Back to Scotland

Me and the Isle of Skye

The bridge to the Isle of Skye.

Loch Ness and a castle.

Old wall I stumbled across on Skye.

On Skye.

On Skye.

On Skye.

On Skye.

Scottish eh?

Yep, Scottish.

En route to Skye. What a beautiful place to wait.

View from Skye of other Islands.

Skye.

Immediately upon my return from Roskilde I lost my job. The project I’d been working on for the past eight or nine months got canned, and so therefore did I. It was not much of a surprise and the freedom of unemployment was most welcome. With all the world before me I decided to go to India, but didn’t count on waiting more than two weeks for my visa to be processed. It was great though, first enjoying the Brighton sunshine for hours at a time, and then when my lease expired, going (back) to Scotland. (Read here for last time.) Scotland! Land of my sirname. I’d always planned to go for a longer trip there and had never made time previously. I’m glad I got forced to though, because it was incredibly beautiful. Originally I stayed in Glasgow, had a large and late night out with some couchsurfers, which ruined my plans for hitch-hiking the next day. Instead I took the train to Fort William and spent the next three days walking around there. The weather was too bad for an attempt on Ben Nevis but there were plenty of other good options. I then left for the Isle of Skye, hitching with a guy who’d also been staying with. We didn’t have much trouble getting the first lift, but then found ourselves in a quiet carpark on a little-used road. After a while a vanload or Germans drove into the carpark, circled round once, yelled something at us in German as they exited, drove off on the wrong side of the road, pulled back into the carpark, circled back to us and the driver said “Come round to the right side of my van boys. We are a German folk music ensamble. I am the driver with no eyes”. Him and the spectacular scenery kept us entertained thusly for the next couple of hours and they took us all the way to Kylakin where I was staying.

The Isle of Skye was awesome. Just like parts of NZ, mountains, lakes, rivers, changeable weather, islands, lots of good walking trails and lots of nice people. I had a brilliant time there, spending three days walking round all the beautiful places. It was the kind of place where you got to know the other tourists too and was all very friendly. When I left it took approximately 20 seconds to hitch a lift all the way to Inverness with two elderly Japanese men, and we even stopped to take photos of Loch Ness on the way. Living the dream eh? And the best part was that this wasn’t even the real dream, this was just a way to fill in time while waiting for it. Think about how sweet that makes life. Pretty freakin’ sweet.

Brighton

At the beach

Brighton pavillion

Local shop. World’s best t-shirt.

Local grafitti.

Our noisy neighbours.

At Sussex vs Durham. Mustaq Ahmed!

Our street.

Rambling nearby

In front of the beach, Hove.

This is the day’s 3rd post after this and this.

I’ve moved house – to Brighton! Brighton is lovely, a really nice place. We live in the North Laine, in my humble opinion the coolest part of the coolest city in the UK (that I know of) (and even despite me living there). Come visit. I still have my same job, I travel to London some days and work from home some days. If I was planning on staying in the UK it would definitely be here… but…

we’ll only be here till the end of July, then the world awaits…

And to start the summer’s travels, on August 8th I’m going to participate in European Hitch-hiking day. If you’re around, maybe you should too. Let’s race to Paris!

Back in the UK

This is my second post today, the other one was Montreal.

I returned to London and it was hot! In the tube and warm outside. London is a much nicer city on the days which aren’t grey. The headed north the next weekend with Tony and Sam to cheer on the Black Caps at Old Trafford. Luckily we were there for the day we dominated, Ross Taylor scored 150 and it was awesome. If we could banter like the English we’d've had a field day, but no-one can banter like the English.

Football!

I’ve been here about six months now and have finally caught English, so have been to some very English football games lately. First up, Brazil vs Sweden. If watching two foriegn teams play a friendly in a stadium full of expats from those countries while the England team plays overseas is not English culture I’m never going to find it. Anyway, Brazil vs Sweden at Emirates stadium! How sweet is that? “Pretty sweet” is the answer.

Quite a stadium, Emirates

Brazil line up a free kick

Almost as sweet as when we retired to Trev’s pub afterwards and got to drink infinite beer as he needed to “clean out the pipes”.

Tony with said beer

Said pub

The football was pretty cool too. But the stadium wasn’t full of chanting Englishmen so we had to go see some more. I was in charge of tickets and decided we could go support our local West Ham boys over in west London as they travelled to Bolton. Was surprised to hear northern accents when I bought the tickets, and a look at the map that night at home showed why: Bolton is somewhere near Manchester (and nowhere near London, west or otherwise)! Pretty good excuse for a trip away – my foolishness – so away we went. Highlight of the trip was on the Manchester –> Bolton train when the carriage was half-full of Barnsley fans en route to Blackpool, half full of Boltonites. They entertained us with songs suggesting where the other parties might like to stick their Yorkshire puddings / Lancashire red roses. At the stadium too the chants were brilliant, they are sometimes very clever and opposing fans even clap each other for a good one. My favourite was when Bolton sang “we are shit and we’re winning 1-0″.

Our West Ham boys on one of their futile attacks. They really were shite.

Bolton crowd

We took the opportunity for a quick look around Manchester and it seems pretty cool. Everyone talks like it is Coronation street and there are plenty of canals, my new favourite thing after recent adventures on the way to Milton Keynes.

One of said canals

And we were lucky enough to stay in the famous couchsurfing house, Percy Palace. It was just like they told us it would be.

Said palace

We’ll be back in Manchester in about a month’s time to have a proper look around, but first I’m going to Quebec! Hooray. Watch this space, and if I don’t post in the next few weeks call the police (I mean la police) because I’ve been eaten by a bear or a moose.

Rambling in Zone 9

Firstly if you’re a regular visitor this is my second post in several days. The other is here.

Believe it or not, this is only a few minutes walk from the London Underground:

It’s somewhere between Amersham and Chesham, way outside the M25 (I was scared too) , where a few weekends ago Valerie and I went for a nice stroll in the rain. It’s a good escape from London and like all the English countryside I’ve visited it is conveniently criss-crossed by public access footways. There’s even the chance to see a toad, which is of course why I came to England:

Yes, she is trying to kiss it. No, I don’t know why.

You can get to both those towns by taking the purple line (Metropolitan?) to the end. It’s only a short walk between the two but very nice. We hadn’t seen more trees than people in a long time. Not exactly wilderness, but nice. I’ve been doing a bit of this countryside rambling in England and am a new fan, a little to my surprise. It is a huge change to the ‘real’ outdoors that I am used to in NZ when there are hundreds of kilometres between people and mountains everywhere and sometimes volcanoes and you carry your food and fuel for five days… But it’s not so bad when after an hour there’s a pub and when it starts raining you can get on a bus and back to a town in a few minutes. And the English countryside is oh-so English. There are squirrels and foxes and little stone fences and rolling hills and colours like in Constable paintings. Here’s some more trees: