Whalespotting

So for the last few weeks, I've been in 'sunny' (not so much) Scotland leading a marine mammal biology course. Here's a few of the highlights.

Dramatis personnae

There were 56 students all together, 9 of whom were from the US from my university, which included:

Kathy 'the loud'. A nice student, but tended to "turn it all the way up to eleven" when she talked.

Wee hairy Dave (not to be confused with big Dave or wee not-so-hairy Dave)

Tracey 'the spacy' (imagine a brunette Luna Lovegood from Harry Potter)

"Mom" (one of my graduate students) 

Velma "the Pole" (whose contract required her to mention Poland every three hours without fail)

Connor aka "Luke Skywalker" - cos he looked like him, duh. Extremely sweet and wholesome.

Cody 'the douche' - not really, although his physical similarity to both Luke Wilson and an character from Jersey shore was astounding.

Sheri 'the quiet' (says it all)

Kev 'the spaz' - very nice guy, but, well a bit of a spaz, and he will agree to this. But nonetheless drew Scottish girls to him like midges to a ginger.

I have to say, this was a great bunch of students. On field trips you often have one or two who are a pain, deliberately or unintentionally. But we really didn't have an problems this time they were great.

(I should probably add that the above names have been slightly changed to protect the innocent, and also there was a strict no underage drinking policy on the trip before anyone asks and there were enforced rules of behaviour ...).

Our epic adventure in haggis land

To cut a long story short and to skip sagas over lost luggage. We arrived in Glasgow early in the morning to find that our hostel would in fact not let us into our rooms for another eight hours. What to do? We went to the pub. So began a trend that lasted rest of the day, in fact the whole trip. As a responsible adult, I should add, that thoughout the trip I did make sure that everyone behaved themselves, moderated their drinking and that Cinderellas went home promptly at midnight lest they turn into drunken pumpkins.

The next day, the jet lagged posse headed to the Isle of Cumbrae, a quaint little island in the Clyde estuary. The island was a popular location for holiday homes for the gentry of Glasgow in the 19th century and the 'capitol' of the island boasts a white sandy beach ringed by sandstone Victorian houses, many in the baronial  style. All in all, it looks a little like Hogsmeade-on-the-sea (and if you don't know where or what Hogsmeade is, you ain't no friend of mine).

Millport

After settling in and getting a general briefing, it was off to the pub, and to broaden the student's understanding if music and culture in Scotland, we hit a bar doing karaoke. Somewhere there are videos. There were "Abba wigs" at one point. It's best to cast a veil over the whole proceedings...

The daily schedule for the first week of so basically involved students taking boat trips to monitor seas, or do surveys for porpoises, or one of two lab projects - one of which very glamorously involved sifting otter poop for fish bones. Afternoons generally involved hours of lectures, with two or so hours of lectures after a huge and wholesome dinner. Then, invariably there was the nightly pilgrimage to the pub.

For those readers who aren't from the UK, student life is irrevocably pub-oriented, and universities pretty much accept this as a fact. So most of these pub visits had UK faculty accompanying the students and drinking with them. Compare this to field courses in the US, where students today are typically forbidden to drink. In my experience students on "dry" courses drink anyway, but do so in secret, drinking spirits, and end up getting into far more trouble. As I said, my students were all well behaved - at least while I was there. But anyway, back to the plot.

I'm on good terms with Robert, the publican of the main 'local' that we go to, and because we can invariably bring fifty thirsty students to his pub, he's very open to giving us the back room/bar of his pub over to us so we can basically have our own private events. He'll also organize pub quizzes, discos and karaoke for us, which he dutifully did. So besides various pool tournaments we had quite a few things to to in the evenings. The annual pub quiz is a particular favourite of mine, and this year in an act of deviousness, the faculty inserted questions from the course in the final round - now that's what I call an "assessment tool". I was pleased to see my students scored high marks, and it brought a proud tear to my eye when they answered the question "which whale has the largest penis, and how long is it?" right (for the record - the sperm whale and 15' ).

Another highlight was karaoke. What the students lacked in terms of having and vocal skill whatsoever, they made up in enthusiasm and a willingness to get up and look complete idiots. There were actually a couple of good singers (I highlight Lianne and Jenny in case one of them ever reads this), but most were dreadful ...

The next stage of the trip was to head off to the Isle of Mull - arguably the whale watching capital of northern Europe. But before I do so, I should give a call out to the infamous Andrew Campbell. Andrew is a famous and venerated marine biologist of the old school, and I love sneaking into his lectures during the course just to listen to his anecdotes. To get the idea imagine a slightly porgy country squire talking about doing surveys for turtles who suddenly remarks : "... So moving to a new survey site, we arrived rather too late, and had had a bit of refreshment en route, and so Rupert (another senior and famous marine biologist) and I rather blearily  staggered into what we though was a hotel, and we were rather the worse for wear and didn't register the interesting furnishings and staff until the following morning when we found we'd booked ourselves into a brothel". If you know me in real life, ask me about the "sea cucumber" story ...

So we decamped to the postcard pretty isle of Mull, where we stayed in a cute ecolodge overlooking the sound of Mull and a stone's throw from the picturesque village of Tobermory, and spent the next three days looking for whales, dolphins,  basking sharks and otters.

Evening at the ecolodge

Tobermory

For the record, on my best day we saw 27 harbor porpoises, 6 minke whales and 6 basking sharks.

A basking shark

A minke whale

The little stay on Mull was delightful, and "mostly harmless".

While I'm talking about Mull, here's an anecdote from a previous course about the infamous "shaggy" Thompson, who was last rumored to be running to be a member of Parliament ... (fade to scene) we were sailing down the sound of Mull on a blustery day, and we were confused at why passing boats were sounding their horns or shouting at us, until one of the crew looked up into the crow's nest and saw shaggy stark naked, and saluting passing ships. Bearing in mind this was a very chilly day ...

Later that night he tried again, climbing onto the top of our minibus (which was parked on the main street), stripped naked and had his arms out in a cross, pirouetting until his pale, white butt was suddenly lit up, by the headlights of a police car, coming down the hill. Shaggy then leaped off the front of the minibus, still naked, slid down the windshield, "catching" himself on the wipers, then ran down a side street and scrambled through an open window behind the local youth hostel -  again, still naked. Evenings in Tobermory have subsequently seemed a little quiet in comparison to that year.

The final stage stage of the trip, my American students said goodbye to the Brits, and we headed to Inverness.

Downtown Inverness

Inverness is a beautiful city, with many baronial style buildings, nestled on the banks of the river ness. Our hostel, not so beautiful however. We had to manhandle heavy luggage up several flights of spiral stairs. The rooms were so small that if the four boys stood up in their room at the same time, there was no space. It was like staying in Harry Potter's room under the stairs. Two of the girls ditched the hostel and went for a nice B&B, while the rest of us roughed it. We had to get out of the place though. So we headed for hootenanny's for some live "diddly- diddly" music. I introduced the students to the delights if chips and curry sauce & scotch eggs. We ended up in a club holding a "games night" where we played giant Jenga and jumped about in bouncy castles. Kev pushed over another group's Jenga tower. "That took a lot of time to make" <in broad Scottish accent> said man who was the size and hairiness of Chewbacca.

"I know, I was watching you" replied Kev. That comment warranted a quick and forceful extraction that seal team 6 would be proud of.

"There's a  m***** ******* platypus on this m***** ******* unicycle!"

 Close to the end of the trip, slight hysteria began to set in. We went to the Loch Ness visitor center and were told that ecologically, Nessie couldn't exist, to the disappointment of the students. Desperate to at least have a chance at glimpsing the monster, we went to Urquhart castle, on the banks of Loch Ness. No monsters, but plenty of idiots. Tourists lacking self awareness or awareness of others. Castle was nice though.

Urquhart Castle

The next stop was another castle, Doune Castle, where parts of Monty Python and the Holy Grail were filmed. This was a great site, with lots of rooms to explore, staircases to clamber up and  great view. Compulsory activities for us were to lean over the battlements and taunt the French tourists, and to 'gallop' around the courtyard with a pair of coconuts.

Doune Castle

"It's just a flesh wound!"

Final port of call was Edinburgh. To not give a list of bars and pubs visited I'll simply highlight a few:

Best beer: Brewdog

Best pub grub: Black bull
Best live music: Whistlebiskies
Best character (and most ghosts): Banshee Labyrinth

For the academic part of the Edinburgh visit, I took the students to 'the dynamic earth' - a great museum of geology, ecology and evolution. Stretching 'historical education' to the limit, we also visited the Edinburgh Dungeon to get the willies scared out of us by Sawney Bean, Burke and Hare and other Scottish horrors. For 'cultural education' there was the 'whisky experience' where we had fun having our palates educated about the differences in scotch (at least the over 21s did).

The final educational event was curtesy or Mercat tours. Which started with me being attached to the Mercat Cross and being flogged for being an Englishman, by our lovely guide Fiona (who flogs me every year, regular as clockwork). The tour took us into the creepy under city of Edinburgh, through crypts and spooky rooms. Sadly no ghosts were encountered - just creepy Mr Perkins the fairground owner.

The final night I shall draw a veil of modesty over, to protect the young, innocent and weak of heart (or liver). Highlights were, however, acquiring a number of horse masks and dancing in said masks, making a scene that looked like "equus the musical". Some time in the early hours I won a dance off against an Italian guy, mostly through enthusiasm and extravagance, rather than any skill.

And so ends my little Scottish travelogue. Next stop, the middle ages ...