In search of electricity - Scotland #fail

Download the Edinburgh Tattoo App - #EdinTattoo

Do you still remember travel before smartphones, GPS, WiFi? I even remember travel before Lonely Planet. We managed just fine. Before traveling, we went to the library and made photocopies from the Youth Hostel directory. And we visited tourist information offices along the way and somehow we managed to find all the sights and had a memorable experience.

Nowadays, everything is much easier. When we need information, we Google it. We use Tripadvisor to find restaurants. We use Hostelbookers or booking.com to find accommodation. We no longer have to fend off touts who want to take us to a hotel immediately after disembarking the train or a bus because we made reservations ahead and we have the receipts on our smartphones. Actually, we don't take trains or buses so much any longer, we use skyscanner to find cheap flights.

Travel without devices that allow us to connect to the internet is not possible any longer. To provide juice for all our devices, we travel with a supply of chargers and cables. We have learned from experience that an extension cord is very useful when we have just one electrical outlet but many devices to charge. We have also learned from experience that when we rent a vehicle, an auto charger is handy so that we can charge our smartphones while we use them for navigation.

Camping in the wild - #noelectricity

So what happened on our recent Scotland road trip that I am referring to it as #fail?

We had an adapter because we knew we needed the UK adapter for Scotland (having bought it in Malta some years ago). We had an extension cord so that we could charge several devices even when we had only one adapter. We brought the auto charger as well.

It turned out that our auto charger did not work in our rental vehicle. Which we realized only after we had driven more than 200 miles (yes, Scotland still measures distances in miles, 200 miles is more than 300 kilometers). It was too far away to go back to the rental place and have it fixed, so we decided we would have to survive without it.

We figured we would just pay for electricity at the campsites where we were staying overnight. But Scotland is not Scandinavia (where we had camped many times previously and were able to plug in our devices into the electrical outlets at the campsites). In Scotland, they use the 3-pin electrical outlets that connect to fancy motor homes. We did not have a fancy motor home nor an adapter for the 3-pin outlet. We could not buy an adapter, because we were in the Hebrides, so far away from any civilization that even GSM coverage was available only near major towns.

In some campsites we were able to charge our devices in the toilet buildings, but some campsites did not provide any electrical outlets in the toilet buildings to discourage charging. They might charge devices at reception for a fee (per device).

Without a guaranteed supply of electricity, we had to find a way to travel with limited electricity which translates into limiting our usage of devices. We can survive without email and social media. Our camera was charged and would probably last for the duration of our vacation. Our Garmin devices which we use for running last many days without recharging. Same for our Kindles. But we still need occasional WiFi or data roaming (which has recently become cost effective within the EU) to find travel related information. We had also intended to use GPS navigation which works without WiFi or data roaming, but still depletes electricity from the devices.

We had to come up with a plan.

Hebrides - travel off the grid

First action item: buy a paper map. Do we still remember how to use a paper map? Yes, we made it work, particularly by supplementing it with occasional peeking into the GPS app, just quick enough to check that we were on the right road, without using too much electricity.

Second action item: gather information brochures and get information at tourist information offices. No Googling required. Interesting fact: some tourist information offices in the Hebrides are permanently closed due to staffing shortages.

Third action item: become vigilant in finding ways to charge devices. Some coffee shops have electrical outlets. Some pubs have electrical outlets. All ferries have electrical outlets (fortunately we were travelling along the islands so we had a number of opportunities to charge devices on ferries).

Fourth action item: use devices only when absolutely necessary. Which is not as easy as it sounds. How do you buy a ticket for the city bus in Edinburgh? Download the app. How do you find information about tickets to the Royal Edinburgh Tattoo concert? Download the app. How do you find more information about the beer that you are drinking in a restaurant? Check the menu, which directs you to download an app. And so on. Nowadays, it is not easy to travel without devices which are used to download apps. And devices have to be charged.

But we survived. Next time, we will probably bring solar powered or battery powered backup charging equipment to charge our devices or something like that. And probably, some day in the future, when someone invents a better way to charge devices or batteries that last longer or invents something that will make our current devices obsolete or whatever, we will look back at this and laugh at how it used to be.

The most ironic part? After we returned home, we plugged our auto charger back into our car and realized that it didn't work. It turned out that the auto charger was not working, not the adapter in our rental vehicle. If we had only thought of buying a new auto charger, we might have been saved from the trouble of looking for electricity. Oh well, live and learn.