Leeds

Leeds was pretty eventless.... I'm here myself, busy with boring work. I never get a chance to see the place, and I've never really been sure what there is to see anyway..... This always happens when I travel to Britain. It's not exotic enough for me. Maybe I need to buy a lonely planet of Britain and tackle it as a foreigner/tourist.

The good point about Britain is having free phone minutes on my mobile. This lets me phone mates to ask stupid questions etc and have big long meandering blethers which I can't do when I'm bored in hotels in other countries.

Later this year there's a conference I have to go to which will be of interest to The Cadet, so maybe she'll come down on the train and we can do Leeds... but this time it's just an endless search for a decent chippie and boring meetings. At least I have wifi, so I can skype and sort out all my photos from Last week's Scottish adventures.

The Meeting is in the Parkinson building of Leeds University....



.......so I am surrounded by students once more, which is quite a strange experience. Especially when I'm dressed up all fancy like. It's exam season, so every time I go down to the toilet, I see all the signs "NO CALCULATOR" "QUIET EXAMS". It takes me back, when you had spent the previous 36 hours overdosing on coffee and crisps and trying to digest a whole years teaching into a list of 20 thigns to remember, past papers, redoing tutorials, the adrehnalin pumping cos it's an exam, then getting out, know ing you've done okay and going off and having that Gezellig beer. Getting the exam results through and getting that tangible reward for the hard work. I actually miss it. You don't get those tangible rewards for hard work anymore, and the mountain of work you've got to tackle doesn't have a structure which can be recognised like a year of lectures can....

The three days passes in a blur, and when it comes to sending postcards I don't seem to be able to find any.... So sorry folks, Leeds isn't interesting enough.

I stagger back home tired on the Friday night.... Too tired to be bothered going out.......

Bondage

I am at one of those get to know your colleagues bonding sessions. It is in the middle of nowhere in the Netherlands; otherwise known as near Den Bosch:





Now this would be horrible no metter where it was, but I have the added complication that it's all in Dutch, a language whose comprehension hurts my head. I suppose I should be glad of the practice and immersion in the language, but given that I have work to do, and don't really beleive that any of the hippy shit about communicating was heard by any of the people in the room(Ironic huh??), I'm not in th best of moods.

After saying Assertiveness, Facilitate and constructive at key moments during the two days. I'm heading off in a Taxi towards Den Bosch and then onto Schiphol Airport for a meeting in Leeds. The girl in the taxi seems quite excited to have a genuine Scotsman in her car and asks if I am impressed by the Dutch countryside:



I'm not in the mood to be tactful and tell her that I've been in Scotland for the past two weeks and the flat countries aren't really doing it for me.

I'm like a zombie all the way to leeds, with the only escapism being Muriel Gray's book on climbing:


It's a good means of fantisising about road trips in Scotland and it's a funny and easy to read book.

I'm very glad when I manage to finally get my head down on the pillow of a comfort inn and settle into some good british telly.......

First weekend back in Amsterdam

Back to Amsterdam, and back to a mountain of work. The trip through the airport is interesting, due to an over abundance of Christmas pressies, my luggage weighs about 40Kg when I check in. The limit is 20, so I have to go away and do some rearanging. A fair whack of this is is Cheddar Cheese and Haggis - two delicacies not commonly found in Amsterdam. After rearranging things a little, my luggage weighs 22kg. Now it doesn't take a Maths genius to work out that I am now carrying 18 Kg's of Haggis and Cheese about my person. The woman at Security says this is the only country that would recognise haggis in the X-ray machine and that I'm lucky.....



I'm glad to get home and dump the huge weight that is my bags.

It's nice to be back, and nice to be cycling instead of driving for a wee while. It's the new year, and The Kiwi seems to be going to the Gym most days to tackle the winter blues. I decide that in an attempt to banish the beer belly and be little fitter on the mountains I'm going to sign up.

On Saturday, by the time I've bought a new bike and done various shopping tasks, and signed up for a 3 month membership to squash city, I don't have time to go to the gym as I'm due at Obi Wan and the Bulgarian Bride's house for a Haggis dinner. I balance my laziness with the fact that its a 45 minute cycle to Diemen.

The Bulgarian's seem to take to Haggis like the British do to binge drinking, so I always bring back plenty.

We have a good evening, where I show off some photos, eat some haggis etc. I also get the chance to see the present I bought Obi wan and my sister:



I head off and catch up with The Kiwi and some mates at the Gollem for a last beer on the way home. They are at that stage that only Belgian beer can put you in. They can barely talk, and it makes my over indulgence of Red Wine which I had been regretting on the cycle home pale into insignificance.

In the morning, I get started on some work. I have stuff to catch up on cos I'm going to be out of the office all week. As a break I head off to Squash city:



I'm pretty apprehensive... I've not been in a Gym in years, and even then it was the Glasgow University gym, and you could pretty much get away with any studentness.

Before long I'm on the cardio machines and churning away... The sweat is lashing off me, but my iPod is pumping out Dookie so I'm doing okay:



After this, I head to the weight machines and do the circuit along to nothing's shocking:



This gym thing is actually quite good fun. It gives me the chance to listen to music for extended lengths of time - nae bother!!

Afterwards I get a call from The Kiwi. They are going to Best Thai, a nearby Thai restaurant after kick boxing, so I go for a green thai curry:



The chill generated by the work out puts me in the zone and some good thai is a good way to finish off the weekend, before I head off on travels again next week....

Foggy farewell

Today was very much an Administration and Logisitics day I got everything packed, and finally too The Cadet home. She liked my sister's bed so much that my mum asked her to chose colours for the room from a dulux colour card:



We head up in the car to Glasgow and drop her off. As a last adventure, we have a walk along the clyde - it's bizarre. The fog is so thick that we can't see the other side or any of the crane's:













There's a small confusion as to whether The Cadet likes the Crane of the кран, but it remains unsolved as we can't see it.

One thing is for sure..... The fog has done the impossible and managed to make the Industrially Scarred Ex-Shipbuilding part of the clyde look beautiful....




It's a fitting end to our fortnight of festive(ish) adventures.... I'll be back in february for more.....

Roadtrippin

......so it's up early for another squeeze into the beetle. We're heading off towards Lanark. This involves heading out across the Ayrshire wilderness through Muirkirk and then on to Lanark.

It's good to be out on these roads again. They are very rugged and twisty and it's probably almost ten years since I've been along them. Muirkirk was a feeder school for my high school to o memories of various faces that we went to school with are discussed between me and Luke SkyeTrekker.

After a lot of Twisting..... A fair bit of Michael jackson(Mowgli and Luke should never have been put together).... and some decidedly green faces..... we stop off in Lanark.



I'm really proud, cos when I ask what everyone wants from Woolworths, The Cadet asks for Irn Bru with a look of physical addiction similar to that of an Argyll Street junkie. I'm proud that she's moved from thinking it was horribly sugary a mere week ago to full physical addiction with ginger glints in her eyes:



Everybody gets refreshed and we decide to head along to New Lanark. Wikipedia has this to say:

New Lanark is a village on the River Clyde, approximately two kilometres from the Scottish town of Lanark. It was founded in 1786 by David Dale, who built cotton mills and housing for the mill workers. Dale built the mills there to take advantage of the water power provided by the River Clyde. Under the ownership of a partnership that included Dale's son-in-law, Robert Owen, a philanthropist and social reformer, New Lanark became a successful business and an epitome of utopian socialism.
The New Lanark mills operated until 1968. After a period of decline, the New Lanark Conservation Trust was founded in 1975 to prevent demolition of the village. As of 2006, most of the buildings have been restored and the village has become a major tourist attraction. It is one of four UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Scotland.

That's what wikipedia says. What the three former Scottish kids say is that we used to come here on school trips, so for two of them it's a bit of a nostalgia trip. For Luke, who's mother is a school teacher, he's here every other summer and could give tours:




There's a multimedia tour and various things inside, but we are just going to have a wander around the country paths which surround the mill.

Before that, we head into the traditional sweet shop where you can stock up on all the boiled sweets that we used to eat when we were kids. The prices have elevated a little and a quarter ounce doesn't last as long as it used to.... but we get:

Clove Rock:

Lemon Sherbets:


Soor Plooms:


and for the country walk..... Winter Warmers:


I think The Cadet is a little perplexed as to how excited we get at the prospect of a wee paper bag of boiled sugar.... but then she tastes a Lemon Sherbet and she's converted..

The next step in the Luke SkyeTrekker tour of New Lanark i the gift shop to get 10p polystyrene gliders. I can kind of tell that when he come here with school children he has to pretend to be mature and subdued, but he can pretty much let rip with us..... So ten minutes after coming out of the shop, there is a group of people watching four grown adults run around making aeroplane noise and throwing flimsy polystyrene in the air:



Inevitably someone's(Mowgli) plane goes in the river and he's determined that the same happens to everyone elses. I blame it on the sugar in the clove rock.

From here we continue un the side of the clyde to the country walk. The waterfallls are pretty magnificant and Luke has brought a digital SLR and a video camera so that we can get artistic.
I don't have our artistic results, so you'll have to make do with 3 megapixels worth of Canon:





From hear we head off back to the car... I'm keen to get up a mountain, and there is a small hill in one of my walking books called tinto hill:



After peeing in Biggar, we stock up on some food and water from a petrol station. We arrive at the car park at the foot of Tinto hill. I am trying to instill some enthusiasm in climbing the mountain. It's a far stretch from the beauty of glencoe, and is basically just a peaty path up to a high point, surrounded by rolling hills etc. There's little promise of seeing anything we can't hear from here. The opinions of climbing are as follows:

Mowgli: Would prefer something more extreme
Luke: Avoiding climbing at any cost
Me: I live in the flattest country in the world
The Cadet: Having just discovered a Kaleidoscope - normal service will be resumed around february.



We head off with Tripod in hand and walk for about 30 minutes..... It's now clear to me that no one wants to continue - even The Cadet is complaining that the scenery isn't up to much, so I decide that rather than force them up the hill, we'll head back down and continue driving. We get some photos, and walk down slowly.....

I quite like the light and the hills, but it is almost definitely cos I live in Holland:









I try to explain it to The Cadet by talking about Constable paintings with the light hitting the clouds etc....



This then continues onto Turner, and how his mess of layers in his paintings resemble a smashing pumpkins guitar solo coming out of a wall of screeching sound:



Since we're in creative mood, we then bang a broken wire fence against its post so that it makes cool noises. We follow this up by finding the half way point and playing harmonics on it..... Ah the joys of education.....

We're back on the road and the night starts to falll as we head out towards Edinburgh, mainly just because it's too early to return to Glasgow. We stop on the way to admire the sky as the sun sets:


Once we've failled to find beaches or views in both Musselbourgh and Portabello, we head off to Leith docks and get fish and chips:



We then sit at Leith docks and eat them. It's a good end to a long day...



From here we head off back to glasgow to the strains of Bad:

From here, it's back to Partick to watch Almost famous with the Similarski sisters:



It's one of my favourtie friends as it reminds me of being a 12 year old Led Zeppelin fan trying to be cool and be an adult. It has a kick ass soundtrack aided by the wailing of one Mr. Mike McCready which also adds to it's rating in my book:



From here, it's back down to Ayrshire, where I have a quick beer and then head off to bed....... knackered......

Wasted days

The first of January is such a wasted day its unbelievable. As always I wake up far too early(about 12.30pm). There's no chance Mowgli is greeting 2006 yet, so I know I can vegetate in front of dvd's for a few hours. It's the first of January, there's no way I can do anything else. I remember specifically watching the entire Godfather trilogy the year before while waiting for Mowgli to realise it was 2005:



This year, it's slightly slimmer pickings, but I do manage to find an entire series of a BBC programmme called Hustle:



For really vegetating the availability of DVD's from my local library has made me give up on an array of different films with differing paces and themes. I opt instead for an entire series of the Sopranos:



Or to delve into the debauched world of Macnamara and Troy for an entire sunday:



In the evening, we wander slowly towards the west end to meet Alice and her family at a coffeeshop on Woodlands road. It's only been about 36 hours, but it's good to be back with the three musketeers. We look over the photos from the road trip and head back down to Ayrshire for the night.......

The next day is spent doing very little other than organising a road trip for the next day. Luke SkyeTrekker has finally got a window clear where we can head off. Unfortunately due to various people having to be various places... It's going to be a one day trip. We are going to try to stay in the centre of Scotland and see what adventures we can get up to. On the second we go a little wander closer to home. We have a walk along the river ayr in Failford. Its a nice country walk.... and makes me feel a bit nostalgic for children's adventure walks.... Building tree houses... etc.







After this, it's a quick trip to the Supermarket I used to work in while Mowlgi gets a clean change of clothes for tomorrow's road trip where I stock up on Haggis and Cheese to take back to the flat countries.....

We have a few pints and games of pool in the local pub and then settle down for an early night ready for a road trip....