Suffolk and Good take on The Final Quest

Ohmigod I feel so hungover. But of course, the last 48hrs have been worth the pain that I am in now. They have been awesome.

I finished my exams (finally) and got the obligatory spraying with champagne by my friends, and a boozy lunch. All well and good. However, by 3pm I was being bundled into a car to embark on “The Final Quest”. The Final Quest was a 27hr scavenger hunt around Scotland organised by a couple of boys in our year. They had created a map with about 70 clues all around the country, from John O’Groats to Skye to Loch Lomond to Loch Ness down into the Borders. It was incredible. Obviously you couldn’t do the whole thing, so we just picked and chose what we wanted to see. For us, that meant driving from Edinburgh to Stirling to Fort William to Loch Lochry on the first night, stopping along the way to do moonie shots in lakes, pick up random photo shots, toot at canoes, and mucho general hilarity. Helen drove, and she did the most awesome job. The road to Fort William was pretty good. Not motorway, but not the one lane wonders that we would spend so much time on the next day. We stayed in a random youth hostel with lots of Dutch people who hated us, mainly because we arrived late, were noisy, tried to put our bedding on in the dark with much giggling, and just were very bad bad hostellers. Lots of fun. Poor WPT. He had to go in the boys dorm which he said smelt v v v bad, and had a lot of people snoring. Not a good night’s sleep. At least we slept. There were loads of people who drove through the night and didn’t sleep at all. How horrible. Plus, those wee Scottish roads would be a total nightmare in the dark. They are so narrow and windy. One group hit a deer, which wrecked the car. Nasty.

The thing that keeps the tourists out of Scotland, as opposed to the West of Ireland, is the midges. They are impossible. I have bites all over my arms and neck and we weren’t even outside that much, being involved in a race against time and the 40-odd other cars that were doing it. It was hilarious – we all had stickers on our cars, and you would be in the middle of nowhere, and suddenly you would see another wee car with a sticker racing along. Fun times.

Our second day had some amazing scenery. The night before, we had been at the foot of Ben Nevis, but the clouds were down, and it was raining, so we couldn’t see anything, which was a shame. However, the skies lifted as we drove through the Highlands, seeing the Five Sisters, and driving through various passes on the smallest, windiest roads, that took hours to get anywhere on, but they had to be taken to get the precious points. We did some awesome things: Loch Garry which looks like a map of Scotland; the most amazing bench view on the road to Applecross; a random seafood festival at Applecross; lots of sheep and hairy coos (Highland cattle). So beautiful and amazing. We met some brilliant people too, and got cheered out of Applecross’s festival. This was a town that was only a street long, and we got right in the middle of their summer festivities. So cool.

Having said that, we badly mistimed our drive home, and had to drive from Ullapool to Edinburgh in only three hours, which is simply undoable. We were exactly four hours late, which really isn’t too bad. We were absolutely knackered, but had had a great great time. We’d also got rather blasé about having our bums out in the open air, having moonied beside a road, and at a castle. Awesome. FMN1 went from being quite reluctant to to being the most keenest moonie planner. All in the name of points. WPT was the only boy, and he got the role of photographer and artistic director, claiming that no one wanted to see his big bum, and would rather see our little ones. Hmm.

More to come later, but right now I am far too hungover to write anymore.