I love words. So much so that I have filled notebooks with words I hear, am fascinated by and collect. (Don‘t even ask about my note book collection.)
But back to words.
I subscribe to daily newsletters such as Wordsmith each of which treats me to a word every day. And I follow various accounts such as HaggardHawk which focuses on obscure and old words.
Thanks to HaggardHawks I discovered that a word existed which describes our penchant for back road wanderings. And such a neat word. Coddiwomple, which means to travel in a purposeful manner towards a vague destination.
When we drive the backroads of the Scottish Highlands, that is exactly what we are doing. We drive purposefully but we often don’t know where we are going. Or if we do have a destination, we often find ourselves somewhere else, but we have had a lovely journey in the meantime. We travel at maybe 35 kilometres an hour, on a road that travels in a straight line for oh, maybe 100 metres at a stretch. We see all sorts of things….sheep, deer, raptors, seals, goats, pheasants, occassionally a house, rarely another vehicle, even neolithic ruins.
We have driven hundreds of kilometres towards vague destinations. But such glorious sights we have seen.
Serendipity! Yesterday’s word from HaggardHawks also describes our enjoyable activity. Anfract: a winding, circuitous route.
Even at home Ken follows anfracts (I hope I used this properly). We never go anywhere directly: we take the back streets and the narrow winding roads whether we are going to the grocery store nearby or to places further afield. And we are always rewarded with something unexpected.
Wander these back roads with us through these random photos of the Scottish Highlands.
