MOTORING
On Scottish Roads Motor touring in Scotland is unlike the same adventure anywhere else. Apart from the expected differences in roads, manners, customs and scenery you have two vital distinguishing points. Scotland has very few roads compared with any European country west of Hungary, and although her newly rebuilt highways are for the most part excellent of their kind and uncompromisingly direct in their service between North and South there are comparatively few links. You drive between Edinburgh to Inverness or Glasgow and 'Fort William on highways that might have been designed for the Berlin-Rome axis, but you do not easily connect up with these or the east coast. Exploring the western glens and the far north means a good deal of circumnavigation.
Many Compasses That is one difference between Scotland and other countries and I for one count it as an immense advantage. Not being able to go straight to a place on the map, being obliged to fetch several compasses, to go back, to go round, all that lends real zest to the eventual arrival. I am the last in the world to say anything in favour of having to embark on ferries like that at Ballachulish (and I can remember when they rowed you across in a sort of punt, with two planks athwart it to carry the car and you knew real fear) and I omit them from the list of Scotland's charms, but the mere fact that it is difficult to get to places is a real if not at the time an obvious joy. It seems to double the size of the country.
The other difference is that by far the best time for taking a car there is now. It can be colder than seems possible, just as it can suddenly provide you with a luxuriant summer in May, but the sun shines more often and more regularly than any time except perhaps September, and until June the roads are fairly free ; the roads and the hotels. It is well to remember that Scotland has her admirers in as great a number overseas as at home and that in July and August there may be nothing but the car between you and her stony ground for a night's lodging.
Three Scottish Cars of Yesterday It seems strange that at the Glasgow show one of the leading engineering people in the world should not be displaying a motor-car, that, in fact, they have only built three in about forty years and allowed two of them to disappear. The Arrol-Johnston was the first, if I remember aright, the Argyll the second. The Argyll, at least in its earlier form, was not strictly speaking an all-Scottish car, the engine being an Aster, a French unit which was put into the Clement and Gladiator machines when Edward VII reigned. It was an excellent car, lively and reliable, with no more than the faults of its age.
The Dog-Cart The first Arrol-Johnston was a dog-cart, an extraordinary machine (using the word in both the Scottish and engineering senses) in which you sat back to back, with the engine where you would not expect to find it, an enormous clearance and two solid-tyred back wheels the size of ordinary horse- carriage wheels. You steered it with a tiller, and I 'believe in the country of its origin it was regarded with a good deal of affection. It was a monument of grim respectability which roused only the profane Sassenach to ribaldry.
The Taxi Later on, of course, it came South and look on a more usual appearance. Before the War it distinguished itself in 11.9 form for speed and life and Scots endurance. After the War it made, I think, a single appearance as a " Victory" model, with rather dashing lines and some taking features.. It passed away about sixteen years ago—burl am opelt to correction. The third Scottish car still exists, 11141157j11 taxi-form, the Beardmore, a great engineering name. r never saw it as a private car.
Loch Linnhe To remark that the view southward over Loch Linnhe. from the Oban-Ballachulish road, is the loveliest in all Scotland is, I imagine, to ask for it. To the foreigner no less than to the native nearly every comely place beyond the Border is, at one time or another, the loveliest of them all, yet I hold very strongly to my conviction that, given the right sort of weather and the right evening hour, not Scotland nor any accessible corner of the British Isles has anything fit to compare with that enchanted arm of the northern seas.
A Seascape The last time I went up that way was at sunset in June, the, end of some sixteen hours of unclouded sunshine, the beginning of that starry twilight which passes for night in those latitudes, and everything was exactly right—air, sky, sea—for the painting of that perfect seascape. You look down the loch towards Mull, with Lismore in the fore- ground, a blue-grey shape against the gold and green and purple the eastern sky reflects upon the sea, and you find it very difficult to believe in it. Every minute the colours change, the blue of the hills on either side grows deeper, the perspective shifts as the shadows melt into the dusk, and in twenty minutes you see not one Linnhe but a score.
Carter Bar It is rather odd, when you come to think of it, that so much of the main roads to Scotland should be so dull. Which- ever road you take, except the western one by Worcester and Chester, you have at least 250 miles of comparative tedium before you get in, but once you have the border in sight there is no lack of contrast. The greatest example of this is Carter Bar, the actual frontier between the two countries on the Cheviot Hills, 1,370 feet above the sea. There are half a dozen higher points than this, of course, but none with a more splendid outlook. You climb up the unending slope out of Corbridge past Otterburn, up the valley of the Rede and across what must be the emptiest stretch of Great Britain, climbing, always climbing, and when you come to the actual top, with a drop in front and behind, half your car in England, half in Scotland, you look over a panorama of rolling hills that more than contents you. Carter Bar is unique.
A New Sort of Sparking Plug I have been asked to try the K.L.G. plug, with the " corundite " insulator, and give my experiences with it. The stuff is a compound of crystals of corundum which is, the makers say, a ruby in disguise. If it were red, it would be a ruby. The main claims for it are immense strength and ability to resist damage ; high thermal conduc- tivity, with means rapid cooling ; and a coefficient of expansion of a kind that insures gastightness. I don't know how I am to verify all these outside a laboratory, as the engine of my car does not readily burn plugs and I am usually careful not to expose them to wilful damage, but in so far as I can check the gastightness and the decrease of wear that ought logically to follow upon these advantages, I shall do my best. I shall begin by checking the gaps at regular intervals, and by watching for any oiling-up tendency or the reverse, any difference in starting from cold, and so on. All very amateurish, but as much as the owner-driver ever does [Note.—Readers' requests for advice from our Motoring Correspondent on the choice of new cars should be accompaniec by a stamped and addressed envelope. The highest price payabl, must be given, as ttell as the type of body required. No adoce can k given, on the pgrchasc, sak. or exchenge of _used _cars.,i
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