Blogs from Edinburgh, Midlothian, Scotland, United Kingdom, Europe - page 135

Well, I finally have a chance to get caught up with this. I arrived safe and sound in Glasgow at 4am on Wednesday the 4th of May. Was lucky enough to have a friend of the family offer to pick me up at the airport; the prospect of navigating myself through Glasgow at such an hour wasn't a fond one. The whole week was spent at my Aunt's near Hamilton. Most of the time was spent catching up with old family members that I haven't seen for years, but I did get a few other things done. The main one worth mentioning was getting to go see my football team train, and play. I support a small team called Hamilton Academical who play in the Scottish first division. I've been brainwashed into a die-hard fan by ... read more

May 4th 2005 Edinburgh, Scotland. With time running out I finally organised to do a more extensive tour of Scotland and so was up and off at 7:30am to join today's "Monsters, Mountains and Massacres" tour up to Loch Ness with the Highland Experience company. There were only six of us in the mini-tour bus, plus the guide-cum-driver, so it was a very comfortable drive, with a bench-seat all to myself and easy access to the windows on either side. Our itinerary was to head for Loch Ness via the northern routes through Pitlochry and Dalwhinne, rather than going the eastern route that most tour companies take. By doing this we avoided much of the traffic, and that was greatly appreciated - after all, we'd be seeing the same sights as them, just later in the ... read more

3rd May 2005 Edinburgh, Scotland. Well, it only took me a full week to get around to it, but finally I stopped in my pleasurably aimless explorations for long enough to do the fairly simple act of exploring the Royal Mile from beginning to end without being sidetracked away into other pursuits. Well, mostly stuck to it, anyway. The Royal Mile was the main or 'high' street of Medieval Edinburgh until the late 1700's, when, for many reasons but mainly due to a lack of room in the city's walls, the New Town was built just outside it and then so on and so forth with other developments until the Royal Mile and the little streets of the old town were in the middle of a rather large city. The Royal Mile itself is actually a ... read more

May 1st 2005 Edinburgh, Scotland. Last night Clorinde and I went to the annual Beltane Fire Festival up on Carlton Hill. Beltane, for those not in the know, is actually an ancient festival which has been resurrected here in recent years, and traditionally it's purpose was to mark the arrival of summer and celebrate life and fertility. You can find out more on it by following this link for Edinburgh-specific Beltane: http://www.edinburghguide.com/feats/beltaneritual.htm or this for the ancient aspects: http://www.witchvox.com/holidays/dt_holidays.html?a=usma&c=holidays&id=2765 So anyway, off we went and it was both amazing and a bit of a disappointment. The crowd was absolutely enormous, literally thousands of people packed onto this fair-sized hill (p.s. for the Queensland residents, the hills here are bigger than ours but nothing compared to our mountains....I just hope ... read more

April 28th 2005 Edinburgh, Scotland. As children, my siblings and I would stand outside in cyclones, waiting, with arms outstretched, for the wind to overcome gravity and carry us away... just a few yards, mind you. Unfortunately, North Queensland is not a particularly windy area and has not, in recent years, managed to produce anything stronger than a category two cyclone, which certainly lack any detectable elements of excitement. It's quite humorous, in fact, to watch the newcomers work themselves into a tizzy every time the newscasts begin forecasting devastating winds in the latest cyclone threat. …"Yeah, right". But today, my friends, was just such a day and just such a city. Edinburgh's high altitude is obviously conducive for strong winds, because it's often been windy in the few days I've been here, but nothing compared ... read more