Toadpipe, Wormwood, Slubgob and now……..

Meet Reepicheep, our new-to-us car! This fine steed of steely blue will be our trusty transport as we meander and cavort about the Scottish moors and munros. Oh and roundabouts too- Run for your lives!

Reepicheep

Not long after we got married, we named our old 95 Accord, ‘Toadpipe’ and thus began a tradition of naming our cars after characters in the C.S. Lewis book ‘Screwtape Letters’. My Ford Escape, was named ‘Wormwood’ for its green swampy color. Then we upgraded to a CRV which was dubbed ‘Slubgob’.

So now that we are living in the land of C.S. Lewis himself, we of course thought we would name our first car here after the book’s namesake ‘Screwtape’, but upon finding that this new/old car is a 2003 Peugot Rapier we instantly thought of little Reepicheep, the valiant but tiny mouse in the Narnia book ‘Voyage of the Dawn Treader’ who carried a tiny sword, a rapier,  and whose courage and temerity were beyond what one might expect in a mouse.

We have found that little Reepicheep has so far lived up to its namesake in taking on the challenges that Scotland’s landscape present and with a lion as its logo, we are hoping for Aslan-like power and durability.  When a friend visited us recently we took on the Quiraing* on the Isle of Skye and the little roadster climbed it without a sputter (not withstanding some shaky stick-shifting on my part!)

Aslan goes before and behind us… we need all the help we can get.

One other feature of our little Reepacheep is a rather obtuse ‘L’ stuck on the back.

Can you guess what this stands for?       Lost? Loser? Left behind? These may all be true but it means Learner! These are to be displayed by those drivers who are ‘under instruction’ or those who have a provisional license but we have our ‘L’ just because we are still getting accustomed to shifting with our left hands and driving on the left. Maybe the drivers behind won’t be too impatient if we take forever to find the right gear!  Our international drivers licenses are still valid so we don’t need to take the UK drivers test ……yet!  We are in no hurry to try that since we have heard it is a doozy.

Stay tuned for more adventures from our little blue sqeaker, Reepacheep.

*We so much wanted to hike the Quiraing but it was dreich! (see side-bar for definition)