Who travels all the way to Glen Coe, Scotland and has nachos? Me! That's who!!

Remember that I'm not doing this for myself, dear readers. I am, instead, on a quest to find some of the very best Nachos that the United Kingdom has to offer and, in this endeavo(u)r, I can leave no stone unturned. Not even one of the frost covered and weathered stones of far off Glen Coe, Scotland!

I've got to say that the scenery was pretty spectacular. The weather wasn't particularly cooperating, but it made things all the more atmospheric.

The sight of the Three Sisters bathed in a late summer mist was enough to make me start hating Campells as much as the next grizzled Glen Coe-ian.

Once sightseeing was out of the way, it was time for the piece of resistance - that's right, nacho time.

The Highland Inn chosen for the nacho repast was The Clachaig Inn, right in the heart of....um...actually, it wasn't near ANYTHING. Glen Coe is referred to as a village, and this place was a good few miles from there. To get to the Inn, I had to drive down one of those crazy country roads, brights at full blaze and ready to break at the sight of any deer or leprechaun that leaped into my path.

Finally, after a good few miles, I found the Inn. The Inn is what is known in these here parts as a real "walkers" inn. That is, most people would get there under their own power, and not belching smoke out of a '99 Ford Fiesta. The whole atmosphere was something like you'd find up in a mountain village somewhere in Colorado. Hard to believe that I was only a few short hours away from Fundee.

But we're not here to talk about walking, or healthy Alpine atmospheres, are we? You want to hear about nachos and that's what this here blog is all about.

Glen Coe Nachos - The Good

I believe if you take a look at the article header, you'll see one of the first nacho lessons I've quickly learned here in the UK - GET EVERYTHING ON THE SIDE. In the first place, if the salsa sucks and it's all over everything, then you've just ruined a big plate of nachos. Secondly, the "soured cream" used here can vary widely from location to location. If you've got yourself a bunch of runny sour cream seeping over your nachos, that'll just lead to heartbreak. Combine that with a bad serving of salsa, and you've got a nacho disaster on your hands.

The nachos arrived shortly after ordering and I was pleasantly surprised. The chips were tasty and the cheese was thinly applied to melt evenly across the chips. The cook had even taken the time to layer the cheese beneath the initial layer of tortilla chips, an attention to detail that wasn't lost on yours truly (we'll be addressing the "nacho layering" theory, including the controversial "refried beans as glue" theorem, in an upcoming post).

Glen Coe Nachos - The Bad

There was, unfortunately, only one drawback to the nachos, but it was in such a critical area that it ruined an otherwise decent plate of nachos. The problem? The salsa.

It's not that it wasn't fresh, or looked great (see picture). It just wasn't.....salsa-y enough. I don't understand why they can't seem to get this right here. The main problem is that the salsa is usually too tomato-y tasting. This was indeed the problem with Glen Coe nachos, but, in addition to being too tomato-y, this salsa was too cinnamon-y. I understand the principle of putting cinnamon into salsa, and even chili, but this just didn't cut it.

The sad part is that Doritos CAN. Yes, I have on numerous occasions purchased Doritos hot sauce from the grocery store and not only have I found it more palatable than Glen Coe Nacho Salsa, but actually not bad at all.

Overall, however, I enjoyed Glen Coe Nachos. I'll just need to start carrying my own salsa with me.

Of course, the funniest thing about "The Secret Bunker" is the name. I first noticed the sign along side the road on the way to Edinburgh. Right there in the brown color used for all the tourist attraction signs - THIS WAY TO SCOTLAND'S SECRET BUNKER. So, technically the name isn't even correct. It should be Scotland's FORMERLY Secret Bunker. Because the signs basically tell you EXACTLY how to get to the "Secret" bunker.

The bunker is located near Leuchars RAF Base, which is one of largest bases in Scotland and home to the interceptor team keeping the UK safe. It's also probably where the Russkies were going to come, if they ever sent planes this way, so it was a pretty big deal during the Cold War. But, now that we won said Cold War, the UK government is closing the base and kicking everyone out.

Which is a little bit sad for pool old Leuchars. Not only have they lost their Royal Air Force base, but they also have one of the saddest looking stations in all of the UK (see sad photo to left). It's nothing more than a building in the middle of a field next to a car park.

I mean, come on! This is where the future KING of the whole UK would have gotten off the train to go to St. Andrews (if the King ever took the train). Even Dundee at least has a pub in the train station!

Once you pass through Leuchars, all you got to do to find the "Secret" Bunker is to follow the signs.

This is where it really starts to get creepy. The access to the "Secret" bunker is through an innocuous looking farmhouse standing in the middle of a field. They've even got cows grazing around the grass to give it an air of tranquility. Of course, since the "Secret" Bunker is now a tourist attraction, not only do the signs give away the farmhouse, but also the fact that there are tanks, armored cars, portable radar installations and a Soviet SA-2 Surface to Air Missile.

Although you might not be familiar with the Soviet SA-2 missile, you're probably familiar with its work, including the Gary Powers shootdown, the Cuba Missile Crisis, and Bono.

The first thing that greets you upon entering the farmhouse on top of the Secret Bunker is, as you might have suspected, the gift shop, where you can buy all sorts of Secret Bunker related paraphernalia including a World War II Spitfire Manual, a Wooden Bulldozer Construction Kit, and a Winston Churchill Coloring Book.

"We will fight them on the beaches, we will fight them when they try to color outside the lines of my ample girth..."

I, however, didn't stay too longer to linger inside the gift shop as the Secret Bunker was near enough to smell. After lightening me of £9.00 (that's $15.00, American), I made my way downstairs and into the "Secret" Bunker proper....

The first thing that greets you is this crazy hallway right out of Get Smart (TV show, not the stupid movie. And yes, I like Steve Carell. And, yes, I'm old.)

Man, is that a hallway or what? I didn't do any kind of crazy coloration or any kind of special effects on that, either! That's how it looks. Imagine running in from the nuclear holocaust through that hallway.

The first thing that struck me about the bunker was the smell. It smelled like the '60s and a little like your Grandma's house. There was one main hallway with a number of doors leading off to either side. There was an audio tour with one of those headset thingys, but it would have cost another £5. I figured I'd get to it next time. Plus, I didn't want to look like an idiot with a half phone receiver hanging off my face.

One of the first rooms I stopped by was the "Broadcast Room." This where the BBC would have setup and broadcast from following the nuclear holocaust.

The creepiest thing is that they were playing the tape that would have been broadcast from this room had someone dropped "The Big One."

But the real, and unexpected, highlight of my entire "Secret" Bunker experience was all the creepy mannequins setup everywhere. I'm a big fan of mannequins - we had kind of a creepy old-timey western town setup near Austin called Pioneer Town that used a lot of bad mannequins in old-westerny dioramas.

Look at the way that she's reeling that top secret paper out of the tape machine in the Secret Bunker! It's like she's some kind of hand model. And the way that the hat sits on top of her hat just so....man, why can't EVERY museum have fake creepy mannequins up inside?

Most of the rooms were all military stuff - there was the communications room (complete with naughty chain faxes still taped to the wall), the main room a la Dr. Strangelove, and the RAF command center.

There was also a functioning canteen downstairs (as I've noticed with just about every attraction in the UK - these people can't seem to go too far without a cup of tea and something sweet), a chapel they rented out for weddings and even a movie theater.

The theater was probably the creepiest part, because what they were doing was showing old 1950-1980s Public Service videos for what to do in case of a nuclear war. Now, I've seen a lot of American movies of this sort, but these British ones scared the crap out of me. There was one running about how a town would react after a nuclear hit. Except that it was filmed like a documentary. Fires were burning, babies were smoldering, buildings were collapsing...just mayhem. The other film was more in the comical - "here's how to stack furniture to hide from a nuclear blast" vein. The film suggested turning your couch over upside down and stacking suitcases on top to help keep you safe from irradiation.

Filled with just about all I could muster, I headed back for the fresh air of Fife. But it was on my way out that I noticed the one sign that the secret bunker was probably closed for good.

There, right next to the entrance to the "Secret" bunker, was the comforting presence of the entrance door for the "Secret" bunker cat.

Things couldn't really be that bad if they had a cat around, right?

Don't worry bunker cat. If you ever get caught outside the bunker when the bomb's come fallin', I know how to make a shelter out of a couch and suitcases.