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September 2018 | Travel Summary and Statistics
Month #5 | Travel Summary
Wow, what a whirlwind of a month! Is anyone else completely shocked that it’s already October?! Yeesh! The first half of the month was spent with my dad and his friend. We tagged along with them on their golf trip and explored some lesser known areas of Scotland at the same time.
Related Posts: Loch Lomond Day Trip
After my dad went home, Mac and I headed north. And I mean north. Like, sixty degrees north! We visited the remote islands of Shetland and Orkney and had some pretty incredible times. We visited one of the most remote places I’ve ever been, and saw some structures more than 5000 years old!
Related Posts: Stories from Shetland
We capped off the month cruising along the north and west coast of mainland Scotland. We did some hiking but were ultimately dismayed by the sudden change in weather. Autumn arrived fast and fierce and I found myself craving some more indoor time under some cozy blankets. More on these adventures in my next posts!
Statistics
Number of Countries: just 1 – Scotland (technically not a country, I know)
Number of Cities/Towns/Villages: 13
Number of Rides Hitched: 28 (new record of 10 in one day!)
Number of Kilometres Hitched: 1000km
Number of Beds Slept In: 19 (4 AirBnb’s, 9 hostels, 3 CouchSurfs, 2 hotels, and 1 ferry)
Number of Islands Visited: 9 (Shetland mainland, Unst, Yell, Papa Stour, Orkney mainland, Lamb Holm, Glims Holm, Burray, South Ronaldsay)
Number of Ferries Taken: 9
Number of Times I Yelled At My Dad For Cutting Someone Off in a Roundabout: ummmm, I think it’s best for our father-daughter relationship if I don’t disclose this…
Budget Breakdown
Lodging: £749.95
Food: £232.95
Beers: £58.35
Activities: £132.00
Transportation: £243.40
Miscellaneous: £80.23
Total: £1496.88 (~$2540.00 CAD)
This works out to about $42.28CAD per person per day.
Note, this does not include travel insurance, or foreign exchange/ATM fees.
With my dad visiting and Scotland generally not having as many CouchSurfing hosts compared to the rest of Europe, our costs added up quite quickly. We stayed in a number of AirBnbs, hotels, hostels, and more. Spending time with my dad made it all worth it though. (But now that he’s gone, Mac and I can go back to our budget backpacking ways! “What’s for dinner?” “Rice” “…and…??” “More rice”. (<—this actually happened).
Highlights & Lowlights
Holy Crap Scotland is Beautiful… – eloquent, I know. But seriously, I had no idea that Scotland was so incredibly stunning and picturesque. Shetland and Orkney are almost other-worldly; with their lack of trees and insane coastlines. But I was totally unprepared for the stunning landscape of the west coast of Scotland! Mountains and beaches I couldn’t have even imagined!
…But man, the gloomy autumn weather really got me down – Autumn came early this year, and with it a whole lot of rain, wind, and cold temperatures. I tried to stay positive and happy, but after a few straight days of walking around with soaked pant legs, something inside me just broke. (Yes, there were a lot of tears unfortunately). I bought myself a pair of waterproof over trousers and they’ve been helping a LOT. I’m trying to get in the perspective that ‘Scotland is so lush and green because of all the rain!!’, and it’s only mildly helping. We’ll only be in Scotland for a few more weeks, so I’m trying to think of the big picture and not stay too bummed out. Fingers crossed!
Papa Stour – easily my most favourite day of the month. The beauty of this island is unlike anything I’ve ever seen before.
LOLs
Lesson learned: Empty Ferries are not conducive to hitchhiking. On our epic day of hitching to the Northern Isles of Unst and Yell, we had great success on the mainland. The ferry from the mainland to Yell wasn’t totally empty, but we couldn’t find anyone going across the island to the next ferry port. We had to wait a whole hour for the next ferry to arrive. Leaving Unst, we were actually the only passengers on the ferry. Again, we waited nearly an hour (at dusk!) for the next ferry to arrive. We must have looked pretty desperate as the first car off the ferry drove us all the way across the island to the terminal. It was kind of fun being the only passengers on the ferry! We tried to make the best of it (and not focus on the fact that the lack of people essentially left us stranded as a bus shelter on Yell!).
Meeting a CouchSurfer IRL. Prior to travelling along the north coast, we had messaged a few CS hosts to see if we could surf with them. One guy in Tongue replied but he was unable to host us. A week or so went by and we thought nothing more of it. We arrived at our hostel in Tongue and only realized after we left for our day hike that the guy at reception was the same guy we had messaged on CouchSurfing!! We returned to the hostel and connected the dots with him and spent the whole afternoon chatting and swapping travel stories. It turns out he’s pretty nomadic like us and wasn’t sure he’d still even be in Tongue when we arrived. We were pretty happy to have made the connection and now we have a new nomadic friend!
Confused about CouchSurfing? Check out this post where I explain all you need to know about How CouchSurfing Works!!
What’s Next
If the high number of beds slept in this month (19!) didn’t give it away, we’re feeling the need for a bit of a break. As people who typically pride ourselves on travelling slow, this month was a bit of a whirlwind. We’re both craving a bit of routine and normalcy instead of always being go go go. We made a profile on a house-sitting website and are hoping to get a placement sometime this month. Towards the end of the month we’ll make our way to London/South England where we’ll hopefully meet up with some friends again.
Blogging
I’ve been feeling inspired to create a community here at A Taste of Trace and have been wanting to grow my audience for a while. In September, I committed to blogging every Monday, Wednesday, Friday. I published 13 (thirteen!) blog posts last month and started focusing on trying to improve my travel writing and social outreach. Publishing posts 3x/week was a little much, so I’m thinking of scaling it back in October to 2x/week. I’d love any/all feedback you have about this lil ol’ blog of mine. I love writing about our travels and sharing stories about the hidden parts of the world we visit and the awesome people we meet along the way. I’d love even more to connect with folks who are interested in travel and reading about nomadic adventures. If there’s someone you think would like reading about our travels, please consider sharing my blog with them! 🙂
Check out our previous travel summary posts!
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