6000 Miles from Dove Cottage - Part 1 of 10

Jordanhill in Glasgow was the first leg of our
'Awfully Big Los Angeles Adventure'

Ever since Gill's brother moved to the United States, he has been keen for us to fly over there for a visit. Now while I am keen to travel; up until now this has been very much a local affair - and any thing further has been achieved from my armchair. Last year's trip to London was an ascent of Everest-like proportions for my Argyll-centric view of life, and several trips to Mallorca over the last 20 years have done nothing to assuage my thirst for staying put.

Victoria Park in Glasgow - we stayed near here for a couple of days before heading for the USA.

I love being in a new place and seeing the sights; it is the actual travelling I cannot get used to. Robert Louis Stevenson famously written that it was better to travel hopefully than to arrive. I am unsure of exactly what he meant by this, but if he was saying that travelling is better than being there, then I have to disagree ... and I feel he would not have said it at all if he had had to fly to the Cevennes or Samoa.

Ice was a serious threat to our trip with all planes from Glasgow to London cancelled the day before.

Really my aversion to travel only applies to flying. I love trains, particularly for long journeys, and sea travel - apart from one lurching trip to the Shetland Isles - is a real delight, but flying is ... un-nerving. And it is not even the flying itself, it is the rigmarole surrounding it. Flying may indeed be one of the safest ways to travel, but the response to the terrorist threat has sucked every vestige of pleasure out of it.
However, we made it successfully from Kilmartin to Los Angeles despite much sabre-rattling from Auld Nick. Threats of cancellations due to bad weather and long delays at U.S. Immigration came to nought... well, almost ...but it was a surprisingly easy trip, if a tad overlong at 14 and a half hours all in ...and we were all in by the time that we finally reached our destination. More to follow.