Yearly Archives: 2011

Scotland, Day 8: Peebles

Peebles is a town of about 8000 inhab­i­tants, with the River Tweed run­ning through it. It’s easy to see why it was recent­ly ranked as the best town in Scotland, as it’s full of small town charm, and is less than an hour dri­ve from Edinburgh. You can stand at one end and see the oth­er, where the build­ings abrupt­ly end and the land goes on as hill and grass. It seems like every oth­er store is a char­i­ty shop where peo­ple can donate their old clothes, toys, board games, and oth­er sun­dries.

Peebles bridge and church

 

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Scotland, Day 7: Edinburgh

It’s slow going in the house of mirth. We’ve been explor­ing parts of Scotland every day, so we decid­ed to take a day off to watch acclaimed British sit­coms and movies. I’m so hap­py here. It final­ly feels like I’m on vaca­tion, as Dennis likes to remind me when I say I should­n’t eat any more ice cream. Where else does some­one keep my dish­es delight­ful­ly warm in the oven before serv­ing me? Luckily, Dennis is also some­thing of an accom­plished key­board play­er. Jamming with new peo­ple, learn­ing their unique strengths and the sound they can get from their instru­ments, is always more fun than I can describe.

Funny to think that we’d only met once before at Aaron’s wed­ding five years ago, and kept in touch from across of the pond. Introverts like us nev­er for­get those kinds of con­nec­tions, cause it’s so rare to find a per­son to whom you can eas­i­ly talk for hours. He lives the same life I have now, the same life I see myself hav­ing many years into the future. Even our cats are alike.

conservatory

Dennis had this con­ser­va­to­ry built as a room where he could lounge dur­ing the day. The poly­car­bon­ate ceil­ing lets plen­ty of light through and keeps the space bright and warm and sun­ny and I’ve decid­ed that I need a room like this.

When the sun sets it can get quite chilly, so then we move to the main room and put the fire on.

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Scotland, Day 6: Inverness to Edinburgh

We left for home the next morn­ing after a heavy meal at the bed and break­fast, where every­thing was deep fried, includ­ing my toast. Our route was cir­cuitous, planned care­ful­ly by Dennis so I could see as much of the coun­try as pos­si­ble.

The thing that strikes me most about the Scottish land­scape is that you don’t need to be on top of a moun­tain to get a good view. There’s breath­tak­ing beau­ty all around, nev­er obscured by sky­scrap­ers or tree­lines. The air is also some of the most pure and fresh you’ll ever get to breathe, yet neu­tral; it does­n’t smell par­tic­u­lar­ly like flow­ers or foliage, it just smells clean.

grazing sheep

 

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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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