I also had to wonder about what I would need to take. There are only two things that I thought I should take: some insect repellant and a map. The Scottish midge swarm in the air and they can be a veritable problem, especially as I was going to be camping and staying mostly in rural areas. I usually go travelling with a bottle of 50%-deet repellant, which I find very effective. I once slept on the top of a roadside garage in India in the open-air after covering myself with deet and I only got one insect bite: on my stomach, and I've no idea how an insect managed to get all the way down into my sleeping bag. My face and hands were fine. Others in my party were complaining in the morning about their twenty bites and so forth - well what do you expect if you sleep in the open in rural India and your feet protrude from under your blanket at night? what DO you expect? You'll get eaten alive, and they were.

I seemed to remember that I returned from Africa after using very little of my bottle of deet, so I had to search through my collection of boxes to find it. I did manage to find it in a bag containing a variety of bottles of sunscreen, which I was pleased about. During the search I also found a padlock, which is always useful as some hostels have lockers that you can use if you have a padlock. I also found a neat little device resembling a portable transistor radio which I bought years ago for £1.99 in a budget shop. It's an audio mosquito repeller, and I thought I'd take it along to see if it will ward off the midge as well.

Since fraud is a theme of this book, I'm going to point out that it says on my bottle of insect repellant that it will provide protection for "up to 8 hrs". So what does that mean? Your average man on the street will probably say "oh well that means you get approx 8 hours protection from it". NO IT DOES NOT. It means you get less than 8 hrs protection from it. It's a cleverly worded piece of misleading trickery. It gives the impression, deliberately, of providing 8hrs protection, but actually it means nothing. If there was ever a legal case about it, the lawyers would correctly argue that it says it provides less than 8 hours protection. So if it provided no protection whatsoever, then it certainly would have provided less than 8 hours protection AS THEY CLAIMED. Thus, if you caught malaria because their product failed, you would have no case whatsoever. I am amazed that this kind of trickery is legal. I mean, if I went into a pub and bought "up to a pint" of beer for three quid, and the barman gave me an empty glass, I would have no case against him because he would have fulfilled his side of the bargain. It never ceases to amaze me that the salesmen get away with this kind of thing.

I took my spare wheel out of the boot and left it at home. That's what I call a tough decision. The boot of the Figaro is small, and I needed somewhere I could leave my rucksack. The problem with the back seat is that it's insecure, and it would be easy for someone to thieve stuff from there, especially when the top is down (!). So I made some space in the boot. Doubtless the textbook would tell me that I need a spare wheel, but I don't have a jack, I know it's deflated, and I've never used it before. If she gets a puncture, I'll just have to walk to the top of a mountain and wave my phone in the air until it gets a signal or someone notices me. I don't believe I'll come to any much harm in Scotland in Summer. If I can put my rucksack in the boot, I can put my sleeping bag and tent on the back seat, and I should be fine. Everyone's happy.

So you see this trip did require some preparation: fixing my car, and buying a map. I would also need to refuel the car but that I could do en-route. I actually bought a couple of new CD's as well: a compilation of hip-hop and a Miles Davis collection; they cost three quid each. I guess you can see that this trip is not "extreme travel". I wasn't attempting to break any records, I wasn't planning on putting myself in any great danger, and I wasn't going far from home. Some people would point at my trip and disparage it for being boring, and their idea of a good trip is to pedal from Alexandria to Cape-town on a bicycle, or to climb mount Everest handcuffed to a grand piano, or to cross the Atlantic in a teapot. You don't have to search much to come across this kind of extreme travel, as it's frequently in the headlines.

Do you know what I think? I think some people just like to brag. They just like to look important and clever. It's all a form of one-upmanship, and everyone wants to look important by having the most outlandish anecdote about extreme travel. They want to sit there in the pub and say "that's nothing, I read [insert some travel author here] and he went to [insert dangerous place here] on a [insert dangerous vehicle here] and let me tell you about [insert some amazing anecdote from his book here]. Aren't I the best?".

I find all that cheap and crass, I'm afraid. It isn't created by a desire to extend the boundaries of human capabilities, but by a need to show off. At its root is some extreme insecurity of the people involved, because they need to impress other people, and they need to be number one, and they need to be talked about.

A colleague of mine was in the Mongol Rally, which is an annual trip from London to Ulan Bator in a small car. He spent little time understanding the cultures and histories of the lands he passed through, and although he may have returned with something to brag about, he didn't gain much from the experience because he spend the whole trip behind the wheel racing to the Mongolian finish line.

Interestingly, my Figaro is small enough to take on the Mongol rally, and perhaps we should go on the Mongol Rally, but just tell me why? why? why? My Fig just screams non-competitive. Furthermore, I have actually been outside Europe, and I have travelled undeveloped countries like Ethiopia, India, Morocco, and I know that the roads are so not good. I also know that in some countries they'll steal anything and everything, and some countries make it really difficult / expensive to get a visa.

My Fig screams non-competitive. It's not a muscle-car: it has a 1 litre engine, so it's always going to be outclassed by modern stallions of the road. It's not a fast car: I don't like taking it over 60mph, and it only has three gears. It's not a big car: it has a tiny little boot which is difficult to put things in. It's certainly not a family car, and it would be silly to try to take your wife and two children to Wales for a week of camping and canoeing in it. It came off the production line in 1991, when I was still a student, and it's a bit of a battle keeping any old car running. It also has a large turning circle, making parking tricky. That's my Figaro.

There are lots of positive points however. It's Japanese, so it's more reliable than most, and you can get the parts for it almost everywhere. It's a lightweight car, weighing 810kg. It's not a slow car either: that 1 litre engine has a turbo slapped on it so it has a moderate zizz, accelerates well, and I've taken mine over 100mph. I still think it needs a fourth gear, but it's obviously not meant to cruise up motorways; rather it's a little city runaround and it's very good at that. Amazingly, there are two seats in the back, and these I use instead of a boot. I can put my rucksack on the back seat and still have room for a passenger.

My Figaro is not going to win any races down the autobahn however. It's not the most expensive, nor the most efficient, nor the biggest or the most powerful. Indeed there are no records that my Figaro is going to break except one: it is by far the prettiest car on the road. It is! And that's why it has something of a cult following. Everywhere I go, people stop and look at my car. They admire it when it's parked, they admire it as I drive past. I've had so many people approach me and tell me that they think my car is gorgeous, that I don't bother discussing it any longer. I just say to them "yes, it is lovely isn't it. That's why I have it." and walk off. Is that rude of me? I hope it's not. I think it's much prettier than me anyway, so I leave them to admire it whilst I have things to do.

I suppose, then, you can say that I am doing something original with this book. I not going on a trip to the most dangerous part of the world with the most overly hyped, expensive vehicle, but I am going on a trip with the prettiest car, and I like to think I'm filling a gap somewhere by doing so. At least, I reckon the Figaro club of UK will think so.

Scotland it is for me, and I think Scotland is far more interesting than Mongolia. If I was in Mongolia I'd expect to be able to see horse fairs, camel markets, goat markets, and horses, camels and goats, and big fields full of horses, camels and goats, probably be able to see horses, camels and/or goats getting herded from one place to another place which may have horses, camels and goats in it.

The general thesis I'm developing here is that travelling developed countries is actually more interesting and fun than undeveloped countries, and I would rather not drive across the Sahara thank you very much. I am in a position to say that because I have, actually, done that kind of thing.

Travelling Africa was an excellent experience, and it makes you see life from a very different perspective, you realize how synthetic and phoney society is in the UK. I can't deny it. Many people suffer from a culture shock when they return to the UK just because everyone here is living in cloud-cuckoo land. It's very hard to isolate exactly what it is that makes Britain phoney. It's something to do with the fact that everyone is extremely materialistic, and everything is very expensive. It's absolutely bizarre that a bus-fare to get a mile or so down the road costs like two pounds in a UK town, but in Addis Ababa it would cost 2p. So you have to treat pounds like pence to make sense of Britain, and all us travellers think it's crazy. If you get a job in Britain, your headline earnings seem like a lot: £30K, £40K etc, but to get that job you have to live somewhere like London or Oxford, where buying a house will cost like £250K which is a totally insane amount of money. Also, it's because in Britain everyone has so much stuff that they just don't need. The villages we visited in Africa frequently didn't have tv's at all, or maybe there was one in the local bar which was packed full when the football was on. I think that prosperity in Britain has got out of control, and I think that the British would be better off for having a little less, and being a little more sensible about the money they have.

Spending a few months in Africa was excellent. However, I have learnt what I have learnt from it, and I don't want to return for the time being.

Seeing as how I'm unemployed, it's a good thing that Scotland is a cheap place to visit: I can get there in my car on a day's travel from London and won't even have to pay for a ferry crossing nor a bribe for the border guards (like you do in Africa). Since we're talking about fraud, I'd like to say that I find the welfare system in the UK to be grossly unfair and discriminatory. Since I was a tax payer, and am now unemployed, why is there no financial assistance for me? It seems to me that the welfare handouts in the UK are deliberately aimed at an underclass of people who vote Labour, many of whom aren't even British, and hard-working British middle-class folk get nothing; it's so wrong and so needs to be investigated.

I have travelled all around Ireland and I think this experience is good preparation for Scotland. It's also good that I speak-a-the LINGO of Scotland. I always find it somewhat frustrating when you meet the locals and all you can do is wave your hands and nod your head. Normally, when you arrive in an African town, the first thing you do is find the English-speaking bod, and they're usually waiting on the steps outside the hotel. Your English-speaking bod takes you around the town and tells you where stuff is like the repair man and the exchange man and the horse-riding man. In Scotland, I won't need a little man because I can speak-a-the LINGO. At least, I hope that they understand English up north. When I was in southern USA, states like Tennessee and Georgia, they didn't understand me at all. Every time I spoke they would say "huh?", because they couldn't understand the English accent. So I adopted a South-American drool for them and spoke like a redneck. They were happy with that, and we got along fine. I even wore a hat with a Confederates flag on it; although they didn't like that in Washington DC. I still have that hat, and I'm going to wear it to Scotland. It's not very politically correct, and it's possibly illegal in the not-particularly-free country of the UK. Note to self: don't title the book "Around Scotland under a Confederacy Flag". I see I may have to adopt a Scottish accent, which I see as a particularly interesting challenge.

I suppose I should have a policy on hitch-hiking. Hitching is nearly dead in the UK, and only rarely will you see anyone trying to hitch a ride. When I was driving around in my first car, which was not an expensive vehicle, I was okay with carrying hitchers. These days I'm dubious about the whole thing, and potentially it's dangerous. Your passenger can cause you all kinds of difficulties: he could threaten you with a knife and you'd have a problem. Nevertheless, I was hitching in New Zealand, and I was very grateful to the people who carried me around. I think my policy will be to stop for people who are obviously travellers. If I meet people at the hostels or campsites who need a ride, I shall oblige. It should be interesting conversation, and they might contribute to my petrol costs. No-one in obscure rural areas is going to cause me a problem anyway, since everyone knows who everyone else is. If I get hijacked I'll just mention it at the local post-office and they'll say "Oh that's Jill McDougal's ex. He lives on the other side of the church now" or some such thing.

A useful skill for travellers is to know some self-defence, and even if you don't get involved in fights and bar brawls (and no-one wants to, obviously) it's a useful failsafe. There are times when the ability to look threatening is invaluable. Bullies are invariably out to prey on the weak, and if you can show that you might present a fight, they'll probably run off like a young puppy just because that is their nature.

Generally speaking I don't go travelling with a strict itinerary, I really prefer to improvise as I go along. I don't know why this is. I have a supreme dislike of military organisation, yet I accept that it is far the more efficient mode of operation. I remember once I met up with a Spanish guy doing language research in Ireland, and we took the ferry over to Inishmoor together. Once arrived, we discovered that it was a bank-holiday weekend and there was nowhere to stay on the Island, and the last boat back had left. So that was well-organized. My plan for Scotland is to start at the border near Newcastle on the east side, and go "around Scotland" in some vague undefined manner, finishing at the border near Carlisle. I will probably avoid Edinburgh because I go there annually to see the Fringe Festival, so I know it well, and I know that if you want to visit Edinburgh you should fly into the city's airport.

I'm taking a camera on my trip, so let's talk about photography. I am totally dubious about the idea of taking a camera on a trip. On my African trip, I took a digital SLR, which is a big camera that takes good photos for those who don't know. Most people in my party had cameras too. The immediate result of this is that the trip became a photographing expedition. We'd arrive somewhere, exit the vehicle, photograph it, and get back in the vehicle and drive to the next place, exit the vehicle, photograph it, return to the vehicle and drive to the next place and so on and so forth. That's not travelling. Modern digital cameras have so much memory in them, that you have no realistic limit on the number of photos you can take, so you snap away continually. You take photos of anything, and you never put the camera down to do something more worthwhile instead. Furthermore, I think the locals must get really fed up with the tourists poking cameras in their faces and asking them to pose.

I returned with approx 6GiB of pictures: hundreds of them, and it took me several weekends of agony to sort them out, categorize them, decide which ones were the best. Was it worth it? no, I think it wasn't. The best thing I got were the memories, not the photos. So this is why I'm dubious about taking a camera, and that's why I sold my SLR to a girl in the office downstairs. That, incidentally, was a piece of luck: I was outside the office taking photos of something one day when one of the girls having a cigarette asked me about my SLR. I ended up selling it to her. She was a silly cluck however! get this: we agreed a price of £175 for it on email, and that I should meet her at 1100 outside to swap. So I went outside and she was 15 mins late. Having already agreed to buy it, she then decides she's going to look at it and has doubts. Then she announces she doesn't have the money. and she'll bring it in later. So we agree to meet at 1400, and she's late again. Having swapped the cash for the camera, she then decides she wants a receipt. What on earth does she want a receipt for? Anyway, I hope I don't have to do business with anyone like her again.

I have another camera now. It looks like an unsuitable camera, but actually it is a clever solution to the problems of being a camera-centric traveller. I'm very pleased with my choice of camera and I think I've done well. It's an old camera, manufactured in 2004. I bought it second-hand for £50. It came with a 16MiB memory card, which demonstrates its age: memory cards are all over 1GiB these days. The fact that it has such a small memory card means that I can't get many photos on it, and I have to be careful to limit my exposures: I get twenty shots before it's full, which is fine: I will just have to make sure I take good photos. It's a compact camera, so I can fit it in my pocket and walk around with it happily enough, and it's not obvious when I point it at someone. Nevertheless, the quality of photos that it takes are excellent, indeed better than the photos from my SLR. Somehow, it seems that this camera is like my car: old and good, and that is why it seems appropriate for this trip. I could afford to buy a brand new 20 megapixel SLR if I wanted to, and I could brag about it I expect, however I am not that kind of person. I'd rather provide a home for a rather good little compact camera that was outclassed but a modern improvement, and, like me, found itself unemployed.

Whilst I'm on the subject of antiques, did I mention that I have an antique electric coffee-grinder? I found it in an antiques shop, and in spite of the fact that it is probably older than me, being pre-decimalization, it works fine. It probably spent thirty years at the back of someone's cupboard, and was turfed out when they died. What a terrible life for a coffee grinder! But I make good use of it. If you were a coffee-grinder, and you were bought and put in a cupboard and then forgotten about for thirty years, how would you feel? unhappy, I think. I did buy a modern coffee-grinder on ebay, and it lasted six months before the rotary blades fell off. haha, so really there's no competition, I'll have an old one please.