My Heart's in the Highlands

My heart is in the highlands.

When you see the Pipe Bands marching into the Games and the way the men walk with the kilt on, it's grand! And the sound, although outside, just takes the roof off.
If the Scottish Rugby team marched into play the All Blacks with the pipes behind them, I think they'd have half a chance! It's definitely the Scottish version of the Haka. Och Aye!

This is the hammer throwing, my old foreman Duncan used to do this in New Zealand when I didn't understand him!

Tossing the caber, actually just getting it up into the start position takes considerable strength and skill.

A valid throw means the caber must toss over itself and land away from the thrower, and the guy behind the thrower is the judge.

This rather dramatically shows the Tug-O-War, and the rope is not straight, to get more purchase for pulling I presume. The teams swap ends in case of weather and other differences to make it perfectly fair. Tho it probably depends on how much whisky and or beer they've drunk beforehand.

 

Cawdor Castle. My mother has been telling me for 30 years that her maiden name is Calder which is a derivation of Cawdor, and because of her name we only need to knock on the castle door to be let in free. I'm sad to say "Ma it didna work, we had ta pay!".

But anyway it was well worth it, as the tour inside the castle, which is still lived in was great.

Christine could live here quite happily, especially because of............

...the garden which was also very impressive, with hedges and even a maze, which amazingly takes months to cut.

We headed back down south via Loch Lomond, and went to Glasgow visiting the famous art deco Willow Tea Rooms.

In heading for England we travelled down the A72 heading along the Borders area, where we had not been before, and we really took a shine to this area. The Border towns of Peebles, Melrose, Kelso and Selkirk were all worth a look, even the main streets still had cobbles in them. Most enjoyably, we chatted to the owner of a equestrian supplies shop, who spoke just like Bill McLaren the Scottish Rugby commentator. He had met NZ's own horsey hero Mark Todd.

It's not uncommon to see people wearing the kilt in everyday situations, though they do need to be an individual sort of person to do this.

The photos below are of Melrose Railway station, the tracks long gone, but the building and the platform signs tell of a bygone era.

We passed this monument along side the road a few times, before I decided to take a photo (sometimes it is very difficult finding a place to stop and park the car). Nevertheless, it's a very impressive monument to the fallen in the first World War.

Leaving Scotland was fairly painless, with no charges either way.

We briefly called into Newcastle, checking out the place and hoping to get a pub meal, but it had just gone 7pm and all the pub kitchens were closed, very strange we thought as we had been getting meals elsewhere up to 8 or 9 pm. The reason was that Newcastle United were playing that night therefore no meals in the Pubs so they could go to the match.

Pretty impressive placement of this bridge, squeezing it in, over and around the older existing buildings.

Not to mention this modern beauty by the banks of the Tyne.

We motored on down the North East coast of England coming to the amazing little (and very old) town of Whitby, famous to us Kiwis as Captain James Cook was a ship's apprentice here and sailed on to discover foreign new lands.

The car park was completely full at 9am and remained that way all the time we were in Whitby.

We walked up the hill to the church on top to the hill to view the harbour and recognized a friend from Nelson (Kina Beach actually) taking photos. After a good chat we took her onto Robin Hoods Bay, slightly further south, and another little gem of a village with steep narrow streets, little pubs and antique shops, it's amazing we actually escaped and headed across the Yorkshire Moors.

Some local kids were edging up to this ewe very scared that it may attack, I held my hand out and the sheep came up and smelled it and within 5 seconds the kids were doing likewise.

Och aye isn't Heather a beautiful colour - mind you, this is English heather.

Ok that's the end of this blog, No. 9 in the catch up series, tho NZ is super fast approaching now. The next one will be the final fling from Heathrow to car camping, to caravaning and woofing on a Scottish organics farm, to unicycling down Edinburghs Royal Mile.

A fitting finale with the final awareness’s of 6 months abroad, can hardly wait to write it!

Blog 10 will round up the decimal dozen!

As always: Stay safe, be creative and laugh like there is no tomorrow!

I found part of my heart in Scotland.....but the majority still resides in Nelson, New Zealand.

Namaste
Jimu

Scotland Whit A Relief

It was Christine who said first, after we had driven some distance into Scotland, "oh what a relief, I like Scotland". We both were feeling this, maybe it was the better weather, the wider roads, better signage on these roads, or the lack of traffic, but straight away it was more relaxing to be in Scotland.

We met some fellow cyclists right on the physical border who were on the Lands End to John O'Groats ride and this added something special to entering Scotland.

We headed into Dumfries late afternoon and checked out the Burns influence in the quite big little town of Dumfries, he spent a considerable time here. This was the first town in weeks that actually had a free carpark in the centre of town so maybe that's why I took a shine to Scotland straight away, though the sense of humour was also evident pretty quickly as this shop sign displayed.

Then I spotted this sign, pointing to the pub, The Douglas Arms, for Citizens Advice.

Dumfries has a connection with Scotland's national poet Rabbie Burns who spent quite a bit of time in the area.

So off we headed to the place where I was born and grew up (Ayr and Kilmarnock, respectively).

I left at the tender age of 16 when our whole family emigated way back in the mid 60s, more than half a life time ago. I still remember certain things though, and a lot has not changed very much.

Burns Cottage in Alloway, Ayr, the birthplace of at least two famous Scots.

My sister Louise went back to Scotland about 4 years ago, and told me our favourite icecream shop had gone. I was heartbroken, but resigned to change, life moves on, but hey, she was wrong, it's still there with the same decor, and the memories of my childhood came flooding back.

When I was a boy the owner was the little Italian man who started the shop, Varani's Icecream, called The Forum Cafe "The Cream of Kilmarnock". They have special tubs of icecream that spin making that special texture, the flavour's great too, supposedly healthy, tho I was never interested in that. The person serving you uses a stainless steel paddle and loads a miniature bricklayer's hod with a wafer, then loads up with the icecream, much like a bricklayer again putting mortar on his brick. Then they stick another wafer or a nougat  chocolate covered wafer on top and load this amazing sculpture into a very simple paper bag, and off you go out of the shop. With my very old local knowledge I recommended Christine try the plain icecream and she was not disappointed.

I only had two icecreams......honest!

Heading accross the Lowlands of Scotland there are plenty of windmills generating power, we arrived in Edinburgh in August at the height of summer, with an Arts Festival and a Fringe Festival and the Edinburgh Military Tattoo all happening  up in the Castle/Royal Mile area. Without all this happening Edinburgh is a wonderful city to explore, and therefore it had far too much to try and take in the 2 days we had in Edinburgh.

This is the famous Greyfriars Church story about the dog Bobby, that stayed on its master's grave for many years till it died.

Tickets for the Tattoo are booked out months in advance, but still it was impressive just to see the setting right next to the Castle, is really stunning.

The Fringe Festival is a busker's paradise, anything goes, it's information overload, one simply cannot take in even a small fraction of what's happening.

So we headed north across the Forth Road Bridge.

In the Cairngorms this was a very cold night in the Hotel Rover for two cheery Kiwis though we did spend a great evening in a pub in Spittal of Glenshee, where a Dundee folkie was in fine form!

Don't know the name of this place, but what a stunner and the photo below was only around the corner of that arch on the left.

So now we were heading for my Auntie Netta in Nairn just east of Inverness. I have extremely fond memories of Nairn, that's where we used to go holidays, where I learnt to ride a bike (a full size man's bike with bar) by pedalling between the bar and the pedals.

Netta is still living in the same house less than 100 yards from the sea, yes it's a special place. Christine had spotted in the tourist info as we drove toward Nairn that the Nairn Highland games were the following weekend so we amended our plans to head around the north of Scotland and down the west coast to Skye and return to Nairn in time for the Skirl of the Pipes and the Kilts.

Auntie Netta still lives in Inverene, on the Links in Nairn, I used to go there as a boy around 10 and thats 50 years ago.

The beach behind me in my last visit 18 years ago was a stoney beach, now it's all sand.

This is what happens when you walk around Scotland dressed like this fella, you meet all the other weirdo's.

The scenery in the North of Scotland (and we had pretty good weather) is stunning, no need for commentary from me!

 Horizontal washing hung across from the house on the shore of the Loch, for every tourist in the world to see....I loved it!

Even the rocks in Scotland are unique!

Another one of our Hotel Rover morning views.

This is Inverness Castle, I'll close now and resume the next blog at the Nairn Highland Games.

Och aye the noo!

Stay safe and Free

Jimu and Christine.