I worked my was round what felt like a Range Rover sized obstacle, a popular mode of transport in this quasi countrified horsy welly-bootie part of the country just a few miles north of the city. The vehicle stood astride the pavement outside The Hawes Inn. I was looking for the spirit of Robert Louise Stevenson (RLS).

Once I had manoeuvred my hazardous path to reception, requiring me to step out onto the public highway and the oncoming traffic, I asked to check in. This always causes some consternation. Sometimes the receptionist is gentle with me, intuiting my difficulties (made obvious, I would have thought, by my white cane), but most often I encounter individuals that are so board repeating simple instructions, and knowing the reception area better than the contours of their own face, that they fiddle about with their keyboards and demand that you sign ‘here’ and go ‘there’ not thinking that their pointed chin is no help to me. It always seems to involve me apologising a lot and staggering around busy areas attempting to enter cupboards, pull on closed doors or knocking over displays of tourist advice designed to catch the attention of sightseeing customers – because despite the fiction that you are their guest, and your comfort is important to them, you are just a sales opportunity; another mug punter, erm, I mean  customer.

This particular robot barely acknowledge my difficulties as he insisted I pay for my room before I entered his hallowed establishment – very unusual as most hotels bill you when you check-out. His directions to the general area where I might find my room lead me straight back out into the traffic, through a gate, and into what looked like a very soggy beer garden (it was pissing down it being summer here in Scotland). I was then forced to march up a long set of steps to a door with neither handle nor the various locks the receptionist had described whilst emphasising the critical information that they locked up at ten pm and one of the keys would open an outer door, if required.

Are you okay, came a voice from somewhere below me.

I’m looking for room number eight, I replied through the damp gloom

 Oh! you won’t get in up there, he offered helpfully, stating the by now rather obvious, I work here he continued rather superfluously.

Was he trying to reassure me or did he think I wouldn’t trust the sort of person who would hang about in a beer garden during a downpour.

I refused his offer of help out of shear frustration and, working my way back to the reception area via the pubic highway. I found the right set of stairs near the front door where I had clearly been directed,

Out the door and turn right, he had said and then watched me drag my case back over the threshold and out the front door.

The route up to room 8 was no less fraught – with half landings, narrow doors requiring a mastery of electronically triggered locks controlled by waving the barrel like device I had been given – the one that would let me in after 10pm, if required.

‘Room with a view of the Forth’, it had promised on the website. Well yes, technically.  I could see a bit of river and the supports for the Forth Rail Bridge but it involved peering out of very small Victorian sash window that steamed up almost instantly,  placed so high that my wife couldn’t see out. There was also the faux oil lamp at head hight that nearly rendered  me senseless every time I cracked my head on it.

I was exhausted. We had only travelled ten miles and I was in my own country where, give or take the odd twist of local colour, they spoke the same language as me. I lay down on the bed and had a snooze.

The plan had been to check into the room, go for a bracing walk along the esplanade, have a pot of tea and a scone in the lounge, then go back to the room to wash and prepare for the dinner I had booked via their website.

Can we have a drink in the bar before we go through for dinner, I enquired. This seemed to cause the young server no end of confusion. Obviously no one had ever asked her anything similar …

I started to remember that I had promised myself (and anyone who would listen to me) that I would only expose myself to this sort of ‘holiday’ once I was too old to make my own way in the world. Was this a sign, I wondered, are my wandering years over, is there any chance that I could be less snooty about these things …

Coach tours round the Highlands loomed up threateningly in my dreams that night.

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