“but do you travel in Scotland?”

She’s probably in her early seventies, an archetypical Italian descended Argentine mother. She’s already garnered our ages, positively complimented our marital status and commented on our negligence in production of offspring. I don’t object to the intrusive interrogation, for she’s fulfilling her other mission in life: feeding strangers. Today it’s husked walnuts and dried raisins and preparing to add lumps of cheddar cheese. We’re blocking the middle of Ruta Cuarenta, route forty, the classic road that traverses the long length of Argentina, its deserted desert dry, grit crafted rocks, wind ripped sand and the occasional drought crippled thorn tree. The chat progresses through the further conversational standards, resulting in the roads we’ve just been riding on, when she asks that pertinent question.

“But do you travel in Scotland?”

Of course we say “yes”, of course we know our own country. It was only afterwards that I got to wondering just how truthful I had been. When was the last time we ventured north of the Firth of Forth, suffered the attentions of the Scottish midge, negotiated with a bed and breakfast landlady, bought a boggy tent pitch on a fancy caravan site? Our cycling winter ventures in the last few years have majored on the Americas, with a healthy dose of trips around the Lothians.

With the summer season over, we’re going to step out our front door and simply head off with no fixed plan, to keep traveling until weather, daylight or disinclination intervenes.

Time for a revision, a revisit, a return.