We leave our hotel in a flurry of German giants who say they are off booze for the next week because they have sampled all the scotch in Glasgow. A jovial fellow from Arnold Clark car rental picks us up in a van, drives us to Glasgow’s exurbs where the car we rented is ready and waiting. Pretty seamless, and we’re off toward a town called Glencoe, famous for an internecine clan battle and several beautiful climbs.

Along the way, we stop at Hill House, a home deigned for a Glasgow publisher named Edward Blacke by Charles Ronnie Mackintosh. The house was originally made, basically, of poured concrete == innovative and daring at the time but a REALLY bad choice given its environment — with almost no lime to bind it so the constant rain and humidity over the years since 1880+ have caused the “skin” of the exterior to leak, separate from the substructure, and rot the plaster walls inside. (Michael Leibman, does something in this seem familiar?)

The house is now encased in stainless steel chain mail so the wind can slowly dry its walls, so rain cannot get at it, and so it won’t dry so quickly that its walls, inside and out, will not crack. We tour its insides and outsides and highly recommend it to anyone who’s near Glasgow.

Next stop after driving about two hours north is Luss, on the shores of Loch Lomond, where a couple older than us, if that’s possible, reciprocates phone photo etiquette for travelers of a certain age, and takes our picture after we take theirs. We walk on the rock beach a bit and split for Glencoe. The views along our route are somewhat drab; weather continues to be an issue. But the rolling brown hills with occasional snow-capped low mountains of raw rock in the distance are … constant, and broken visually by long thin lakes of sinuous shapes, some large, others small.

We get to a spot noted for two deep valleys receding into the distance and separating three sharply etched hills called the Three Sisters. Worth a 10-minute stop in the blowing wind that spits rain at us. On to Glencoe.

We’re destined for the Strath (that’s a long picturesque winding road to … nowhere) Lodge, owned by Lawrence and Dawn who like to RUN the Haute Route in three days that it just took a cohort of Grants (David, Byron, Michael and Carmen) 12 days to hike. They are. thin couple and their lodge is lovely. We check in and leave for a seafood dinner a 20-minute drive around the edges of a Loch Leven. Oysters to die for. A lovely view across the lake to steep hills on the other side.

Back home and to bed.