On the 2nd October this year we were due to set off driving the Mini to St Andrews to do the Highland Thistle, a classic car rally organised by our friends at Rally The Globe.
Back in March/April the RTG team had looked at the devastation Covid had wreaked on their entire calendar of events and had taken the brave but difficult decision to cancel the lot.
They then put back just one event for 2020, the Highland Thistle, a five day UK-only trip round Scotland, which they scheduled for October. 2021 would now be Europe-only events and their mouth-watering (for Sid and Doris) programme of global events would restart in 2022.
So Sid and Doris, along with many other RTG friends, have been eagerly looking forward to the Thistle for the past five months, and nervously looking at the resurgence of Covid for the past five weeks.
And just a week before the start, it happened. The email arrived acknowledging sadly that even if the event did go ahead, it wouldn’t be in the spirit of the Scottish Covid restrictions, and it wouldn’t be much fun either.
As you know by now, your doughty duo are not down-hearted for long, and we had been planning to add a tour to Orkney after the event anyway. After all, if you’ve already driven your Mini all the way to Scotland, you may as well make the most of it.
So with thanks to our erstwhile* organisers, here is the Sid and Doris version of Not The Highland Thistle. It will involve smaller hotels, more ferry crossings and hopefully a fair number of interesting roads. And yes, we are still hoping to do the Proper Thistle when it is rescheduled in 2021.
(*yes, this is the correct use of the word “erstwhile”)