Episode 49 - State Visit to Fife!
The much-anticipated visit to Finlay's family in Scotland
When I first moved into the co-op last September, I only knew one of my roommates, Vieri. He and I met in Paris when I studied abroad there in the fall of 2023, and when I learned that he was coming to UCLA for his exchange, it only seemed natural to live here together, too.
The other roommate was random, and it turned out to be Finlay. The first thing I learned about him was that he was Scottish, so naturally, I spent the next two quarters pestering him nonstop about Scotland.
Fast forward to half a year later, and I’m at Finlay's house in Scotland to visit his family. Best part is, Finlay’s still at UCLA, finishing up his last quarter while I’m off gallivanting around the British Isles.
What follows is an epic adventure, one of my state visit to Fife1. It’s finally here!
If this is your first episode and you’re like “what in the world is happening”, start off here.
Monday, April 21st, 2025
After saying bye to Rachel at the Edinburgh train station, I hopped into the first-class carriage to get to Kirkcaldy. You may be thinking, “First class, Dennis, so fancy!”
The story behind that is that the train to Kirkcaldy from Edinburgh costs only $4 (!!), and upgrading to a first-class ticket would only be an extra $5. After Rachel told me that the LNER2 trains provide free tea and a snack for their first-class passengers, I was completely sold. First-class, here I come.
And wow, was I fed well! Even though the train was only 40 minutes long, I still got a glass of red wine, chips, jam, butter, bread, tea, and crumpets! Pair that with the large, comfortable seat and coastal view, and I was living like a king in that first-class carriage.
I blinked, and had already arrived in Kirkcaldy. I walk out the train, and there was Finlay’s dad, waiting for me on the platform! James!
I was honestly a little bit in shock that he was waiting for me, and that the crossover of the century was happening right before my eyes. Me, with Finlay’s dad, here in Scotland!
We arrived at his house after a pleasant drive, and it was honestly so surreal. I’d heard so much about Finlay’s place after months of asking about it, and it was honestly just so crazy to me that I was on the other side of the world, having made it to his doorstep.
Of course, the first thing I did was check out their pond, where famously, James put in a floating duck house and got 4 ducks to live in their backyard. Over the course of a few weeks, I listened in awestruck horror as Finlay told me the tragic saga of these quackers — one by one, these delightful, precious little darling ducks were eaten by the river otter that would swim into the pond to enjoy a convenient lunch. Week by week, Finlay would update me that another duck was unfortunately eaten, adding another victim to the otter’s feast.
And months later, here I was, standing right in front of this legendary pond, the site of such profound and historic events. Wow. Simply wow!
After appreciating the duck pond (now duckless, unfortunately), James and I headed inside, where I met Finlay’s mom, Josephine, and sister, Tabitha. We all sat down for a delicious dinner of ratatouille and bison, and it was the best time ever. It was again just so surreal to be sitting there with Finlay’s family. I’d made it!
Plenty of tales and stories were recounted, particularly about the co-op and, of course, the art gallery I spent months curating and Finlay spent countless hours writing the plaques for. We also had a lovely conversation about patriotism and culture in the UK vs US, a conversation I’d had a variation of several times on this trip already.
The highlight of the evening was our post-dinner teatime, where I was very confused about the difference between Earl Grey tea and black tea. I thought that Earl Grey tea was black tea.
Turns out, black tea is a completely different thing since Earl Grey contains bergamot. Of course. I asked to smell these different teas to see if I could tell the difference, and much to everyone’s surprise, I couldn’t. Clearly, I’m not British.
After dinner3, I spent a few hours planning the rest of my Scotland trip with James, which basically entailed us poring over some extremely detailed (and waterproof) topographical maps of the country on the kitchen table. We planned for a nice hike together the next day, followed by a train ride up to Tyndrum the day after for some solo hiking in Glen Coe.
And I must add, James’s collection of maps is the finest I’ve ever seen. I thought I liked maps, but it was nothing compared to James’s love for them. I could hardly imagine someone I’d rather spend two hours looking at maps with than him.
Tuesday, April 22nd
I woke up early after an amazing night of sleep in the even more amazing bed, and headed downstairs for a delicious breakfast of porridge, coffee, and toast. Everyone was up early for an exciting day of hiking!
A bit about Scotland: It’s divided into two main regions based on the local physical topography, and these regions are appropriately named the Lowlands and the Highlands4.
The main cities, Edinburgh and Glasgow, are located in the Central Belt in the Lowlands, and the Highlands are further north and home to the most beautiful scenery and nature in the UK. Scattered all around the Highlands are tons of mountains (including the tallest one in all of the UK, Ben Nevis), and the ones that are over 3000 feet in elevation are known locally as Munros.
Some dude a few hundred years ago named Sir Hugh Munro wrote a hiking guidebook with a catalogue of all the peaks over 3000 feet, and subsequently these mountains started being referred to as Munros. The ultimate goal is to climb as many as you can.
Maybe I should write a similar book about California peaks, and in a few hundred years everyone will be hiking up Gavrilenkos.
And in case you’re super confused about all this, here’s a nice little map to show you how this is all divided:
Besides their name, the other interesting thing about these Munros is that very few are isolated peaks, but rather they’re strung together in a row with narrow ridges between them5. As a result, one rarely hikes up just one Munro, but rather an entire string of them — hiking along such a ridge is known as ridgewalking, and the subsequent ascent of a string of nearby peaks is known as Munro bagging.
And that was the plan for the day! James and I, along with Finlay’s younger brother Peter (who also studies at the University of Edinburgh), were off to bag some Munros in the Highlands!
After picking up Peter near Edinburgh, we headed north toward the Highlands, stopping at a Subway to pick up sandwiches with the ultimate destination of Ben Lawers6. We chatted the entire drive up, and what we didn’t talk about! Everything from James’s PE and investment philosophy on LATAM markets, to Peter’s decision to study zoology and the Irish Potato Famine, to guns and the classic UK vs US conversation.
The highlight of it for me was learning about the famine walls — land in Scotland was privatized a few hundred years ago into the hands of a few major owners, and there wasn’t any government social support in times of crisis7. So when there was a famine from bad harvests, the poor peasants would move onto the large landowners’ land and work in exchange for food.
The thing was, there wasn’t much work that needed to be done, but the landowners needed to have the peasants do something to justify feeding them. So they just had them build random stone walls over random mountains, which are now known as famine walls. Wild
On the drive over, we also saw a ton of sheep, which is to be expected at this point in my UK trip. There are just sheep everywhere here. Of course, the sheep’s wool was different colors based on their owners, but James revealed to me that the sheep also might be colored based on which color ram they… had a lovely time with in the field.
The idea was if you paint one ram’s BRC8 red, and another’s blue, then you can determine which lambs came from which rams because the sheep receiving the rams’ love would be that color, too. Then, determining which lambs turned out into better sheep determines which ram’s genetic line is better, and subsequently, you could decide that ram should be given access to more sheep to improve the farmer’s flock.
Fortunately, we didn’t see any purple sheep. That would’ve been hilarious.
Eventually, we made it to the parking lot for Ben Lawers, and set off on our epic ascent of the tenth-tallest peak in the UK. It was pretty smooth sailing, with beautiful views9 and nice weather the entire way up.
I was honestly just so happy to be there. It was so crazy to me that I met my random roommate in September, and here I was, half a year later, hiking in the Highlands with his family. What a special time!
The views from the top of Ben Lawers were amazing, and we celebrated by destroying our delicious Subway sandwiches, and, of course, finding the geocache hidden at the summit. It was a D5/T510, and slightly buried in snow, but the helpful hint meant that the large ammo can was in my hands in no time at all. The nice thing about all the snow was that Bella, their dog, would fervently dig into it and bury her head in the snow. So cute!
We celebrated at the top, signed the log, and descended to the ridge saddle to hike up the third and final Munro of the day.
All this ridgewalking was super fun because Scotland has this amazing thing called the “right to roam”, which basically means that there is no such thing as trespassing as long as private property is respected. Unless land is actively being farmed, any land is fair game to walk across, so people just hop fences and walk through sheep fields all the time to get wherever they want to go.
This leads to the very interesting phenomenon of ladders over lots of fences. Knowing that hikers will hop their fences otherwise, farmers build ladders over them so hikers can get over without damaging the fences that keep the sheep contained.
This also leads to the very interesting phenomenon of hikers just walking down random mountains and onto the side of random roads, blazing their own trails however they’d like.
That’s pretty much exactly what we did. After summiting the third Munro, we created our own trail down the mountain to reach the main road (so much fun!). We saw some sheep dens on a cliffside, learned a ton more about James’s military career (along with a related Bahraini prince and unrelated Italian corruption), and were back in the cars in no time at all. What an epic adventure!
We had a smooth ride home, and were getting ready for dinner at a nice restaurant near Edinburgh. Before we left, though, I asked Tabitha to show me her horses, and it was definitely the highlight of the entire visit.
Finlay had told me a lot about his family’s horses and even showed me, a few months ago, the dedicated Instagram Tabitha has for her lovely animals. There are two of them, Lego and Bobo, and they’re the most wonderful things to ever exist on this Earth. As a miniature Shetland pony, Bobo is basically a sphere with legs, hooves, and a beautiful mane, and is in the running for top-3 cutest things I’ve ever seen.
She’s definitely not 2 or 3.
After the horse adventure, the entire Bryden family + me headed off to dinner at a beautiful restaurant near the famous bridges across to Edinburgh. The food was delicious, and at that dinner, I increased my knowledge of horses (and equestrian riding in general) by at least 100x. I was honestly just blown away by both how detailed the world of horse riding is and Josephine and Tabitha’s knowledge of that world.
I spent a solid hour straight asking question after question, and every one was answered in extreme detail without fail. 🐎
Wednesday, April 23rd
Woke up pretty early this morning after another amazing night of sleep in the Bryden home, and was downstairs and reading to go by 7:20 am. James was heading into Edinburgh for work at 7:30, and I wanted to tag along with him to 1) Get an early start on my first day of solo traveling in the Highlands, and 2) It was a chance for a fun bring-your-kid-to-work-day with James, kinda.
This wasn’t exactly the case, since I was neither going into James’s office nor was I his kid. But close enough. A first Scottish commute for me!
After saying bye to Josephine and Tabitha (it was so lovely meeting you both!), James handed me this amazing reusable coffee cup to take onto the train, and we were off to the station. Once again, I’m very impressed by the sustainability efforts across the British Isles.
James and I chatted the entire train to Edinburgh, and it was another lovely conversation — we talked about my career plans, and James’s career arc. The most exciting part is that James is leading the redesign of his company’s office, and of course, the most important part of this new office is the coffee machine.
We subsequently spent a solid 15 minutes talking about this coffee machine, and after that conversation, I want to work at his company just to see it!
What an amazing trip to Fife, and thank you so much to the Brydens for having me and being such amazing hosts :)
Some more anthropological observations:
Everyone always jokes that the US is so far behind the rest of the world for using the Imperial system of measurement, but the UK has us beat. Yes, they use the metric system, but they also use the Imperial system (they invented it, after all), and there’s no standardization for which system is used for what. Some people think in miles. Other in kilometers. Some think in kilograms. Others in pounds. Craziest part is, the same person will use different systems for different scales — someone might use miles when driving, and kilometers when biking. Better yet, think in pounds for human weight, but kilograms when buying meat or other goods at the store. Centimeters for household objects and general referencing, then feet and inches for height. At least the US is consistent with its system — for better or for worse, everyone here thinks in Imperial. And don’t even get me started on stone. Wtf is a stone??
The right to roam is the greatest thing to come out of Scotland, followed closely by ridgewalking
The quote, “British by taste, Italian by temperament, and Brazilian by birth”. iykyk
Peter and Finlay start their sentences with “Em” in the EXACT same way, I thought it was the craziest thing ever
If you know Finlay, you probably thought that was him “Em”-ing. BUT IT WAS ACTUALLY PETER!!!!!
Media appendix:
James shared an amazing story during our hike up the third Munro, which was so great that I just had to share it here: James was stationed at the Northern Ireland/Republic of Ireland border, years ago, and found a pub in the evening to get a drink (classic). In walk three old men, who start chatting in Irish to each other — this is such a rural region, Irish is the main and first language spoken by most residents, yet when James would go up to get another pint, they’d switch to speaking to each other in English, just so that James could understand what they were talking about. The moral of the story is that you don’t need to have wide open arms and cheerfully greet everyone you meet, but that making someone feel welcome, however you can, goes a tremendously long way
The county where Finlay’s family lives
London Northeastern Railway
There was also the greatest cheese platter of all time at dinner, where I tried the famous Wensleydale cheese from Yorkshire!
There are also all the Isles off the coast of Scotland, but that’s a separate story entirely
The Highlands’s geology causes this ridge formation, and also causes the Munros to all have smooth tops without jagged peaks
“Ben” means mountain in Scots Gaelic, so lots of the tall peaks here start with “Ben”
Everyone at the time believed in an extreme laissez-faire approach of Adam Smith’s “invisible hand of the market will fix everything” philosophy
Big ram cock
It was on this hike that I saw the most perfect U-shaped glacial valley of my entire life. It was unbelievable. Like perfect. For those that don’t know, valleys shaped from glaciers are shaped like U’s, whereas valleys shaped from rivers are shaped like V’s. Random side note, but one of the really cool things about Kings Canyon NP in California is that in its main valley, you can see exactly where it turns from a glacial valley into a river one. The U turns into a V!
Difficulty 5, Terrain 5, the hardest a geocache can be