Scottish Road Trip

With Mark returning from his European tour of women, we hired a car and set off with my lassie Magda and flatmate Leah for a lap around Scotland. After a beautiful drive through the highlands and a night in the sleepy town of Fort William, we stopped at the scenic setting of the highland rail, which for all you harry potter fans (I know you exist), was the setting for the flying car being tailed by a train in the third? film. From there we bypassed Hogwarts and the flying car and into the Cairngorm Mountains, Aviemore to be precise, and ridiculed the Australian like ski fields, before we all decided marks face needed some cooling.

Cooling marks face

The Highland Rail

We left the mountains and decided to make a massive drive to the very top of the Scottish mainland to John O’Groats. A whole hour or so later we arrived and seemingly doubled the population of the town. We had initial intentions of getting the ferry across to the Orkney Islands, but after being advised that were massive storms predicted for the next week that would leave us stranded on the island, we gave it a miss and moved on. The next exhilarating town was Thurso, where the only place to stay was hostel above a chippy, which consequently meant each room was pungently fragrant and whose owner, much to Magda’s irritation, was of the vocal and highly informed opinion that all drunken violence was due to Polish immigration.

On the way back down to Inverness we stumbled across a nice looking beach and ventured across the dunes to leave a supersized NSBH trademark in the frozen sand. After admiring our artwork for a few hours we wondered back only to discover a blaringly obvious sign at the start of the track warning that the beach was in fact radioactive. For the rest of the drive down to loch ness and during a wee spot of nessie spotting, I couldn’t help but wonder if I was ever going to have children, and more importantly, what kind of awesome supernatural powers would I acquire?

Having planned the driving roster to perfection, MARK drove us (now minus Magda) to the Glen Fiddich distiller to go on a free whisky tour and tasting. I love scotch. Scotchy, scotch, scotch. Here it goes down, down into my belly... Having had leah and marks shots, the journey over and into Aberdeen was a little blurry, but to be honest I don’t think I was missing all that much. Following the eastern coast south we strolled around the romantic Dunnottar Castle, before we arrived at Leah’s hometown of Arbroath for a taste of their renown and unique ‘smokies’ (rather tasty smoked haddock) and to view the spectacular Abroath Abbey ruins (see photo). To conclude the trip we dropped in to the well known town of St Andrews, and had a random night out with some posh English uni students and dreamed of a round of golf on the famous course.

A magical place: the Glen Fiddich distillery.

Dunnottar Castle

Arbroath Abbey

Edinburgh Hogmanay

For new years 07 we got tickets to the Edinburgh Hogmany, a large festival with music, amusement tides, ice skating, fireworks and drinks in the old part of the city. Whilst mark and I wondered around the city and checked out parliament house, the weather turned from crap to worse and when the gale force winds started to blow ever speaker stacks on stage, the event was sadly cancelled. With mark finding enjoyment in competing with the storm to see who could produce the most wind, we picked out a pub that happened to be full of other aussies and settled in for the night. When the new year clocked over without much of a hoohar, we left for a house party and somehow actually managed to find it. As we walked in we clumsily stepped over a number of passed out quitters, and mingled with some seriously pissed people. At one stage a rather happy young chap, who had that unfocussed where the hell am I look, started to give mark a nice little leg rub thinking it was the leg of the girl sitting next to him. Mark of course, didn’t tell him to stop.




The umbrellas didn't stand a chance with marks windy onslaught.

The Storm Drifts In

Would have been nice to see fireworks off the Castle

If only cameras could show wind

Not a bad location for a gig.

The fratellis were gonna headline.

Looking sharp

We woke up in some strange place with some of the people we meet up with during the night, and headed off to the Forth River just outside of Edinburgh to witness a strange Scottish new years tradition. For some reason, a bunch of people dress up in an assortment of costumes and traditional attire, parade down the streets and then brave the cold and plunge into the cold waters of the river near the Firth bridge(see photos below). I’m sure there’s a story behind. I might even go google it now.