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It is usually by chance you meet, just leaving the early breakfast when another group arrives for breakfast and you realise that their guide is one of your best friends - you just did not know you spent the night in the same hotel. Meeting other guides by chance was always great fun. This is one of the reasons why the Parliament contract was so good. You met your colleagues regularly for a chat. I loved the four years in Parliament, it was hard and 3-4 tours in a day was very tiring (usually collapsed in Clarinda’s), but a good experience. And, of course, it changed the STGA forever. For a while I took part in assessing guides, my future colleages, and I may have made enemies then, so sorry. I was quite strict! but hope that advice and feedback was helpful. I liked that part very much, I got to know many guides and got to know them well and it kept me in touch. I left the best for the end. We have all experienced it, the heavy rain that turns Glenshiel and Skye into one big waterfall...the everchanging clouds... the day when it rains more or less the whole day and the roads are wet except it never rains where you are with the group! The numerous rainbows that have disappeared when you finally stop for the photo and the three weeks of uninterrupted sunshine and heat that is nearly a bit boring. The mountain in bright sun that you never noticed before, the spiderwebs covering all greenery on a foggy morning, and all the birds and squirrels and dolphins and all that. And the basking shark swimming just for you when the group has gone for their lunch.
One last memory of a view of nearly biblical proportions: the coach drives on Ardnamurchan towards Kilchoan to catch the ferry to Mull. The sky is black, threating but no rain, just black. Then suddenly there is a hole in the sky and I ask the driver to drive slowly up the hill and stop on top of the hill so that we can see what the sun illuminates. Even green grass in sunshine surrounded by blackness is beautiful... We come to the top of the hill and the whole group just gasps and are left breathless. In the middle of that perfect round sunny illuminated patch of grass surrounded by blackness is the most magnificent deer, dancing.... Breathtakingly stunningly beautiful Scotland. I loved every single day.
Blood and Guts
By Keith Laing
‘I had been guiding and driver guiding for some time round Scotland, England, Wales, Northern Ireland and Southern Ireland and in 1985 my wife had an operation that didn't go to plan so I was going to be working more at home. An old friend, Anne Lister, suggested that I try doing City tours and I made a few enquiries but discovered that most companies
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