A 2nd Scottish Misadventure

The day started beautifully with the sun shining and a delicious breakfast at our B&B. Joan prepared a full Scottish breakfast, minus the baked beans (seriously, who does baked beans at 7:30 in the morning??).

We’re used to eating a few scrambled eggs in the morning so this is way more food than we eat for breakfast. But everything was delicious.

We left Joan’s to head for the Glencoe National Reserve on our way to Stirling Castle, about a 4-hour drive. It was a beautiful drive along Loch Lochy. Here’s a short video Peter took. You can just barely see the lake to the left of the screen but the mountains were beautiful with a low level of fog.

Shortly after this video was taken, about 90 minutes into our journey, we had our 2nd misadventure in less than 2 weeks. I think the picture says it all.

OK, so going about 50-55MPH (speed limit 60), I hit a ginormous hole that I didn’t see until it was too late to do anything. This is the result. The road was two lane and full of curves so it was at least 1/3 mile before I could find a safe spot to stop. I could actually smell something burning and was afraid the tire was going to ignite when I saw a gravel road that was luckily on my side of the street.

We unloaded the trunk to try and change the tire except, wait for it, no spare. Apparently they don’t put them in the rental cars anymore We had an emergency number for Europcar so we quickly got someone working on getting us out of there.

Unfortunately, what wasn’t quick was actually getting out of there. After about 45 minutes roadside assistance called and said she couldn’t find anyone to come out to change the tire so she would sent a tow truck and would let me know when it was available.

I waited almost 90 minutes with no call from roadside assistance, so I called back and was transferred to someone else who said she would find a tow truck and I would get a text with an estimated time. A few minutes later I got a text that said someone would be with us in no more than 240 minutes. For you math wizards who quickly did the calculation, that’s 4 hours.

By this time, though, the expected clouds were rolling in so we settled into the car to wait. Luckily about 30 minutes later a tow truck came rolling up and within 15 minutes we were on our way to Fort William and the tire store. The driver had just gotten the call about 20 minutes before he picked us up so I think whoever I spoke with on the 2nd call dropped the ball and never reached out to a tow truck.

We were very fortunate that the repair shop had the correct tire in stock and that I didn’t damage the wheel when I drove on it before I could stop. So within another 30 minutes, we were on our way. Except by this time it was after 2pm so instead of stopping at Stirling Castle we came straight to the Doubletree Resort about 15 miles outside of Glasgow. As it was we didn’t get here until almost 5pm.

While inconvenient, it could have been so much worse. I could have lost control of the car when the tire exploded. Or we could have been slammed into from behind when our speed dropped to almost nothing for the time it took to find a place to pull over. So, as they say, all’s well…yada yada yada.

It turns out that our route didn’t change at all so we still saw Glencoe Natural Reserve and the eastern edge of the Trossachs National Park. It was a bit rainy and we were tired so we didn’t stop for pictures, but I found these online. Even with the clouds it was a beautiful drive.

We didn’t get to see Loch Lomand as it’s on the western edge of the Park and we drove down the eastern edge. But there were plenty of other pretty lakes so we don’t feel like we missed too much.

We couldn’t face getting back into the car to go to dinner, so we ate at the hotel. Tomorrow we head to Glasgow, hopefully without any more misadventures. One can always hope.