Scotland day 2: let's hit the road ....

As usual, the early start is not what it could be, and Paprika and I are beetling it to Glasgow at around 12pm.

We're picking up Mowgli and The Cadet outside the Barrowlands:







So Paprika gets to see the Barrowlands on a Saturday, a Glasgow experience that should not be missed.

When Mowgli comes out of his flat, he's already in his kilt. It's going to be a good weekend. We're heading off on the well trodden path towards Loch Lomond. We can't get our tape adapter to work with the laptop so we're tuneless for once. Instead we just have to take in the scenery:











The weather remains undecided when we get out at Inveruglas for more irn Bru and a few photos. I love taking people to Scotland for their first trip. You head up to Loch Lomond and they are awe struck, and I start to get really excited, cos I get to imagine their faces when they see Glencoe.

After a quick stop at Tyndrum, and the serenity and solitude of Rannoch moor, we see the familiar sight(well familiar to 3 of us) of Buchaille Etive Mor on our left. From the flatness of Rannoch moor it looks like a gateway....







We have some fun at Glencoe, flashing random cars in our kilts as we take photos at a view point... everything is so green compared to the snow covered peaks that Mowgli and I saw(climbed) in April.







This time we drive on past the Red Squirrel campsite that we were at last time. We've decided to head on round to Oban and see what we can find to do round there. Thats not before we stop at my grandmother's house in Appin. She's not in(She's down in Glasgow for my brother's graduations... remember), but we get to take some picturesque scenes of Castle Stalker and Loch Lhinnie in her absence.








It looks as amazing as always, and it's even more impressive to those who haven't seen it 1000 times before on family visits...

From here, we trundle on through the early evening light to Oban. we're going to go camping.....

We drive round and round Oban trying to find a campsite that will let us have a camp fire on the beach, we give up and make do with the campsite that has a view over the Loch:








Once we've set up camp, we head back to Oban in the car to get some supplies from Tesco. Following this, we treat Paprika to a traditional scottish dinner of Omega-3 oils wrapped in complex saturated fat molecules.... otherwise known as the "Fish Supper"



When we are sitting looking out to Mull and the islands from Oban High Street we realise just how large a fish supper this is. Several onlookers comment on the size of the fish compared to the size of Paprika....

After the fish supper we feed the rest to some extremely aggressive seagulls, who wolf it down as their regular evening meal.

We get back to camp and head down to a jettu on the Loch side for the second course. We bought cheese and wine in Tesco and we sit and let the sun go down as we slowly get chessily drunk:











we drift off with full bellies ready for more adventures in the morning.......

Bulgaria day 2 - Melnik

I get up at 7am and head down to the pool to get a swim in before I sort out my computer problems.... the pool doesn't open till 9am.... There's a day trip to the Rila Monastery.... I really wanted to go, but if I can't get a presentation together in the hotel, I'll be doing some major off roading.... phoning round internet cafe's to find powerpoint and then getting a taxi to some town I don't know anything about. It would be a nice adventure to tell the grandchildren... "There used to be this huge company called Microsoft who sold software... before everything was made open source in the great code war of 2015, and one day I chased a copy of one of their products around Eastern Europe in a taxi"

I think it would be a bit irresponsible to ignore it and go to Rila. I wouldn't relax either...

I go for breakfast early and then assess the situation. It turns out the hotel has a wee computer room with a few computers in them. They aren't very fast, but they have a powerpoint and an internet connection. Problem solved... if I can't get a pre-prepared presentation from my boss I have time to put one together.

It's now 9am....I head downstairs and book а massage to celebrate. I sit through the first session. Almost everyone is at RIla. I have no laptop or wireless internet as a distraction, so I have to listen and take notes to get me through it... There's some interesting stuff, but nothing groundbreaking. At the coffee break, I slip out and phone my boss... I get an irate agreement that he'll send me a few powerpoints to piece together.

I curse myself for not having went to Rila....... Did I mention it was a Spa hotel... I head down and cleanse myself of frustrations and stress in the pool... I have a time for a shower before my massage and then a floppily pack some lunch in before the afternoon excursion leaves... I change to camera, iPod and Lonely Planet tourism mode instead of Notepad and conference proceedings mode.... I also can resist a couple of shots out of my Bedroom window:



The afternoon excursion is a visit to Melnik/Мелник. Melnik is a wine region in Bulgaria, and the little town of Melnik is the centre of that region, and also the smallest town in Bulgaria.

On the Bus, the tour guide tells us various facts about Bulgaria and it;s history. I know much of it. Judging by his tone and how he tells the stories.. it would seem that things were better before the democratic change according to him.

We drive through the same lush greenery that we traversed the previous day, only today there's a blue sky above it. This lush greenery is actually us crossing between mountains in the Pirin range so that we can continue south to Melnik... Its about 50 km... but it's going to take about 2 hours. I am lucky to travel well... I wouldn't advise anyone who can't sit on a warm bus for hours going through windey roads to try to be a tourist in this part of Bulgaria without a helicopter...

We pass as close as 10km to the Greek border(I send Paprika an SMS), and the tour guide points out that the home of Baba Vanga is very close... I later learn that Baba Vanga was a sooth sayer, who had great success in finding things that were lost and healing people.... there seems to be some truth in it... she died in the mid 90's which intrigues me a little, as these stories are usually from long ago.

Eventually we stop in a Layby and get out to get some photos of Melnik:





There's a even Vinyards:



We continue down to the street in Melnik... It;s clear as soon as you get out of the bus that this is a tourist town. There are people sitting around everywhere selling wine for astronomical amounts... sometimes it's just in a 2 litre coke bottle. The prices are astronimical... more than you'd pay for a reasonable bottle in the UK. I surprise them by heading into one of their shops and buying Bulgarian phoen credit for a friends sim card I have in my phone.

We continue to walk deeper up the river in Melnik(The river Melnik???)..











It's a quaint little village that was much larger 100 years ago before the industrial revolution. The old style houses are still evident, and before them there are even roman ruins... Melnik is also kown for the sand structures which tower over the village in pyramids... they are quite strange:







Eventually we reach our destination... the home of a wine merchant of Melnik where you cans sample the local wine. We walk throught he house and see the 17th century traditional decor:









There are double windows to make it look like the house is more grandiose than it is and has more floors:



Underneath the house is a wine cellar... which has a constant through draft to keep the wine cool:





Beside this... we get to taste wine:





I've tasted Bulgarian wine before, and ain't bad. There are many types of Grape... Syrah, Cabernet Sauvignon, etc... this appears to be the Bulgarian "Tourist" grape. I'm no connoisseur, and maybe the bottle was corked, but this is some very bad wine... there's more expensive Merlot next to it which tastes pretty good... but the local brew isn't up to much. If this is on purpose, to make you buy the merlot, then I think it's a shame. Bulgarian wine could very well be a growth industry as Bulgaria enter Europe and some tourist trap appears to be doing their best to advertise it;s lack of quality to an international group of people... again.. maybe I'm wrong.....

We discuss the wine with various other people. There's an Italian woman I know from previous conferences who is ripping into the quality of the wine with an Italian guy... He turns out to work in the Louvre... very cool.....

Once we are back out on the street, we head back to the Bus. Whiel we're waiting for folk to catch up, a Romanian girl asks if my name is American, as the "Mc" at the start is a little like MacDonald and thats American. I come on a bit strong with my putting her correct, but it had to be done.

Back on the bus... I exchange headphones with the two romanians and it while's away the journey. I needed some ИIN to wake me up and they asked what I was listening to at the wrong moment... i.e. one of the heavy bits.... they turned out to be able to handle it no problem. They had a selection of off the wall metal and punk to treat me to.

Back at the hotel the conference goers are preparing for the Social evening... There is a choir of 5 male singers warming up. I catch my 10 year old Bulgarian friend and get her to fill my phone with credit.... I can barely do it in English and in Dutch, so I doubt I'd manage it in Bulgarian she manages it no problem.

The social event consists of some champagne and a 5 man choir singing greensleeves I start to talk to the people around me, but get into trouble from the tour guide for not respecting Bulgarian culture. Since there's another 25 songs before we get food a quick word in the ear of the Italian guy puts us in the sauna 5 minutes later....

By the time we get back up, the singers are singing their last song..... we are presented with a Conference tie and then we get to have food....

Our dinner party consists of a Serbian, two Romanians and the Italian.... a very Multicultural lot...

After dinner we drink a better quality Melnik wine and have a few games of pool....

We get on like a house on fire and are all quite merry by the time we go to bed.......

Weekend in Scotland... let's go camping

After several plans for easter fell through, I made a last minute decision to head home to Scotland. With Pearl Jam a mere 5 days away and lots of work to do.. I'm on edge. Some nature should do me good....

I'm arriving Saturday morning, so after a quick coffee in Glasgow with my parental units, we're down to Ayrshire with Mowgli to pack a car and head North. We're getting good at this..... we're ready to leave by about 2pm.


It's a reduced team, just me and Mowgli. It gives a chance to get excited about Pearl Jam. We're playing various bootlegs and albums all the way up in the car, and our excitemnt levels are through the roof... we're living on a mainline Adrenahlin drip...

The trip is now so common to us, that we are in Glencoe without incident in no time. It;s easter weekend, so the traffic is terrible, but wew just sit in the slow lane of tourists and sing along to our favourite songs.

We're going to camp at glencoe tonight and play guitar, drink red wine and sit at a camp site.... then tomorrow, we'll see what the weather brings... when we arrive the rain is hitting off the car window... As we pay for our tent, I ask the man at the window if he sells sun cream. the humour seems to be lost on him.

It's that really annoying weather... it's not actually raining, but it could at any point, and there's smirry rain in the air, so you get wet just being outside. We pitch the tent anyway and set about trying to start a fire. We have kindling, but the popularoty of the fire means that there is no wood or logs anywhere around. I head off in the car to the local shop...

When I get back Mowgli has the fire going, and I add some extortionatly priced wet logs to the fire. I chop up some ingredients and stick a beef in red wine(vina mara reserva) stew on the gas stove. The rain is drizzling down, but we get the guitar out and sing a few songs anyway.



Although it's raining, I love this setting:







Once it's dark and we've sat and dunked bread into our stew, I chop a few suasages into the pot, add some more wine, and some bacon and cook it for another wee while. Then we pack a bottle of wine for the road and head off into the mountains to get to the closest pub. It's a 2 mile walk or so, but it's great walking along in darkness with only the big onimous mountains surrounding you for company.

We eventually get to the pub. We re-cork our wine and hide it in a bush for the walk back.



The Clachaig Inn is a little old hotel/bar nestled in the middle of the mountains. It dates back to the 16th century, and is pretty much famous as a bar for ale drinking malt whiskey tasting hikers, climbers, bikers and walkers. There's a sign above the door saying "No hawkers or campbells", a reference to the massacre of glencoe.

We enter the bar, and it's clear that this is the only bar for miles. There is no room for breathing.... we squeeze our way through to the bar and order one of the several real ales from the new Atlas Brewery. We have something called a Nimbus:



It's smooth, light and as mowgli describes it... tastes like tropicana.

We make our way to our seats and fin ouselves drinking with some bikers... they tell us the usual biker stories, and we slowly get merry. There's a band playing... a standard pub covers band, but they do manage to pull off some rush covers, which is quite impressive. Before long it's last orders and people start to trickle out the door back to various campsites, youth hostels and hotels. We hop over a fence and retreive our pre-stashed vina mara..... we're such well prepared drunks.

We get back to the campsite and get the fire going again... we tuck into the sausage stew that was left... stewing....and sit up playing some songs with a few of the people we met in the pub...

Once the fire is out... its into the tent for a good nights sleep with the mountains for company.