Don’t get me wrong, not rude, just miserable and not that welcoming. Mostly tourist spots, and we did keep ourselves to ourselves a bit. Not like we had to talk to anyone
Some tourists can be very trying. Not sure I'd have the patience to work with them all day every day.
They probably start the day with a smile but it wears thin as time goes on. When self and Mrs Gimlet were in Australia many years ago we had people-watching down to a T. There isn't much else to do when you're living under canvas for nine months. In an Australian campsite you can't tell what nationality people are from their cars because no one takes their own car to Australia, you buy or hire one when you get there. So we used to observe new arrivals and try to judge their nationality from their behaviour. We got pretty good at it too and called it right nine times out of ten. (Edit: The former Mrs Gimlet, I should add, was from Middlesbrough where curtain-twitching is immensely popular. She taught me all I know). Parts of the Scottish highlands are that popular you can now do the same thing there. Fort Augustus, for example, is rammed with foreign tourists who come to book tours to see Nessie (not...). If someone walks between your car/bike and the fuel pump when you're gassing up at the petrol station and gives you a hard stare as they walk past - a very odd thing to do - they will be German. If a group of people have stopped for a chat in the doorway to a shop so no one else can get through, or they've decided to stand around and drink coffee in the queueing lane for the tills when they aren't actually buying anything, so the harassed shop manager has to come out and shift them, they will be French. If you meet an oncoming biker on the road and he greets you with a raised index finger like a point of order has just occurred to him in a meeting, he will be German. If he ignores you completely, he is Belgian. If a group of exceptionally nice people greet you with waves and smiles and they are riding KTMs, they are Austrians. The slowest camper van drivers in the world, it turns out, are French, the only camper van drivers who pull over to let following traffic pass are UK drivers and the Dutch. And if you're riding along a deserted single-track road with no one behind you for miles and a van in a lay-by waits till you're fifty yards away then pulls out in front of you and proceeds to drive down the road at 23 mph with you up his tailpipe, the driver will be Japanese. And if someone comes onto a largely appreciative and praise-filled thread about Scotland and cavils about a mild forum in-joke that was first used to try and tickle @finm (who has more sense than to bite) that person will be @749er who is Scottish.
And if someone comes onto a largely appreciative and praise-filled thread about Scotland and cavils about a mild forum in-joke that was first used to try and tickle @finm (who has more sense than to bite) that person will be @749er who is Scottish. . meh, i'm just keeping my powder dry. bloody grockles, then there's the tourists....
Careful, finm. You know how weird those circus Glaswegians get. A bit too touchy-feely about a person's sit-upon, so they are.
I just want to know if those who talk the talk have walked the walk. Maybe I will start another thread with a poll?
I have a really simple approach. I am always polite, try to to pleasant and jovial. Manners cost noth8mg, rudeness can cost everything. Until someone is rude to me. Then they go go f*ck themselves. And I’m happy to tell them that. Forum or anywhere. But there is always a bit of banter, and a few of te Scottish participate without going all Rob Roy
If I meet a chippy, thin-skinned person I consider it a public duty to offend them, partly because its just too hard to resist and partly because being offended by everything is probably their only function and pleasure in life and it would be mean not to bring them a little joy. But I didn't meet any chippy, thin-skinned people so no badinage of the sharp stick variety was deployed.
Banter is two-way. Its an exchange that has to develop. Blurting random things out to strangers you've never spoken to before is tourettes.
