Monthly Archives: June 2011

Scotland, Day 5: Edinburgh to Inverness

We took a jour­ney by car through the mid­dle of Scotland along Loch Ness to the city of Inverness1, and stayed at a local bed and break­fast for the night. Inverness is con­sid­ered the Gateway to the Highlands because it’s the most north­ern indus­tri­al­ized city. It has nei­ther the urban con­ve­niences of a mod­ern city or the his­tor­i­cal char­ac­ter of an old one, so remains some­thing of a ho-hum sub­ject in itself, but our short stay was just to break up the dri­ve, and along the way was some of the most breath­tak­ing scenery I’ve ever encoun­tered.

Scotland has long been on the top of my list of places to vis­it for exact­ly these types land­scapes, but my favourite things to take pic­tures of are these farm hous­es under the moun­tains. At the same time, they’re a chal­lenge to pho­to­graph because lit­tle details like sheep and streams of water run­ning through the cracks of moun­tains dis­ap­pear when try­ing to cap­ture the sheer scale of the ranges.

The sun has­n’t been around much. When it rains it’s a fine spray, almost mist-like, but it can be just so dense that you’d get just as wet as if it was com­ing down in “stair rods” as they like to say here. The clouds hang low and shroud the tops of trees and moun­tains, mak­ing you feel like you’re right at the door of heav­en.

house under mountains

These hous­es are so remote and serene, fre­quent­ly with sheep graz­ing all around, and I won­der what life must be like to live among such splen­dor.

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  1. Meaning “Mouth of the River Ness” in Gaelic. []

Scotland, Day 4: Edinburgh

Edinburgh reminds me of Ottawa in many ways. It’s not the largest city in the coun­try (pop­u­la­tion less than half a mil­lion), but it’s the cap­i­tal, and serves as the finan­cial hub of Scotland. The accents here are very sub­tle and quite posh. Save for the old archi­tec­ture and some­what angu­lar roads, it looks like many Western cities.

Arthur’s Seat is a group of hills that pop up from the hori­zon, high above the city, an is vis­i­ble from my bed­room win­dow. It serves as a visu­al cue for Edinburgh, and when trav­el­ing out­side, one can always look to Arthur’s Seat to see how far (or close) one is to home.

Braveheart charity

Atop Arthur’s Seat, over­look­ing part of Edinburgh.

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Scotland, Day 3: Edinburgh to North Berwick

Dennis tells me it’s the cold­est Scottish sum­mer in recent mem­o­ry, hov­er­ing around 14°C with the skies filled with rain. Luckily, I did­n’t come here for the weath­er, came for the views. It’s won­der­ful­ly chilly in the house, just the way I like it cause I can swad­dle myself in warm blan­kets (and mine is also an elec­tric).

We took a short trip in the after­noon and head­ed east along the coast, mak­ing stops at small towns. It seems like there’s always anoth­er in almost every direc­tion, most with pop­u­la­tions bare­ly sur­pass­ing 1000. It’s nice to see a healthy amount of trees and foliage, not to men­tion such beau­ti­ful bod­ies of water. Paris is so urban that I nev­er even wor­ried about bugs.

Aberlady

Aberlady from a dis­tance.

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Scotland, Day 2: Edinburgh

My vaca­tion has final­ly begun, marked by a chance to do some laun­dry after sweat­ing in the same five sets of clothes for the last 10 days. I tend to trav­el to put myself out of my com­fort zone, but that’s impos­si­ble here with Dennis tak­ing care of me. I offer to lend a hand in any way I can, but he refus­es my help cause he takes plea­sure in tak­ing care of his guests. I’d feel guilty or behold­en to him if I was­n’t the same way, but I under­stand, so I hap­pi­ly sur­ren­der myself to his hos­pi­tal­i­ty.

I’m here on a clean break, on my own terms, a detox of the mind and heart and lungs, with absolute­ly no plans at all. I know that as long as I have Dennis for com­pa­ny, I’ll have a great time.

beach

 

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Scotland, Day 1: Edinburgh

On the plane, I won­dered whether I should con­tin­ue my jour­ney to Scotland after work­ing so hard in France. After all, it’s been too long with­out my kit­ty, my famil­iar bed, and my gui­tar. I knew I’d made the right deci­sion as soon as I saw Dennis greet­ing me with his arms open at the bag­gage claim. There’s no bet­ter feel­ing than some­one pick­ing you up at the air­port.

waiting in Heathrow

Layover in Heathrow. Terminal 5 is the newest addi­tion and very mod­ern, even with loung­ing couch­es where many peo­ple take their shoes off and sleep.

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