped with our luggage, got us settled, and stayed with us until they were sure we’d be alright.

After a long day of traveling we finally made it to our destination and come to think of it, we nearly always do.

Four weeks later we planned the reverse: return the rental car and hop on a train. On paper it looked easy.

Car Return Day found us approximately one hundred miles away from Sheffield with a nice relaxing plan. My goodness, things were going swimmingly. With over 2,000 miles driving under my belt I expected nothing less.

Full English in the morning, easy car drop off, Uber to the train station with luggage, coffee and a Danish, and soon we were relaxing in our reserved seats on a clean and comfortable train. We were heading north to Glasgow and our campervan, soaking up the scenery as it glided by.

Somewhere before Manchester I heard a familiar message over the loudspeaker. The train stopped and out we tumbled with all our luggage onto an elevated platform cold enough to be New York in January. Another jumper, incident under investigation and the tracks to Glasgow were closed. What are the odds? Two trains, two jumpers. Our fellow passengers shrugged. I guess it happens a lot.

They must teach their loudspeaker announcers how to garble any message but we think we heard “platform 9.” The magical thinking was that, sure we’re going North to Glasgow but York, in the wrong direction, has a bigger station and you might have a better chance to catch a train maybe all the way to Glasgow.

Just as our feet hit the platform in York a railroad employee yelled, “Passengers to Glasgow, please hurry to platform (garbled.) The train is about to depart.”

It’s a large grand station. We tore off with the rest of the dispossessed Glasgow passengers, gasping as we dragged our luggage. Up the stairs and down the stairs and we might be heading for platform 9 and 3/4 for all we knew.

Finally Marce ran ahead and found the bloody thing. I didn’t care any more. I chucked the luggage into the train and climbed aboard as the thing started to move. Wait, we’re going East! Not North! We were heading East, all the way to the coast, then north following the sea, stopping at every small town up to Edinburgh, then west to Glasgow. And no cushy reserved seats.

I’m a little unclear about the rest of the trip. Something about an Uber, a Travelodge and a room that looked like it had been robbed of most of its furniture, dinner out of a vending machine in the lobby, a bed.

Tomorrow we pick up our new home and that’s all I could think about.

It was almost time to return our rental car to Sheffield. On the way we wanted to meet up again with our friend Mark in Yorkshire. Since our campervan is already in Scotland, we’ve decided to explore northward rather than return to England, so this will be our last opportunity for a while.

Coincidentally, the best day to connect was Sue Owen’s birthday. Sue was taken by breast cancer four years ago. Jack and I last saw her in August 2016 when we met in Auckland for an Ethiopian dinner before they traveled for what was supposed to be a few weeks’ family visit in England. Sue never came back.

We first met the crew of Macushla at a cafe in Charleston, South Carolina. They were drinking coffee and reading the paper at a communal table when we sat down with our pastries. Jack nudged me and whispered, “I think they’re cruisers, too.”

We were new to the liveaboard life, and we learned they had been at it for 12 years already. We were in awe.

Our friendship deepened during a season in the Caribbean as we bonded in that way you do when your worldview and personalities mesh perfectly. We crossed the Pacific together in 2015, with more special times in New Zealand. So many of our best cruising memories include these two.

It is Mark’s tradition to visit Fountain’s Abbey on Sue’s birthday, a place he told us was very special to them. We were grateful to be included this time, to talk about Sue, to be in a place she loved, and to celebrate her birthday. We were joined by Sue’s sister Hazel and it was wonderful to finally meet her. We’d heard a lot about each other during the years we cruised with Macushla.

Fountain’s Abbey is a UNESCO World Heritage site, the ruins of a 12th century monastery on 70 acres in North Yorkshire along the river Skell. It is stunningly beautiful and peaceful. We could see why Mark and Sue loved the place.

The four of us walked the path around the abbey, Jack and I snapping photos of the changing views, all of us grateful for the weather.

We came to a place overlooking the water, and Mark and Hazel lead us to a bench with a breathtaking view. This is where Sue’s ashes are scattered, they told us. She’d wanted the water view. We sat for a while, and thought our own thoughts.

As we get older, and especially living a nomadic life, it’s hard to meet new friends and maintain the kind of social circle more stationary people enjoy. I’ve been fortunate to have forged strong bonds with a few very special women whose friendship I treasure, even when years go by before we see each other again. Sue Owen was one of them. She was beautiful, kind, funny, quirky, generous, passionate, and one of the best storytellers I’ve ever known. I miss her.

Our days started to follow a pattern. We spent the mornings exploring nearby points of interest, then returned to our digs in the afternoon to work on admin when the offices opened in New York. That synced perfectly with our age-adjusted energy levels, especially after a good lunch.

I pore over the map to find places to visit. Jack wants to see every castle ever built; I want to see graves. Often we just want to appreciate the stunning scenery. Before we came to Dumfries and Galloway I had the impression that the landscape would be flat agricultural land and we’ve both been surprised and entranced by the rolling hills and deep forests of hardwoods, territory not unlike where we both grew up in Pennsylvania. It’s pristine clean, with nary a scrap of trash to be seen, and even when the sun doesn’t shine, the sky is dramatic with cloud patterns that would inspire any artist.

We took off one morning to visit what was bound to be a sad place. On the way we passed a gypsy caravan.

After about an hour’s drive and a few wrong turns we finally arrived at our destination.

For those of you too young to remember, a few days before Christmas in 1988 Pan Am flight 103 was destroyed by an onboard bomb as it flew over Lockerbie, Scotland, en route from London to New York. All 259 passengers and crew died. Parts of the plane landed on a suburban street and 11 residents of three houses also perished.

Thirty-five of the passengers were students at Syracuse University heading home for the holidays after a semester abroad.

The bomb was eventually traced to Libyan nationals and in 2003 Muammar Gaddafi finally accepted responsibility.

Whenever we visit any kind of memorial I read every name, pronouncing it in my mind. I know how quickly even the most horrific events fade into history and I want each person to be remembered and honored, even by a stranger. I was heartened to see that there were other visitors to the memorial garden during the time we were there.

Lunchtime lead us to a farm market and café that was recommended by our Airbnb host. After three years in SE Asia, this kind of shop display is an eyeopener.

Luckily, vegans and vegetarians are also respected here in the UK and there are always options for me too.

We walked off the calories on a pretty little trail around the farm where we met some of the Beltie Beef cows that end up in the butcher case.

Someone on the farm enjoys chainsaw sculpture.

Jack finished off his lunch with his beloved apple crumble, and then it was back to our cottage for more banking fun.

Discussing our poor luck with castles over a home cooked full Scottish breakfast, Jan, our diminutive Irish landlady, at least I think she said her name was Jan, said, in her heavy Irish brogue, “Well you needn’t go far. We’ve our own just over in the village, don’t ye know.” I’m pretty sure that’s what she said. It was something like Closeburn.

We punched our best guess into Google maps and sure enough a pin appeared on the screen. What could go wrong? We cranked up our trusty Vauxhall and plotted a course to our very own castle. Basic rule of thumb should you find yourself driving in Scotland is when you do find yourself on a path that is too narrow to fit your car between the weeds you are lost and it’s time to consider extricating yourself. Well, that’s our newly revised rule. It started out fine.

I missed the first turn. I mean it was so improbable and narrow that I was sure it couldn’t lead to a castle. Marce said they hold events at this place. Not to worry, Google plotted a new workaround that completely circumnavigated the village. The closer we got to the pin the more narrow the road became, following the familiar pattern. (We have no photos of this.) Now we’re down to muddy narrow two track heading down towards a dip at a turn where, if I’m any judge, some other idiot became mired in mud.

I could see a fancy wrought iron gate just beyond. That’s got to be it. You see how this works? We judged the mud wrestling pool as passable and didn’t slow down until we found ourselves in somebody’s courtyard. I did take note as we passed that the gate was chained and padlocked. Closed. Waving politely we motored on through, eventually finding the narrow road that I missed in the first place.

We decided this afternoon’s adventure had to be a sure thing. Caerlaverock Castle, that’s the ticket. Famous, moated, triangular, medieval stronghold walls with a gorgeous renaissance palace within those walls. In short, a “please exit by the gift shop” kinda place. And we even heard rumors of overnight campervan parking! Worth the hour drive while the authorities make life difficult with regulations to buying the camper van.

Never ones to follow directions, first we entered via the gift shop which featured actual stone carvings from the castle.

As we made our way towards this amazing castle pleasantly nestled down in the valley below us, we noticed an uncomfortable amount of fencing around the structure.

We reached the drawbridge and were crestfallen to read the sad news. Closed. It seems the structure is unstable. We could walk the perimeter though.

At various points along the path Marce found the augmented reality plaques. She dutifully downloaded the app and watched every one of the animated characters who told what life was like in the castle.

You can visit the foundation of the original castle which had man made canals to the sea back when sea levels were much higher.

Nice idea, but apparently the castle flooded and the sea was destroying it. It had to be abandoned and rebuilt on higher ground.

So let’s see, I think that leaves our castle record at 0-4 attempts. We will press on regardless! We are Escape Velocity.

As long as I have a few days of admin to finalize the camper purchase, and we weren’t going to take up residence for at least a week, I booked us into a little Airbnb cottage near Dumfries so I could focus on the tasks at hand, and for another, special reason.

Longtime readers may remember that one of my hobbies is family history research. If you’re interested you can check out some previous posts here and here and here or search for genealogy or family history in the search box in the blog.

I’ve continued to research even while we were in the far flung corners of the cruising world, and last year I had a giant breakthrough because new records were made available online by the Danish National Archives. I’m not one little bit Danish but some of my ancestors lived in St. Thomas, Virgin Islands, owned and governed until 1917 by Denmark. The records they released are probate records from the 18th and 19th century, handwritten and mostly in Danish.

I spent hour after hour during much of the pandemic lockdown paging through the records, hoping a familiar name would pop up. And it did! I learned that my great great grandmother’s birth name was Roddan and for the big breakthrough, I learned that her father was from Dumfries in Scotland. This is the first time I’ve been able to make the leap across the pond to my ancestors’ origins in either Ireland or Scotland.

With that new information I’m able to start to piece together a previously missing branch of my mother’s family tree, and now that we’re in Dumfries and Galloway, I’m hoping to make even more discoveries, primarily to learn what would have possessed four carpenter brothers to leave this beautiful place in the 18th century and undertake an uncomfortable journey to the West Indies.

In anticipation of our visit to Scotland I joined the Dumfries and Galloway Family History Society. I looked forward to visiting the center to see what records are available, and to pick the brains of the local historians.

Before we got here I found online a book of headstone inscriptions from a small village churchyard near the town of Dumfries.

“In Memory of William Roddan Esq., of the Island of Tortola, who died at Bilbow in the Parish of Troqueer the 13th of Sept 1784 aged 23 years And of James Roddan his youngest son, who died the 30th December 1784 aged 6 months Also of his eldest son William Adamson Roddan Esq., accountant in Kirkcudbright, who departed this life at Bowhouse of Terregles on the 23rd day of June 1822 in the 41st year of his age.”

Months ago I marked the cemetery on my Google map and we were finally close enough to find it. Jack has known of my fascination with graveyards since we met, and on our first date he took me to an old German cemetery in Pittsburgh. So off we went to read some headstones.

The yard was much larger than I thought, with a couple of hundred engraved stones. Jack was first to find the name Roddan. Unfortunately it was a century too late for my people. We kept looking.

An hour later we admitted we couldn’t find the right stone, but saw that quite a few had either fallen or broken. The stones were transcribed for the book in the 1970s and the preface noted that many of them are no longer standing or legible for one reason or another. Sadly, I think the one I was looking for might be one of them.

On the way home from the churchyard we visited the Twelve Apostles stone circle. It’s the largest in mainland Scotland, and the 7th largest in Britain.

The circle is unimpressive, especially from this distance. It rained heavily the previous night and the field was too mushy to venture into. The stones are nearly buried but were originally close to 2 meters tall and oriented toward the midwinter sunset.

I have a lot of stone circles and standing stones marked on my Google map so expect to see more as we travel further.

I wouldn’t say that we were finished jumping through hoops exactly, but with the camper van under contract it felt like the ban on having fun was officially lifted. Most of what was left to do involved a lot of waiting and as our final act of contrition, the circus of returning the car all the way back to Sheffield and then returning to Glasgow via train with luggage in tow and perhaps a little more waiting at the Travelodge of Glasgow. Trains have not been kind to us, but really, what could go wrong. This leaves us free to…wait for it, Coddiwomple!

Yes there’s gas in the car, but castles are awaiting. First a stop at Bowling Harbour where the end of a canal terminates with several locks to dam up enough water for a small marina while leaking the rest into the Clyde.

It does this old sailor’s soul a lot of good to see this clever boat harbour.

Pressing on regardless we pointed the hood or bonnet of our Vauxhall mini suv towards Drumlanrig Castle, a 17th century number with, it says here, a lavish interior, featuring paintings by Rembrandt and DaVinci among many other works of art.

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The Duke and Duchess of Buccleuch are still in residence at the Queensberry Estate. After a long and winding path through deep dark forest, We found it…closed.

We continued south and ran into this Burns memorial.

I don’t think anyone has ever done an accurate count of how many Robert Burns memorials there are but this one is quite substantial. It’s now an art gallery. Closed.

In the meantime Marce booked us into a charming garden cottage to deal with substantial admin on the camper van. This will be our view for the next few days.

We’ve known right from the start that buying a campervan in Europe would be a challenge. In most countries, non-residents just aren’t permitted to buy any vehicle. You’d think they’d be happy to have foreign tourists commit long term to spending their hard currency in restaurants, supermarkets, tourist concessions and such. But no.

Some places have workarounds. There are a few dealers in Europe who will purchase, register and insure a camper on your behalf, for a price. An enterprising agent in France assists in setting up a corporation, for a price; then the corporation buys the vehicle. Many people have successfully used these strategies. I was skeptical. Plus the timing of Europe was a bit concerning, what with uncertainty about Covid restrictions and too many border crossings. We really wanted to start in the UK before venturing further afield.

What to do? We contacted our British friend Mark and asked if we could use his address for the purpose of registration. He very kindly said yes. That’s one hurdle.

Our second hurdle was banking. The owner of our new baby told us if we were British we’d be able to transfer the money bank to bank in minutes, sign the papers and drive away. In our case we’re doing international foreign currency transfers and it just doesn’t happen that quickly. And it was a weekend. And we are five hours ahead of bank hours in New York. This is going to take a while.

We gave Davie all the cash we had on us at the time as hand money and initiated a transfer of the remainder of the deposit. Then, because there wasn’t anything we could do until all the money made it to Scotland, and the promised service and safety inspection couldn’t be scheduled for another week, we decided to spend the rest of our prepaid time in the rental car touring.

During the following week I got all the money transferred and started on the biggest hurdle: insurance. Every company I contacted said they couldn’t insure a nonresident. Lots of people advised me to just not mention it, since we are using the UK address of our friend, but we don’t want to run the risk of having a claim denied for not being truthful.

After many calls and refusals, I finally found a company to agree to insure us — at an extortionate cost. But we are over a barrel and needs must. The cost of insuring this campervan is nearly as much as we paid to insure our worldcruiser yacht with a value more than six times that of the camper.

Life is short, we tell each other nearly daily. It’s only money and we aren’t going to quibble at this point. We don’t know how much longer we can travel, or when our desire to see new places will start to wane as our bodies grow tired. Go now, go with what you’ve got. Just go.

So that decision was made, which led to an unexpected hurdle. The insurance company refused to accept our US credit card. You’re kidding, right? No, they were not. We crawled back to our English friend Mark and asked if he would pay the premium and we’d bank transfer him back. He agreed, but it took an additional three days before the company actually answered Mark’s calls and deemed to take his money.

That brought us to the final hurdle, paying the road tax, which turned out not to be a hurdle at all. We went online, entered our registration number and credit card and presto! Done.

All in all it took nearly ten days for the purchase to finalize, which turned out ok because a very important football match delayed the service and safety inspection for a few days. The mechanic was hung over.