I have been walking a lot. And it has taken its toll on my feet. After walking a long way the other day, my feet were sore and painful, and I took off my shoes to take a look, and my right little toe was just one huge blister. It even reached under my toenail. I had blisters in other places as well, but the one on my little toe was the worst. I remember this kind of stuff happening to my feet on the last trip I was on; when I was walking through Australia, I had similar problems.
So I did the same thing I did then; I looked online for solutions. The problem is that then, as now, none of the listed solutions really worked for me. If I cushion my foot where it is hurting, then my feet are even more packed in my shoes, rubbing against them worse. And my feet swell as I walk, so they get to really rubbing against the edges of the shoes. I also tried compression socks, but then my feet are squeezed in different ways, and I start getting more problems between the toes as they rub against each other.
No, the only solution seems to be just to crank into the crunchsmush. Just take all that raw, painful, soft sore stuff, and keep walking on it, working the crap out of it, painfully, until the soft, raw stuff turns into hard, calloused protected stuff. There just doesn't seem to be any way around that.
But, for now, I did sort of tape up a few of the worst spots with toilet paper covered with adhesive tape, even though it is not the greatest solution. And I also changed to new merino wool socks. I had been wearing my old, worn merino wool socks, and changing to the newer ones seemed to help a bit. But this will probably be a fairly chronic, recurring problem as long as I'm walking as much as I am.
I had one day with just a series of misfires in Glasgow. I went online to try to find an all-inclusive bus pass for the day. I had seen the First Bus buses running by the hostel, so I went to their site to buy a day pass. And I did, with relative ease, though I had to download their app. But what I didn't know at the time, and didn't find out until later (with fairly mortifying consequences), is that there is not just one bus company in Glasgow operating the city buses, there are several. And each company runs buses with similar numbering patterns, but the buses are split between these different companies. And if you buy a day pass for one company, you can't use it with the other companies, which makes it near useless, because if you take three buses somewhere, they are probably going to be with three different bus companies. Fuck privatization, goddamnit. So that was my first misfire, though I didn't find this out until later, when I tried to board my second bus, after using the pass on the first bus. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
I tried to go to Seven Lochs Wetland Park. It sounded like a cool place to visit, and their site said though it's outside the city, it's easy to reach by public transportation, BUT IT DOESN'T SAY HOW! So I went to Google Maps, and it gave me the way there. Or so I thought. I took my first bus there using my day pass, and then I was to take a second bus. There was a nice little wilderness area to hike around in nearby, called Todds Well, so I wandered there for a while since I had some time before the next bus. But, when I got back to take the next bus, a lady at the bus stop told me (wrongly) that I was at the stop going the wrong way. I believed her, because the Google map of the bus route was weird and improbable, and the route went in a strange loop going in an imponderable direction that didn't involve streets, so I didn't know what to think. It made it look like I had to catch the bus on the wrong side of the street, and then it would turn around and go the other way. So she said I had to go down the street to the stop on the other side of the street. So I did that, only to see the bus I was supposed to catch arrive across the street while I missed it. There was my first misfire. And this particular bus only came once an hour, so I was screwed. I decided to walk out into the country to where Google Maps said the park was, rather than wait for the next bus, which I couldn't take anyway with my day pass (though I didn't yet know that), because the bus belonged to a different company.
So I walked down this narrow country road with no sidewalks, having to jump out of the way into the bushes when cars came, but there was no entrance to the park along the road I was on. I think the park may have bordered that road, but there was no path to get in.
Anyway, I kept down that road for a really long tone, until I had long passed where Google told me Seven Lochs Wetland Park was, and it was apparent that it wasn't happening. So I Googled some more about the park, and found someone's blog where they talked about going to the park, and found what I thought was the location they were talking about on the map, and mapped out the way there on Google Maps. I would have to take the bus I missed (the next one arriving) farther out, and then change buses to get to the new location. I waited for the bus, and when it arrived, my day pass didn't work. I tried to scan it several times, but it wouldn't accept it. The bus driver put his glasses on and looked at my pass, and he told me that it was a First Bus pass, but his bus was McGraw's. So I added him how much the fare was; it was a little more than a couple of pounds.
I pulled out my change to pay the bus fare, and that's when the next misfire happened. I was about thirty cents short. I had been trying to use up all my change, because I was leaving Britain soon, and I didn't want to have a lot of change left over. But I certainly didn't foresee this situation at all, where I was stuck in the middle of nowhere, thinking I have a bus pass that is, in fact, worthless for this bus, and not enough money to take the bus.
I was mortified and chagrined, and faced with having to disembark from the bus far from the city. But a woman who was the only other passenger on the bus offered to pay my bus fare. I accepted, embarrassed that I had enough to pay, just not on me. I offered her my change that was a little short, but she wouldn't take it.
Anyway, I had to transfer to another bus, and, luckily, it was a First Bus, which was covered by my nearly worthless day pass. But I did manage to cover two bus fares with it, so I just about got my money's worth. But, the park was nowhere to be found in this second location either, so I just took the next bus into town, luckily on the First Bus route. And when I got into town, that's when I noticed many different bus companies listed at every stop. Damn it.
My whole morning had been taken up by this series of misfires, so I decided to try to go to Glasgow Tower. But none of the buses that went there were First Bus, and I didn't have enough change (and didn't want to get money out of an ATM just for bus fare), so I walked there for about an hour and a half across town. Yet another misfire. But I saw a sign at one of the bus stops (of course, when I was almost there) that said you can pay by contactless card. In Europe, they have contactless cards all over the place; they don't seem to be very prevalent in the States. But they work the same as phone payment apps, which means I probably could have used the Samsung Pay app on my phone to pay for the bus rather than have a stranger bail me out. Aauugghh, misfire again. That one was a double backward misfire that would have canceled out the earlier one.
Well, anyway, I had decided to pay forward the good deed that the woman did for me when she paid my bus fare. Later, at the hostel, I met a guy from Montana who was going to London, and I still had my Oyster card for the London Metro with a little money on it, so I gave it to him, and rooks him when he was done with it, he could either cash it in for the five pound deposit, or pass it on to someone else. So I was able to pass on the good deed. Does that cancel out a misfire? Probably not. Not that I won't do any good deeds in the future if the opportunity for one comes up; hopefully there will be more. But at least I paid one forward.
There was just that one day in Glasgow that was filled with misfires. The rest of the time was just smooth sailing. Then I moved on to Edinburgh. This time, I took the Megabus instead of the train. I did take one bus before, from London to Bath, but it was a National Express bus. The Megabus from Glasgow to Edinburgh was the cheapest way I found on that particular route. It was only £3.75, and the trains were much more, as was the National Express bus. But the strange thing was, it didn't even end up being a Megabus. It was a Citylink, and though I paid for Megabus online, they had apparently made some deal to carry their passengers on the Citylink bus, even though the fare was much cheaper. I'm not complaining...it was strange though, because I saw other Megabus coaches leaving from that station.
I arrived in Edinburgh, which was absolutely one of the most beautiful European cities I've been in, beating out even Kazan, Russia, and Prague, Czechia, though I have to say that Venice, Italy, is in its own class. It's like everywhere I look in Edinburgh, the city is posing for me for pictures. But not in a contrived way, in a very natural way. Edinburgh has one of the most unique city centers I've ever seen. There is a huge, craggy, cliffy mountain right smack dab in the middle of the city, which has Edinburgh Castle at its peak, and The Royal Mile leading down from the castle to Holyrood. The huge hill has deep valleys on either side of it. And this unnaturally strange thing is right in the middle of what is basically downtown, though they don't call it that. The whole city on the hill is the Old City. It's not very big at all and was the city surrounded by walls prior to the eighteenth century, when the New City was built just on the north side of the Old City, flanking the Northern Valley, which now contains Princes Street Gardens, though in olden times, it just collected the sewage that people poured their windows in the Old City. Supposedly they took decades to dredge out the nasty old sewage that had gathered there for centuries when they decided to turn the valley into a beautiful garden. And it's one reason why it's so fertile.
I spent three days in Edinburgh, and on the fourth day, I took a bus tour across the Scottish Highlands, heading to Loch Ness, but stopping in a few towns along the way to sightsee a bit. The longest stop on the way up was Dalwhinnie, and the longest stop on the way back was Pitlochry. There are three lochs in a row...Loch Lochy, Loch Oich, and then Loch Ness, and the bus traced the path of the first two before arriving at Loch Ness at Fort Augustus. We also saw some of Loch Linnhe near Fort William, which is a salt water loch leading to the Atlantic Ocean on the west side of Scotland; the others were fresh water lochs. There was an option to take a boat around Loch Ness, but I chose to walk around the town of Fort Augustus instead. I'm glad I did because the boat ride was not very long and didn't go much farther than I could see anyway. The day trip into the Highlands was a very long day trip; we left around eight in the morning and got back at around eight at night. I had to re-pack my backpack for a flight to Porto, Portugal the next day, which is where I am now. When I pack for a flight, I have to put my pocket knife and nail clippers in my checked bag, take my electronics on my cabin bag, and empty out my water container. But I forgot that I had left a jar of Marmite on my carry-on, which got confiscated at the Edinburgh Airport, because who knows what nefarious deeds I could have committed with that Marmite. I might have actually eaten it. But, alas, no, it was seized unopened, and probably even gone to waste. At least they could have fed the hungry or something (assuming the poor would eat Marmite).
I had an uneventful and peaceful flight to Porto, and took the metro easily to the hostel. I always look forward to arriving in a new country, even as I miss the old one.
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