Lately, my most common mid-winter thought is … will this winter never end?!
This winter seems so cold, colder than any other recent winter. There has been more rain than usual, and more wind, more hail, and thunder, and lightning. There hasn’t been much snow, but it has just been so blasted cold and rainy and windy. Just miserable.
Where is spring!?
I decided I needed to get my mind off of this cold weather, so I researched places to go camping a couple of months from now, in April. And I made a camping reservation! Yay! This April I’ll be heading to Cape Disappointment State Park near the mouth of the mighty Columbia River, on the Washington State side, the north side of the Columbia River near the mouth of the Columbia River where it empties into the Pacific Ocean.
Obviously, I may not have weather as nice as in the photos above (both photos borrowed off the internet), but I will keep my fingers crossed.
The campground that I’ll be going to runs north-south along the Pacific Ocean, although the campsites themselves are a safe distance away from the ocean in case of big storms. But my campsite has a view of the Pacific Ocean! How cool is that? My specific campsite doesn’t have electricity or water, but Towhee the Trailer carries plenty of water and she has lots of solar panels and batteries, and I use propane for heat.
In April, it might still be cold and windy out there right next to the Pacific Ocean, but somehow a spring storm out on the Pacific Coast sounds fantastic, whereas here at home storms have become simply tedious. So, later in April, after I get home from this camping trip, look forward to some blog posts about this trip.
Other travel thoughts to distract me from winter woes …
Here at home, I’ve had friends visit recently from Canada. Our talk always seems to include a discussion of the monetary exchange rate between the Canadian dollar and the USA dollar. Not that many years ago, the Canadian dollar was worth more than the USA dollar so Canadians flocked to the USA to buy stuff and save money. Nowadays, it’s the opposite. The USA dollar is worth about 25% more than the Canadian dollar. In fact, that’s one of the reasons I bought a travel trailer built in Canada … and I purchased it directly from the Canadian builder, Escape Trailer Industries, in Chilliwack, British Columbia.
Also, other travel thoughts … a friend of mine and I have been discussing spending a month in Scotland this year (or next year) and of course we’ve been talking about what that might cost. She and I were there 12 years ago and learned to figure out the values of pounds and pence and quid and shillings and ponies and monkeys (really, those are names, or nicknames, for UK money).
In the UK (United Kingdom … or some folks think it’s not-so-united), Scotland has its own currency. There are three banks in Scotland that are allowed to print Scottish currency … Bank of Scotland, Royal Bank of Scotland, and Clydesdale Bank. The Scottish pound is worth exactly the same as the English pound. English money is used regularly in Scotland, but Scotland money (paper money and coins) is often refused by private businesses in England even though it is legal tender in England.
You might ask what would happen to Scottish money and its value if “brexit” does or does not happen, or what would happen if/when Scotland regains independence from England. I’ve researched those questions a bit online and, believe me, there are so many opinions that I stopped researching.
For ease of identification, each denomination of Scottish bank notes (paper money) is a different physical size (people who can’t see well or who can’t see at all, can learn to differentiate denomination by size) and each bank note has a different background color: £5 blue, £10 brown, £20 purple, etc.
While my friend and I were in Scotland, I took photos of some of the bank notes we came across. The photos are here (below), with information about the main image on each bank note (and a link to more information). Many of the bank notes photographed here that we used during our trip in 2007 are now out of print and out of circulation. I brought a good number of the ones we used back home with me to the USA. Time to go back to Scotland and get more!
My apologies for some of the badly focused photos here. I could have downloaded nice, crisp photos from the internet but I thought it more personal to share my own photos with you of the very same, exact money that I/we used while in Scotland.
Lord Ilay, Archibald Campbell
Mary Slessor, Scottish missionary to the Ibibio people in Nigeria.
Map of Calabar in Nigeria, including the location of the Ibibio people. Note the sailing ship in the lower left corner.
Whisky stills in a Scottish distillery. Scotch whisky is spelled without an “e” … it’s not whiskey, it is whisky … and it’s not “Scotch”! If you are in Scotland and order “Scotch” in a pub, you will not be served, you may well be completely ignored. The beverage is called simply whisky, the breath of the land!
Robert the Bruce, King of Scots, led Scotland to victory over the English army at the Battle of Bannockburn.
Education and research. The images on the right side of the bank note above are, from top to bottom: the Scottish Thistle, the national flower of Scotland; Pallas, the goddess of weaving, surmounted by the Latin motto “Ditat” (“she enriches”); the saltire cross (the large white X) and gold bezants (dots) which form part of Bank of Scotland’s coat of arms; a ship in full sail taken from the Union Bank of Scotland’s coat of arms. The thistle, Scotland’s national emblem, is in the upper left corner.
Education in Scotland has a long, important history. Guaranteed, free, basic education to all children in Scotland, no matter how small the village or remote the home or farm, has been a basic part of Scottish life and infrastructure long before it became such in England … and was put into practice in Scotland prior to such education in almost every other country in the world. Originally, all Bibles were written (and read) in Latin. The Roman Catholic church had forbidden teaching Latin to anyone other than priests and nuns, so only Roman Catholic priests and nuns could read (and interpret!) the Bible. The Scottish people reacted to that by establishing one of the earliest and best systems of education in the world, by distributing English translations of the Bible to all people in Scotland, and by establishing free schooling for every Scottish child. Scotland enjoyed the highest literacy rate of any country in the world for hundreds of years. Scotland still enjoys a 99% literacy rate, higher than the literacy rate in the USA.
So … all this talk of money and history and education and whisky sure has been a great distraction for me from this miserable winter weather. In fact, as I’m typing this, I just looked out my window to find NO wind, NO rain, and bright glorious sunshine. I think this blog post did the trick! 🙂
Do you have stories about money or education from “other” countries (I’m from the USA obviously) … or do you have interesting information about your own country? I’d love to hear all about it.
I was in Hong Kong many years ago and found their bank notes to be equally colorful and most interesting. For the most part they did not have images of people on them, only buildings or country scenes.
I checked out images for Hong Kong bank notes online; they are lovely. But indeed, there are no people on them, which surprised me. In fact, there haven’t been people on their bank notes for many decades. I wonder if that’s because of the political stresses and tensions that have existed between Hong Kong and China. If so, that’s too bad because there are so many people in Hong Kong over the years who have done miraculous things. Very interesting. Thanks Henry.
We’re with you on the “miserable cold winter” Ann. Up here in BC, Canada, we’re having a winter that’s colder than usual too. Or maybe there’s just more rain, or wind, but we too have commented on the miserable winter. But you saw sun today! Spring is coming. 🙂
I saw sunshine and spring again today! You said “spring is coming” and it certainly is … thank you! 🙂
Isn’t paper money beautiful? It’s like works of art….and yet we all seem to use our credit cards now. Absolutely not the same!
Yes, I’ve read that too, that we all use credit cards and don’t carry cash. What is it they say? That we’ll be a money/cash-free society within 20 years? No cash, just credit cards. Bah humbug! I’m reminded of the same sort of “threat” that was going around the internet years ago that we would no longer have printed books to read soon, that all of our reading material would be digital on our computers or other devices. I want my REAL book to read, and I want cash to spend. You are correct … not the same.
Can’t wait to hear about your next camping trip. Fascinating info about Scotland money. USA paper money is so boring in comparison.
I agree … USA paper money is boring in color, and the people are all men, and all bank notes are exactly the same dimension so visually impaired or blind people can’t tell the difference between denominations. Take a look at Australian bank notes in comparison … so many colors, men and women, aboriginal people, a woman who was a felon, church folk, artists, military folk, opera singers, etc. And of course Queen Elizabeth II. Sure wish the USA would take a lesson from the rest of the world.
Hi Ann. I’m a lurker but I love your blog and just want to say hi and hop you have a fantastic camping trip in April. The comment about credit cards was interesting. I have been places here in the US where they do not take cash, only credit cards. I thought US money was good anywhere, I guess not.
Hi Lori! Thanks for lurking. 🙂 Your comment reminds me that I, too, encountered a business enterprise here in the USA a few months ago that did not deal in cash, only credit cards or debit cards. When I asked them about that, they said it was easier for employees not to have to deal with cash and making change, and it was safer not to have cash on the premises, and it was easier to keep records of sales. The world continues to change, eh?