Taking a day trip to Scotland was planned quite early on during our time in Europe. The plan was simply to take a ferry from Belfast to Cairnryan, organize a ride from there to a popular city or landmark, then explore for a while and come back. In practice, however, that became much more of a challenge than we ever could’ve properly anticipated.
To begin, this was the earliest in the morning I have needed to wake up for any of our plans so far during the entire trip. I was awake around 4:30 and spend the next twenty minutes or so battling myself to actually stand up. From there, the ferry was just a taxi ride away and it was very simple to board for the beginning of our trip. I was genuinely excited for the ferry itself; I had been on one before from Boston to Cape Cod and it can be a lot of fun to spend time with the right people in that setting. This ferry ended up being several times larger than I anticipated, but some exploration of the boat was limited by the desire to play Uno with the other boys on the trip.
Upon arriving, the girls managed to get a hold of a taxi pretty quickly and set off to visit Castle Kennedy. Unfortunately for us, the same taxi company as well as two others told us that they were either fully booked or simply would not help us. Over the course of at least thirty minutes, we were doing everything in our power to organize a ride to meet the girls at the castle. The use of ride share apps is virtually nonexistent there, and we had no luck with any company we contacted. Finally, after speaking to staff members at the port, we learned a bus would likely be able to bring us if we just kept waiting. Not ideal, but doable. To our surprise, we walked outside to find a bus to Stranraer, driven by a man who was absolutely not allowed to let us get on since we had not organized a ticket ahead of time. Regardless, after speaking to us and hearing our situation, he allowed us to board for free and called his friend who would drive us back on a different bus in the evening. The man who organized all of this for us was named Tucker, and he genuinely became our hero for the day.
Finally reaching Stranraer, which was much closer to Castle Kennedy than we initially were, we ran into the same problem. We had no ride to Castle Kennedy, which was roughly an hour and ten minute walk away. Being already sick of trying to organize rides, the five of us decided to get over it and walk the distance. To our surprise, the highway we walked along had a fully completed and usable sidewalk with beautiful scenery of Scotland to keep us amused. We had also been filled with a new sense of motivation after the kindness Tucker had shown us, so the hour walk really was no issue at all.
Once finally meeting up with the girls and arriving at the castle, we were presented with so many incredible views of old architecture and the nature of Scotland. The grass was green and vibrant, the garden nearby was well maintained and colorful, even the trees were fascinating to look at. There were lakes and ponds as well as paths leading to remarkable sights of hills with sheep and cows in the distance. As exhausted as I had already become, the views were absolute worth it. All of the people in the group were also very fun to hang around and I wouldn’t want to do a trip like that again without them.
When we finished with the castle, all of us together now took the hour long back to Stranraer, enduring the pain for the sake of the experience. The town itself was small but the houses were still amusing to look at given how different they were from American architecture. There was also a rocky coastline we could walk across where many of us got busy searching for sea glass and shells. We eventually got on the bus driven by Tucker’s friend Jim and boarded our ferry back to Belfast, exhausted but still with high spirits. And all of the bonds strengthened by that trip were immediately tainted by some more merciless (and very fun) games of Uno.
