With Brussels now in summer recess I’ve headed North to spend a couple of days with Rob Gibson MSP and his partner Eleanor Scott at their home in Evanton, Rosshire. I was up there a few months ago for the Andrew de Moray walk in Avoch. While the landscape and the countryside round that part of Scotland is pretty spectacular, that’s not the only reason why I decided to spend some of my summer holidays here.
Essentially my Highland jaunt in sunny Sutherland is about my learning and understanding more about Scotland in the sense of finding out who we are as a people and how we got to where we are today, economically, socially and culturally. Any Scottish history I was taught at school comprised solely of Robert the Bruce, Mary Queen of Scots and William Wallace and that was it. History at school was about the Romans, the Egyptians, 1066 and English Kings and Queens, Shakespeare and the wars. The extent to which the history of our nation was ignored at school was and remains scandalous and is something which I am glad to see the SNP Government is striving to correct by way of working towards the teaching of Scotland’s history and our culture is part and parcel of the school curriculum
Understanding who we are and where we came from is central to our identity and to the future of our nation. And for me this week there is no better way to understand Scotland’s place in the world than going out and about and experiencing our culture, our landscape, and being able to feel it.
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