The (touristic) Blitz

We learnt from the mistakes of history and decided to take Britain by land. Armed with a rental car and a large quantity of jelly babies we delved deep into the “land of embarrassment and breakfast”. Well, as deeply as 12 days would permit.

A toothless hitch-hiker with serial killer hair and a heart of gold recommended a not too distant first stop in England’s Lakes District. Given the source of the recommendation we were very surprised to find ourselves in a boutique village featuring award winning breakfasts, picture postcard sunsets and some lovely lakes!





The following day we drove further south into Wales, making our way along the northern coastline and then south into the idyllic Snowdonia National Park. The pastures fit together like puzzle pieces delineated with stone walls and are populated by brick cottages, lambs a leaping, ruins of renaissance era mansions, ancient churches, nuzzling horses and sweeping shelter belts of trees in shades of gold and green.



For some reason Wales reminded us of home...

Our first stop in Wales was a converted stables, now the host to many a Welsh school trip and... us. Just us. We had the whole place to ourselves. We spent our time spreading out in the huge lounge, playing surprisingly even table tennis matches, and exploring the ruins of the old abandoned mansion...

It was used as a prisoner of war camp during the second world war... very spooky.

On day three we visited gorgeous Port Meirion, an Italian inspired village that was the setting of the mind-bending 1960’s TV show The Prisoner then slowly made our way further south to the Brecon Beacon national park. We stayed in a tiny village’s sole hostel/bar and were welcomed into a team for the towns weekly pub quiz. We managed not to disgrace ourselves during the quiz but may have done so afterwards upon being gifted a bottle of wine...


No sign of the ominous white ball...

We originally set a course along the coast of Wales, but after many miles of uninspiring views we ventured inland and were greeted with these valleys.

The following morning we dragged ourselves out of bed for a 12km walk and then departed Wales with heavily aching muscles and lightly aching hearts at the thought of how much more there was to see and do in that beautiful country.

CUTE! Even Postman Pat came by for a visit.

After some local ciders (one of which was called 'brains') we set hit the road for England...stopping only for a peek at this epic ruined cathedral.

A Tale of Three Cities

I spent one of the best weekends of my life in..... Glasgow!

I can’t really explain why I liked it so much... I think it was because Glasgow has a spark, a buzz, a sprightly, lively, young feel that I haven’t encountered since we left Auckland. It actually reminded me of Auckland in many ways with its mash of architectural styles, hilly terrain, inner city walkability and thriving music scene. Perhaps I’m just biased towards anywhere that reminds me of home.

There were some decidedly un-Aucklandy features though, like the sprawling Barras Market with its impressive collection of terrible horror movies, the inspiring art nouveau architecture of Glasgow’s own Charles Rennie MacKintosh, and the necropolis surrounded by cathedrals. (Necropolis is an infinitely cooler term than ‘graveyard’.) Plus, major bucket list item alerts - I have now seen the gravestone of the author who wrote Wee Willie Winkie and the Presidents of the United States of America live in concert. Woot!


The Presidents were on form and hilarious, they even played through their entire self-titled album from start to finish... a great blast from the past.

The pinnacle of Glaswegian fashion, or so the tourists think. Most people on the street actually sport more of a Jersey shore inspired look.


Our wanderings took us through an old necropolis...

The shots here more accurately captured true Scottish weather, somehow all the others ended up with blue sky...

We visited London in a very British way... which is to say we treated it very casually and had a great time without seeing any of the usual tourist attractions. Actually we did manage to fit in two hours at the Tate (and quickly found we needed 2 days). And I’ve seen the Tower of London and London Bridge from about 1km away.

OK, so we failed miserably. We’ll just have to go back...

Our wanderings didn't take us very far...
The Tate however was very... modern

We also visited a little Scottish town called Stirling, and saw a castle.

 

Check out that burger, epic.


The castle is famous for its head carvings, it was all pretty magnificent.

EdinBRRRR

We arrived in Edinburgh at the stroke of a mid-November midnight. An exotically lit castle castled above us and at ground level there were fish and chips and people speaking English! Below us lay abandoned closes where the wallpaper had the power of killing us with a single touch because the arsenic component has separated from the paper component... but we didn’t know that yet.

We luxuriated in Edinburgh’s gothic beauty, haggis pies and horror stories for all of ten minutes, and then busied ourselves finding a home, jobs, bank accounts... it felt great once we got past that stage and on to the luxuriating in the gothic beauty and the dreaming-of-where-to-go-in-Europe-this-year stage.

Our six months there felt like a flash interspersed with an eternity - our time always seemed to be passing either really slowly or really quickly. Some highlights were the Hogmanay street party, playing Spanish fiesta songs at free guitar lessons, seeing weird and riveting movies at the incredibly diverse cinemas, the dreamy morning skies, living life within a grand architectural setting and getting to know the Scottish psyche: they drive left, walk right and are incredibly witty – I could not keep up and am hoping that some of it rubbed off on me while we were there. It’s got to be something in the water...

Capturing half a year in one blog is hard so... time for a MONTAGE!


We came to Scotland expecting William Wallace, awesome architecture and freezing cold... we got it all, and much more of course...


The castle was definitely epic... not quite Jodhpur fort epic but still very impressive.

Some bad weather, but plenty of nice clear days. Which unfortunately were still so so cold....


Cold, sleepy Edinburgh came to life when they won the football.... the lifeblood of any good Scotsman. Whenever I opened the paper to the sports section hoping for some cricket or rugby news, I was always greeted by at least 4 pages of football and (at the most) 1 page of ALL other sports. Dedicated.

Hogmanay was a blast, we laughed our way into the new year thanks to the Cuban Brothers and their unique brand of craziness.

Best way to keep warm in Edinburgh was to get moving, we walked a lot! Our favourite was Arthur's Seat which we climbed multiple times. That's it below looking amazing in the unseasonably warm weather we had for a week in March. For scale, those are people walking at the bottom.


The whole city poured into the parks during that week... was quite a change from the ghost city we were used to!

And as if to mock us, the warm weather came back on our last day in Edinburgh. While enjoying the sunshine we wandered through a Christian fair in the gardens and Sophie (losing focus for just a second) was pounced on and converted... note the flyer and sticker.