i've heard of Britain's "low cost" carriers and their methods for saving money. now i'm sitting in the back row of a little Airbus A319 on EasyJet's Inverness-Gatwick run, stuck next to a really big guy on my left and... damn. the plane was landed before we were boarding. turnaround scraped in at just under half an hour. there's no seat assignments, and checked luggage is an extra charge so EVERYONE has a fuckload of carry-on. my backpack's half-way up the cabin because there was simply no room for it anywhere closer. my shoulder-bag is sitting between my ankles on the floor. i'm amazed i got a seat on this thing - i only booked 2 days ago and it's jam-packed. the safety lecture led straight into the in-flight advertisements, suggesting that we spend-big for valentine's day. now i've got my earphones in (oh fuck me... the fat guy just farted. and i thought my bowels were bad...) so that i don't have to listen to his breathing or the drone of the engines and once again i'm glad that my Eee not only has a decent amp, but that it's lack of bulk fits nicely on the tray table. i'm also thanking fuckery that i'm not carrying the weight that once i did or i'd be making life extremely difficult for the average-sized lady to my right. at least it's only a 100 minute flight.
i was up yesterday morning in good time, with a plan for the day. rumour had it that there was some nice coastline and the possibility of dolphon-sightings a little up the west-shore of the Moray Firth. the original idea was to head to Cromarty, a 3/4 of an hour bus ride away. after a couple of conversations with random strangers i fetched up in Rosemarkie instead - around half-way to Cromarty, with better prospects for aquatic mammals, and by 10:45 i was walking along a quiet beach that ran between two little hamlets (Rosemarkie and Fortrose) which are roughly a mile apart by road. it was quiet, peaceful, like pretty much everywhere i'd seen around Inverness. 45 minutes or so later i was sitting at a park bench near the lighthouse on the little peninsula. the people are friendly around here. it's all little villages, so it's obvious you're a stranger when you're walking around, and a hairy man dressed all in black stands out around here like a clown at a funeral. still, everyone i'd passed on the beach had smiled and said hello which kept my spirits high. i after sitting around for a while and seeing nothing but still water and little birds mucking around in the grass and the snow i picked up and walked the 2 miles into Fortrose through the golf course, found the bus and sat there enjoying the view (both outside of the Firth, and inside of possibly the prettiest redhead i've ever seen who'd been welcomed onboard by a heavily made-up girl with the query "Or-ite? Wossa craic?") on the way back to Inverness.
three and a half hours later i'd found the appropriate bus and gotten out to the Collodden Battlefield and was standing on the spot where the front lines of the Jacobites who'd survived the artillery blasts and musket barrage met the redcoats in hand-to-hand combat before being blown to pieces by the government's 2nd-line, who encircled them and opened fire. wandering through the exhibition there's a video-rendering of the movements of the battle - an hour or maybe less during which the little blue ants had the shit kicked out of them by a strong defence and a commander who wasn't blinded by delusions of a god-given destiny. the story of the lead-up to the battle, and the aftermath, are worth reading because it explains a lot of the religious and political situation of the time. also worth doing is stopping to have a talk to the period-garbed staff at the end of the exhibition centre, because if you ask nicely you'll find yourself holding some extraordinarily beautiful weaponry. the muskets and shields are replicas (GOOD replicas, mind), but there are originals you get to play with if you're lucky. i wound up being handed and swinging around a 200+ year old Jacobite Cavalry Backsword, so named because the rider would swing it down and back as he galloped past the infantry. it was beautiful, too - well preserved and perfectly weighted, and as much as i wanted to bolt for the door i DID give it back.
i was about done with Inverness by the time i got back there in the evening. this is partly because a lot of the fun stuff to see and do was closed for the winter, but also because i was itchy to be moving on. fortunately or unfortunately, "on" meant back to London. i was fully prepared to chill out in the hostel for the evening, but wound up being dragged to the pub by a french guy and a couple of italians. i even wound up getting chatting to a tiny little brunette from Perth (Australia) called Rachel, but was interrupted by the italians who were trying it on with her pretty messily then got stuck talking to the french guy who was really fucking loud and annoying, to the point where i drained my beer, made an excuse about getting some sleep and bolted. as i strolled back to the hostel i was stopped by a group of Scots who were asking if i could point them to a good boozer. i'd pointed out 2 or 3 that i'd seen or been into before the leader looked at me and asked "Or-stralean?" yeah mate. "Orite! Cheers mate!"
for some reason last night i had great difficulty sleeping. i was the second person to hit the sack, and the other guy had the good grace not to snore, but for some reason i just couldn't nod off. i put my ear plugs in but kept waking up again and again until finally i slept half-way through the morning. i took my time getting packed, heading downstairs and having a strong, hot coffee while i checked my mail in the common room. i'd checked on where to catch the bus to the airport the day before, so finding the stop and getting out was uneventful, until of course i had to go through airport security. anything liquid in my toiletries bag went into a clear plastic bag. my Eee came out and was scanned separately (although they were happy for it to stay in its little sheath). my belt had to come off, although i'd prepared and everything from my trouser pockets was already in my coat. every time i fly anywhere the security gets more and more anal, and i enjoy the experience less and less. what was really 20 minutes felt like forever, but eventually i was in the air with my Eee open and Title And Registration by Death Cab For Cutie launching into its 23rd repetition in the last week. at least the flight's quick and from the inclination of the aeroplane i have the feeling that it'll be over soon - then i just have to look forward to the ruinously expensive Gatwick Express to Victoria Station, then the bus ride back to base-camp. oh joy, ecstasy. at least the snow that hit the south and midlands the other day hasn't caused any delays in my travel plans, unlike the snowfall last week which backed up Heathrow worse than a fat man on a beef and imodium diet.
please excuse me if i hate everything right now. i'm most of the way back to the real world, which is something i was managing quite nicely to avoid while i was away. going back to London means resumption of my responsibilities, fiscal conservativism and job-hunting. it means grey streets and grey people, and watching while louise messily self-destructs and cries herself to sleep at night. of course, it also means not sleeping in a room full of stangers or walking for miles a day. it means quiet time and semi-normality. it means sitting around wondering where i'm going to go next, a question for which i have more answers than pounds. it means no more being beaten in the back of the head by the sound of snow crunching under my feet the smell of clean air and the feeling of being remarkably alone in a beautiful setting, wishing i could magically teleport all my mates there so that they could see what i was seeing and share in the moment. one of the joys of traveling with someone is the times later when you can turn to them and say "do you remember when...?" and they smile and nod and you share that moment all over again. being somewhere on your own robs you of that, but at least you still have the story to tell years later at the pub when someone talks about something they heard about Scotland and you get to be that irritating fucker who pipes up with
oh yeah - i was out there back in 2009. fucking beautiful out there. you should go...
i'm going to need to get away again, and soon. days, weeks, a month at the most. get away and forget i have a care in the world while i grind the soles of my boots further down on different streets and darken foreign doorsteps. run away from the real world and return to being yet another dirty backpack-toting itinerant with their 24-Hour Friends and No Fixed Address, constantly trying to reduce the number of places they've never been by one. meanwhile, i'm hearing the call of the hostie asking that electronic equipment be shut off so that's me done. i'll be back with the regularly scheduled programme once i've slept, sorted a few tihngs out and the haunted look's gone from my eyes whenever i look the mirror.
Showing posts with label scotland. Show all posts
Showing posts with label scotland. Show all posts
Sunday, February 15, 2009
Friday, February 13, 2009
Inverness - snow on the ground and a sudden change of plans...
when the train pulled into Inverness i'd been sitting, watching snow-laden fields and towns go by for the last 2 hours. Inverness, on the other hand, was dry, apart from a couple of patches of ice here and there. when my boots hit the pavement this morning a couple of inches of snow covered the ground and as i headed out it started to rain. a good day to go and sit beside Loch Ness this was not going to be, but this is me we're talking about so i did it anyway.
the hostel was easy enough to find - a couple of minutes walk from the train station, with the entrance in the middle of a short alley that led between a side road and High Street. in the doors and up the stairs and i was greeted by a jovial scot and the sounds of construction - "We're in the middle of renovation, so sorry about the mess," he told me. the standard procedures took place, my stuff was dumped in the dorm and i ejected myself back onto the street again. i stopped through the Tourist Information Centre, picked up enough information to make plans for the coming days, and wandered down to the River Ness. a left-turn took me southwards and into the peaceful village. green grass, a nice footpath and a shallow river flowing quickly, but gently out to sea. after London and Edinburgh, even Brighton, the quiet village atmosphere (Inverness is officially a city - they have a piece of paper stamped by Queen Elizabeth II that says so - but it's only got ~70,000 people in it and it FEELS village-like) was like a gentle breeze and i fould feel myself relaxing as i walked. crossing over one of the suspension briges i was able to look down into, and through the water. from what i was told later it's drinkable - clean and fresh with no industry upriver to mess it up. salt water seeps through an artesian basin, filtering through the rocks and into Loch Ness, then flows back out to sea again. up at the Loch it's just as clear and cold you feel like you could immerse yourself and it would wash your sins and pain away, leaving you clean and renewed once again.
heading back up the other side, i kept going until i got to the two churches and crossed over and down Church St where i'd been told i could find a Wetherspoons and therein a cheap feed. it WAS cheap, too - £4.38 bought me a pint of local ale and a cottage pie, which i sipped and scarfed respectively while hitting the net and checking on the news. my phone rang while i sat there - the pimp who's placed me in Louis Vuitton a few times previously, wanting to know if I was interested in some £10/hour work he had going. i laughed, explaining that i was in a pub in Inverness and that it'd take something pretty spectacular to get me to rush back - in other words: you can take your £10/hour and shove it, mate.
a bit of a sit-down in the hostel and i was back outside the Tourist Centre by 6:45PM for an evening tour, which was led by a Patriotic Scot, and on that cold evening catered to a clientele of one: me. he didn't seem peturbed by this - he was as happy to take my money as i was to have an informal one-on-one, and we wandered around chatting while he told stories for an hour or so and i learned a few odds and ends about the town and its history while enjoying some pleasant company.
another quick chill in the hostel after which i fetched up in the Hootenanny - a chain, apparently. they have music every night and tonight was a "traditional scottish jam session", which meant a piano-accordian (for once, not used as a Weapon of Mass Destruction), a couple of violins and a guitar. i found a seat and wound up chatting to a Scottish bloke in his 50's while enjoying pleasant music and pint after pint of the local ales and generally having a really nice time for a few hours.
i was supposed to be up early this morning to get out to Drumnadrochit (Drum-na-d'rocket) - about a 3rd of the way down Loch Ness, near to Urquhart Castle. the plan was to get to the village and hike the 2 miles to the Castle - then i woke up late (missing the earlier bus by about 5 minutes) and saw the weather. alternatives came to mind, but Cawdor Castle was closed (unless you're in good with Lady Cawdor who lives there, and i'm not), so that was out, as was the Culloden Battlefield Centre which is shut through the winter. oh well, fuckit. i bought a ticket for Drumnadrochit, chilled out for the hour or so i had to wait and took a ride down a narrow, windy road past the Loch.
sitting on the bus, i plugged my earphones in for the first time in days (i', hit "Last Played" and Death Cab For Cutie started singing in my ears again (they've wound up providing the unofficial soundtrack for this trip) and i sat there looking out the window, quietly losing it. i'm sitting on the knife-edge between wanting to go back to head back to civilisation and wanting to continue wandering on and on until i run out of breath or money. i was starting to get the over the perception of loneliness, and starting to get the feeling that i could just keep doing this forever - a new town every couple of days, a new bunch of room mates, a new set of streets to learn to navigage. suddenly, while i sat on the bus to Drumnadrochit i was sitting on the MRT in Singapore. as i walked up the road towards the Castle i was hiking back to home-base in London. walking the dark, narrow alleys in Edinburgh and i was walking across the Harbour Bridge in Sydney. in an airconditioned taxi with a disinterested cabbie in Melbourne and i was in a tuktuk in Bangkok where the driver had a mad gleam in his eye and i had the wind in my hair. walking on the pebbled beach in Brighton and i was walking up Cable Beach in Broome. sinking pints in Inverness and i was in the back-deck at Little Creatures in Fremantle. all in the blink of an eye, i splintered an reformed and the only thing that changed was the view out the window, but somehow i got the impression that when i settle down again i'll still be sitting on a bus careening through snowy fields with a view of one of the most famous bodies of water on the planet.
Drumnadrochit is a sleepy little one-horse village sitting just off the water and seems pretty much to cater to tourists and Loch Ness pilgrims. i got some directions for a walking trail (which i couldn't find), pulled out my umbrella and headed off down the road which got more and more treacherous as i went along. with the verge covered in 2 feet of snow i wasn't going to get anywhere in a hurry, so i walked along the edge of the road against the traffic and jumped into the snow any time a car came past. somewhere around 3/4 of an hour later i was finally at the Castle - tired, but alive.
Urquhart is an old ruin sitting out on the side of the Loch with a little visitor's center which i'm now sitting in, nursing the remnants of a hot chocolate, watching what look like robins playing around in the snow. there's not much to it to be honest - it took me a little over half an hour to meander quietly through the remnants of the fortifications and buildings, my earphones dangling dormant around my neck while i enjoyed the sound of rain on my umbrella and Sweet Fuck All else - the silence that comes from being a long away from too many people and the glossolalia of their noisemakers and gadgetry. after investigating the nooks and crannies of what remains standing i ducked down to the shore of the Loch so that i could dip my toe in the water and tempt the Nessie, marveling at the water's clarity, before heading back up to gift shop for a warm drink and a bite to eat.
i'm a little irritated - if i'd managed to get to the earlier bus i'd be back in Inverness by now and i'd have time to do something else this afternoon, but then i guess a quietish day is for the win at this point. i have another 20 minutes before i have to be out on the roadside waiting for the bus back to Inverness (i got a return from the village, but i'm hoping that the driver won't make me hike back there to catch the proper one. in better weather i'd have gone for a walk down the side of the Loch, but i at least got to go to the shore by the castle and dip my toe into it. it's a beautiful place - even shrouded in mist and raining, it's quiet and wild and remarkably unpoluted. even if i don't get to do what i've got planned for tomorrow, i'm glad i came up this way just for the chance to hang around here for a bit.
anyway, word is that the bus drivers do a drive-by and if they don't see anyone than they don't stop, so i'd best be out on the road looking obvious. hopefully being dressed all in black with an umbrella counts as obvious, but i'll not be taking any chances of having to walk along that road in the dark so i'm off.
---
i spent half an hour standing on the edge of the frozen road chewing gum and playing with the robin who seemed keen on flying and hopping around me while i waited. by the time i was back in Inverness i had a gaping hole where my stomach used to me - the hot chocolate and steak slice back at the Castle cafe having filled it not at all. i felt like an old pair of boots - soles ground thin on strange pavement and starting to crack, leather faded to grey, crinkled and soft. i managed to not trip out of the bus when it stopped and dumped the broken remains of my umbrella (stalk cracked while waiting outside the Castle) into the first bin i found. too early for the All You Can Eat Chinese Buffet, so i headed back to the hostel, dumped my bag and spoke to a pimp who seemed keen to talk to me, then wandered back and stuffed my face while i watched the river trickle its way past beyond the window.
tonight has been designated a "dead" night. i'm not in the mood to go and sit in a pub on my own, so i'll be sitting around the hostel, working on my writing. i have a few things to get out if i can get them together properly. tomorrow i'll try to make an early start and head up to Cromarty where i'm told there are wild dolphins, seals and maybe even puffins. i'd have liked to have wandered around somewhere indoors, but what the hell - i might as well make the most of the situation, and if that means bothering the wildlife then so be it. i won't be going hell-for-leather anyway - it'll be my last day in Scotland since i'm now rushing back to London on Saturday (thankyou EasyJet)... but that's an explaination i think i'll tell out of sequence.
the hostel was easy enough to find - a couple of minutes walk from the train station, with the entrance in the middle of a short alley that led between a side road and High Street. in the doors and up the stairs and i was greeted by a jovial scot and the sounds of construction - "We're in the middle of renovation, so sorry about the mess," he told me. the standard procedures took place, my stuff was dumped in the dorm and i ejected myself back onto the street again. i stopped through the Tourist Information Centre, picked up enough information to make plans for the coming days, and wandered down to the River Ness. a left-turn took me southwards and into the peaceful village. green grass, a nice footpath and a shallow river flowing quickly, but gently out to sea. after London and Edinburgh, even Brighton, the quiet village atmosphere (Inverness is officially a city - they have a piece of paper stamped by Queen Elizabeth II that says so - but it's only got ~70,000 people in it and it FEELS village-like) was like a gentle breeze and i fould feel myself relaxing as i walked. crossing over one of the suspension briges i was able to look down into, and through the water. from what i was told later it's drinkable - clean and fresh with no industry upriver to mess it up. salt water seeps through an artesian basin, filtering through the rocks and into Loch Ness, then flows back out to sea again. up at the Loch it's just as clear and cold you feel like you could immerse yourself and it would wash your sins and pain away, leaving you clean and renewed once again.
heading back up the other side, i kept going until i got to the two churches and crossed over and down Church St where i'd been told i could find a Wetherspoons and therein a cheap feed. it WAS cheap, too - £4.38 bought me a pint of local ale and a cottage pie, which i sipped and scarfed respectively while hitting the net and checking on the news. my phone rang while i sat there - the pimp who's placed me in Louis Vuitton a few times previously, wanting to know if I was interested in some £10/hour work he had going. i laughed, explaining that i was in a pub in Inverness and that it'd take something pretty spectacular to get me to rush back - in other words: you can take your £10/hour and shove it, mate.
a bit of a sit-down in the hostel and i was back outside the Tourist Centre by 6:45PM for an evening tour, which was led by a Patriotic Scot, and on that cold evening catered to a clientele of one: me. he didn't seem peturbed by this - he was as happy to take my money as i was to have an informal one-on-one, and we wandered around chatting while he told stories for an hour or so and i learned a few odds and ends about the town and its history while enjoying some pleasant company.
another quick chill in the hostel after which i fetched up in the Hootenanny - a chain, apparently. they have music every night and tonight was a "traditional scottish jam session", which meant a piano-accordian (for once, not used as a Weapon of Mass Destruction), a couple of violins and a guitar. i found a seat and wound up chatting to a Scottish bloke in his 50's while enjoying pleasant music and pint after pint of the local ales and generally having a really nice time for a few hours.
i was supposed to be up early this morning to get out to Drumnadrochit (Drum-na-d'rocket) - about a 3rd of the way down Loch Ness, near to Urquhart Castle. the plan was to get to the village and hike the 2 miles to the Castle - then i woke up late (missing the earlier bus by about 5 minutes) and saw the weather. alternatives came to mind, but Cawdor Castle was closed (unless you're in good with Lady Cawdor who lives there, and i'm not), so that was out, as was the Culloden Battlefield Centre which is shut through the winter. oh well, fuckit. i bought a ticket for Drumnadrochit, chilled out for the hour or so i had to wait and took a ride down a narrow, windy road past the Loch.
sitting on the bus, i plugged my earphones in for the first time in days (i', hit "Last Played" and Death Cab For Cutie started singing in my ears again (they've wound up providing the unofficial soundtrack for this trip) and i sat there looking out the window, quietly losing it. i'm sitting on the knife-edge between wanting to go back to head back to civilisation and wanting to continue wandering on and on until i run out of breath or money. i was starting to get the over the perception of loneliness, and starting to get the feeling that i could just keep doing this forever - a new town every couple of days, a new bunch of room mates, a new set of streets to learn to navigage. suddenly, while i sat on the bus to Drumnadrochit i was sitting on the MRT in Singapore. as i walked up the road towards the Castle i was hiking back to home-base in London. walking the dark, narrow alleys in Edinburgh and i was walking across the Harbour Bridge in Sydney. in an airconditioned taxi with a disinterested cabbie in Melbourne and i was in a tuktuk in Bangkok where the driver had a mad gleam in his eye and i had the wind in my hair. walking on the pebbled beach in Brighton and i was walking up Cable Beach in Broome. sinking pints in Inverness and i was in the back-deck at Little Creatures in Fremantle. all in the blink of an eye, i splintered an reformed and the only thing that changed was the view out the window, but somehow i got the impression that when i settle down again i'll still be sitting on a bus careening through snowy fields with a view of one of the most famous bodies of water on the planet.
Drumnadrochit is a sleepy little one-horse village sitting just off the water and seems pretty much to cater to tourists and Loch Ness pilgrims. i got some directions for a walking trail (which i couldn't find), pulled out my umbrella and headed off down the road which got more and more treacherous as i went along. with the verge covered in 2 feet of snow i wasn't going to get anywhere in a hurry, so i walked along the edge of the road against the traffic and jumped into the snow any time a car came past. somewhere around 3/4 of an hour later i was finally at the Castle - tired, but alive.
Urquhart is an old ruin sitting out on the side of the Loch with a little visitor's center which i'm now sitting in, nursing the remnants of a hot chocolate, watching what look like robins playing around in the snow. there's not much to it to be honest - it took me a little over half an hour to meander quietly through the remnants of the fortifications and buildings, my earphones dangling dormant around my neck while i enjoyed the sound of rain on my umbrella and Sweet Fuck All else - the silence that comes from being a long away from too many people and the glossolalia of their noisemakers and gadgetry. after investigating the nooks and crannies of what remains standing i ducked down to the shore of the Loch so that i could dip my toe in the water and tempt the Nessie, marveling at the water's clarity, before heading back up to gift shop for a warm drink and a bite to eat.
i'm a little irritated - if i'd managed to get to the earlier bus i'd be back in Inverness by now and i'd have time to do something else this afternoon, but then i guess a quietish day is for the win at this point. i have another 20 minutes before i have to be out on the roadside waiting for the bus back to Inverness (i got a return from the village, but i'm hoping that the driver won't make me hike back there to catch the proper one. in better weather i'd have gone for a walk down the side of the Loch, but i at least got to go to the shore by the castle and dip my toe into it. it's a beautiful place - even shrouded in mist and raining, it's quiet and wild and remarkably unpoluted. even if i don't get to do what i've got planned for tomorrow, i'm glad i came up this way just for the chance to hang around here for a bit.
anyway, word is that the bus drivers do a drive-by and if they don't see anyone than they don't stop, so i'd best be out on the road looking obvious. hopefully being dressed all in black with an umbrella counts as obvious, but i'll not be taking any chances of having to walk along that road in the dark so i'm off.
---
i spent half an hour standing on the edge of the frozen road chewing gum and playing with the robin who seemed keen on flying and hopping around me while i waited. by the time i was back in Inverness i had a gaping hole where my stomach used to me - the hot chocolate and steak slice back at the Castle cafe having filled it not at all. i felt like an old pair of boots - soles ground thin on strange pavement and starting to crack, leather faded to grey, crinkled and soft. i managed to not trip out of the bus when it stopped and dumped the broken remains of my umbrella (stalk cracked while waiting outside the Castle) into the first bin i found. too early for the All You Can Eat Chinese Buffet, so i headed back to the hostel, dumped my bag and spoke to a pimp who seemed keen to talk to me, then wandered back and stuffed my face while i watched the river trickle its way past beyond the window.
tonight has been designated a "dead" night. i'm not in the mood to go and sit in a pub on my own, so i'll be sitting around the hostel, working on my writing. i have a few things to get out if i can get them together properly. tomorrow i'll try to make an early start and head up to Cromarty where i'm told there are wild dolphins, seals and maybe even puffins. i'd have liked to have wandered around somewhere indoors, but what the hell - i might as well make the most of the situation, and if that means bothering the wildlife then so be it. i won't be going hell-for-leather anyway - it'll be my last day in Scotland since i'm now rushing back to London on Saturday (thankyou EasyJet)... but that's an explaination i think i'll tell out of sequence.
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Edinburgh to Inverness - 24-hour friends...
9:37AM, sitting on another train. this one stops a few times on its way to Stirling, where i get off and change for the one to Inverness. i only left the backpacker's 20 minutes ago - an incredible luxury in my book. sitting in the bar sipping a coffee and looking relaxed, chatting to a couple of the folks i'd been hanging out with last night:
"What are you doing still sitting here? Shouldn't you be at the station?"
nah - i've got 20 minutes to get from here to there (pointing across the road to the sign 10 metres away that reads "Edinburgh Waverley"). you know what, i think i'm gonna be ok.
"HA! Well, we'll see you back here in half an hour when you miss it! We'll be waiting!"
sorry guys. it's been real, but i'm off.
true to prediction, i was not a happy lad when i awoke yesterday morning. the warm room and doona had saved me from the worst of it, but my legs were still stiff and aching and my shoulders whined in protest at the abuse. i lay there while my companions were getting up and got ready to face the day. the room had nearly emptied the day before - all that was left was Sam - a girl from Sydney who'd been there the night before, and a pretty Romanian girl who's name i hadn't caught who was there because she'd missed the train out to the farm she was headed to the night before. she'd asked a taxi driver about somewhere to stay and he'd pointed her towards the nearest hostel to the train station. she explained that she was a something between a horticulturist and a botanist and had been employed on a 6 month contract to work with rare flowers. never been out of home, and now she was in Scotland on what sounded like a pretty awesome adventure. she heard me grumbling about being stiff and achy (i explained that it was self-imposed misery, but she was sympathetic regardless) and the next thing i know she's kneeling on the floor and demanding that i give her a foot which she proceeded to massage. this sort of kindness from strangers was a bit of a shock, but i wasn't going to rock the boat.
when she was done i thanked her profusely and took her downstairs so that she could get a quick feed before she was picked up by someone from the farm. i asked the usual questions - the answers don't necessarily mean much to me, but it's comforting to talk about home, and it gets people's lips moving. she was from Transylvania, which got an instant grin out of me, and she made an obvious joke about vampires and werewolves. of course, it's somewhere i'd like to get to at some point and she insisted that i contact her before going so that her family could show me around. i'd known her for about 45 minutes at this point, and i nearly fell over by her earnest friendliness. i managed to dodge exchanging numbers to make sure the temptation didn't arrise, but as she headed out the door with a slightly confused looking scotsman carrying her bag i couldn't help but hope that she got by ok. some people are just too fucking nice for their own good, but she put a smile on my face and 24 hours later i can't help but wonder how she's getting on.
the Romanian girl now a memory, i finished shovelling cereal into my mouth and got myself ready to face the day. it wasn't until 10AM that my boots hit the pavement, sunglasses on my face to ward off the bright, sunny day which none-the-less felt like ice, and headed north. i'd taken 15 minutes out, sitting on the veneer floor of the dorm, stretching to get my unhappy muscles moving before getting kitted up and getting out. i could have headed down to Holyrood Castle, but after the day before's adventures the idea of another castle and more touristy shit did not sit well with me, so instead i took a bearing on the water i could see in the distance and headed for it, meandering otherwise aimlessly through the New Town.
the Georgian New Town was built with geometric precision after 300 years of Edinbrugh being confined to a mile-by-half-mile area behind the Flodden Wall, built to keep the English out but instead served to just keep the Scots in. for 300 years they built higher and higher inside the wall, expanding way past maximum capacity, creating a population and hygenic nightmare until it was finally decreed that the wall would no longer be maintained. the people took it into their own hands at that point and, so the story goes, they quietly demolished it inside of 5 months and sprawled with reckless abandon. the New Town is a victory of urban planning - the roads for the most part are grid-like, each block another series of uniform terrace houses. from up high it looks very impressive, especially seing as it was built in 3 stages over the course of a century. after 20 or so minutes of wandering generally northwards i was well and truly off any of the maps that i had so i just kept making educated guesses, letting my instincts, and then the bus stops be my guide. it took a little over an hour to get to the water, by which time i was staggering. most of the kinks had been worked out, but i was far from recovered, so after a little while of standing on the edge of the redevelopment i asked around and found a bus to take me back to Princes St (the edge of New Town closest to the train station). i was fortunate in that the number 10 took me through the suburb of Leith, somewhere i'd wanted to at least pass through so that i could drop an email to an old friend of mine of the same name and tell him i'd been there.
it was past midday by the point the bus let me off in front of the Sir Walter Scott Memorial, and i needed to sit down somewhere and sort myself out for an hour or two. in my travels i'd been pointed towards Rose St - a not-quite-street, not-quite-lane one block up from Princes St - which was reputed to be pretty much wall-to-wall bars and taverns. 40-odd of them. finding a place to sit down, have a quiet beer and some food was pretty easy - all i needed to do then was walk up one direction or another until i saw the familiar "Free WiFi" sticker in a window. walked, found, entered, connected, i had a pint (so that i'd be a customer) and started working out What The Fuck i Was Doing. having an extra day up my sleeve in the hostel was a bonus, but by this point i was starting to get a little sick of Edinburgh. don't get me wrong - nice town, but the time to move on was rapidly approaching. Inverness was the next place on the cards, but with Perth (Scotland) an hour or so north it was a temptation and i had a look at options, but in the end Perth went in the Too Hard Basket - i could have done it as a day-trip, but the timing was looking a bit harsh and i've had to hump my backpack around for the day, and hostels in the town were looking thin on the ground so without having to pay at lesat 3 times as much for a B&B an overnighter wasn't going to happen. 20 minutes later a £10 train ticket to Inverness was booked, as well as a couple of nights at a hostel near to the station and that was that.
plans made and sorted, i had something to eat and and a pint of water while i checked the news and investigated tours and things to do in Inverness and the surrounds. when my battery started to wind down i packed up and headed west along Princes St and up Carlton Hill where Eve and i had gone back on Sunday, enjoying the view for a little while before i headed back to the hostel.
i just got distracted in an amusing way: after changing trains at Stirling and now Inverness-bound, i wound up sitting across from a Swedish couple playing guitar and singing old James Taylor songs. we wound up getting chatting for something like half an hour about music, and since i have my music collection on my Eee i gave them an introduction to some reasonably obscure Australian music. i'm now SO glad i made up the Oz Mix - it made things a whole lot easier...
when i got in Sam had just got back from checking out the castle and we got chatting. i wanted more scotch, and managed to convince her to come up to High Street and try some, so 10 minutes were were swapping stories in the Albernach while sipping 21 year old Glenfarclas. having someone to hang out with was really very pleasant - we've next to nothing in common, apart from being a ridiculously long way from home, but a friendly face and company over pints seemed to be enough. back in the hostel bar we met up with Blondie (from Melbourne, with a penchant for giving people nicknames, which is probably why i can't remember hers) and Random (Steve from Winnipeg, Canada). for the rest of the evening i managed to gain the title of PC (for Perth/Canberra) and after playing cards and demolishing burgers the four of us headed off for a pub crawl which wound up lasting just one pub (the Bannerman where i'd been the day before) before fetching back up at the hostel again. i wasn't overly upset - i felt that i'd seen my share of pubs by this point and finishing the evening within staggering distance of my bed was entirely For The Win. Sam and i had the dorm to ourselves... although when we'd passed through after getting back from the Albernach the windows had been open and there was a strong smell of weed in the room. the Sneaky Stoner didn't resurface and by midnight i was showered and sleeping the sleep of the dead, and the rather tipsy.
meanwhile, the Swedes are back to singing and playing and making pleasant noise to my left and the view out the windor is of hills and trees and old stone buildings all dusted in snow. is it happened, the train wound up stopping at Perth, so i grabbed my camera, dumped out and took a bunch of hurried photos to prove i'd been there. from what i could see while passing through there's not really a lot going on, but at least i got there, if only for a minute or two. between the 24-Hour Friends back in Edinburgh, the jovial Swedes and my minor wish-fulfilment of getting to Perth, i'm in really quite high spirits. 24 hours ago i was starting to lose interest... now i'm back in the swing and curious as to what the world will look like when i get to my destination...
"What are you doing still sitting here? Shouldn't you be at the station?"
nah - i've got 20 minutes to get from here to there (pointing across the road to the sign 10 metres away that reads "Edinburgh Waverley"). you know what, i think i'm gonna be ok.
"HA! Well, we'll see you back here in half an hour when you miss it! We'll be waiting!"
sorry guys. it's been real, but i'm off.
true to prediction, i was not a happy lad when i awoke yesterday morning. the warm room and doona had saved me from the worst of it, but my legs were still stiff and aching and my shoulders whined in protest at the abuse. i lay there while my companions were getting up and got ready to face the day. the room had nearly emptied the day before - all that was left was Sam - a girl from Sydney who'd been there the night before, and a pretty Romanian girl who's name i hadn't caught who was there because she'd missed the train out to the farm she was headed to the night before. she'd asked a taxi driver about somewhere to stay and he'd pointed her towards the nearest hostel to the train station. she explained that she was a something between a horticulturist and a botanist and had been employed on a 6 month contract to work with rare flowers. never been out of home, and now she was in Scotland on what sounded like a pretty awesome adventure. she heard me grumbling about being stiff and achy (i explained that it was self-imposed misery, but she was sympathetic regardless) and the next thing i know she's kneeling on the floor and demanding that i give her a foot which she proceeded to massage. this sort of kindness from strangers was a bit of a shock, but i wasn't going to rock the boat.
when she was done i thanked her profusely and took her downstairs so that she could get a quick feed before she was picked up by someone from the farm. i asked the usual questions - the answers don't necessarily mean much to me, but it's comforting to talk about home, and it gets people's lips moving. she was from Transylvania, which got an instant grin out of me, and she made an obvious joke about vampires and werewolves. of course, it's somewhere i'd like to get to at some point and she insisted that i contact her before going so that her family could show me around. i'd known her for about 45 minutes at this point, and i nearly fell over by her earnest friendliness. i managed to dodge exchanging numbers to make sure the temptation didn't arrise, but as she headed out the door with a slightly confused looking scotsman carrying her bag i couldn't help but hope that she got by ok. some people are just too fucking nice for their own good, but she put a smile on my face and 24 hours later i can't help but wonder how she's getting on.
the Romanian girl now a memory, i finished shovelling cereal into my mouth and got myself ready to face the day. it wasn't until 10AM that my boots hit the pavement, sunglasses on my face to ward off the bright, sunny day which none-the-less felt like ice, and headed north. i'd taken 15 minutes out, sitting on the veneer floor of the dorm, stretching to get my unhappy muscles moving before getting kitted up and getting out. i could have headed down to Holyrood Castle, but after the day before's adventures the idea of another castle and more touristy shit did not sit well with me, so instead i took a bearing on the water i could see in the distance and headed for it, meandering otherwise aimlessly through the New Town.
the Georgian New Town was built with geometric precision after 300 years of Edinbrugh being confined to a mile-by-half-mile area behind the Flodden Wall, built to keep the English out but instead served to just keep the Scots in. for 300 years they built higher and higher inside the wall, expanding way past maximum capacity, creating a population and hygenic nightmare until it was finally decreed that the wall would no longer be maintained. the people took it into their own hands at that point and, so the story goes, they quietly demolished it inside of 5 months and sprawled with reckless abandon. the New Town is a victory of urban planning - the roads for the most part are grid-like, each block another series of uniform terrace houses. from up high it looks very impressive, especially seing as it was built in 3 stages over the course of a century. after 20 or so minutes of wandering generally northwards i was well and truly off any of the maps that i had so i just kept making educated guesses, letting my instincts, and then the bus stops be my guide. it took a little over an hour to get to the water, by which time i was staggering. most of the kinks had been worked out, but i was far from recovered, so after a little while of standing on the edge of the redevelopment i asked around and found a bus to take me back to Princes St (the edge of New Town closest to the train station). i was fortunate in that the number 10 took me through the suburb of Leith, somewhere i'd wanted to at least pass through so that i could drop an email to an old friend of mine of the same name and tell him i'd been there.
it was past midday by the point the bus let me off in front of the Sir Walter Scott Memorial, and i needed to sit down somewhere and sort myself out for an hour or two. in my travels i'd been pointed towards Rose St - a not-quite-street, not-quite-lane one block up from Princes St - which was reputed to be pretty much wall-to-wall bars and taverns. 40-odd of them. finding a place to sit down, have a quiet beer and some food was pretty easy - all i needed to do then was walk up one direction or another until i saw the familiar "Free WiFi" sticker in a window. walked, found, entered, connected, i had a pint (so that i'd be a customer) and started working out What The Fuck i Was Doing. having an extra day up my sleeve in the hostel was a bonus, but by this point i was starting to get a little sick of Edinburgh. don't get me wrong - nice town, but the time to move on was rapidly approaching. Inverness was the next place on the cards, but with Perth (Scotland) an hour or so north it was a temptation and i had a look at options, but in the end Perth went in the Too Hard Basket - i could have done it as a day-trip, but the timing was looking a bit harsh and i've had to hump my backpack around for the day, and hostels in the town were looking thin on the ground so without having to pay at lesat 3 times as much for a B&B an overnighter wasn't going to happen. 20 minutes later a £10 train ticket to Inverness was booked, as well as a couple of nights at a hostel near to the station and that was that.
plans made and sorted, i had something to eat and and a pint of water while i checked the news and investigated tours and things to do in Inverness and the surrounds. when my battery started to wind down i packed up and headed west along Princes St and up Carlton Hill where Eve and i had gone back on Sunday, enjoying the view for a little while before i headed back to the hostel.
i just got distracted in an amusing way: after changing trains at Stirling and now Inverness-bound, i wound up sitting across from a Swedish couple playing guitar and singing old James Taylor songs. we wound up getting chatting for something like half an hour about music, and since i have my music collection on my Eee i gave them an introduction to some reasonably obscure Australian music. i'm now SO glad i made up the Oz Mix - it made things a whole lot easier...
when i got in Sam had just got back from checking out the castle and we got chatting. i wanted more scotch, and managed to convince her to come up to High Street and try some, so 10 minutes were were swapping stories in the Albernach while sipping 21 year old Glenfarclas. having someone to hang out with was really very pleasant - we've next to nothing in common, apart from being a ridiculously long way from home, but a friendly face and company over pints seemed to be enough. back in the hostel bar we met up with Blondie (from Melbourne, with a penchant for giving people nicknames, which is probably why i can't remember hers) and Random (Steve from Winnipeg, Canada). for the rest of the evening i managed to gain the title of PC (for Perth/Canberra) and after playing cards and demolishing burgers the four of us headed off for a pub crawl which wound up lasting just one pub (the Bannerman where i'd been the day before) before fetching back up at the hostel again. i wasn't overly upset - i felt that i'd seen my share of pubs by this point and finishing the evening within staggering distance of my bed was entirely For The Win. Sam and i had the dorm to ourselves... although when we'd passed through after getting back from the Albernach the windows had been open and there was a strong smell of weed in the room. the Sneaky Stoner didn't resurface and by midnight i was showered and sleeping the sleep of the dead, and the rather tipsy.
meanwhile, the Swedes are back to singing and playing and making pleasant noise to my left and the view out the windor is of hills and trees and old stone buildings all dusted in snow. is it happened, the train wound up stopping at Perth, so i grabbed my camera, dumped out and took a bunch of hurried photos to prove i'd been there. from what i could see while passing through there's not really a lot going on, but at least i got there, if only for a minute or two. between the 24-Hour Friends back in Edinburgh, the jovial Swedes and my minor wish-fulfilment of getting to Perth, i'm in really quite high spirits. 24 hours ago i was starting to lose interest... now i'm back in the swing and curious as to what the world will look like when i get to my destination...
Monday, February 9, 2009
Edinburgh: you are guaranteed to regret this tomorrow...
sweet fuckery i hurt. i just climbed a mountain. a snow-covered mountain, no less. it's funny - we all have these things we want to do before we die. climbing a mountain was never really on my list, but now i've done it i think i'll add it anyway. it was only a little mountain, as far as mountains go - 251 metres in total. my trusty (and heavy - have i ever meantioned heavy?) Lonely Planet guide said that it was an easy walk. an hour or so. but i'll bet you the coffee i'm drinking those fuckers never did after a night of bloody snow.
a quick break to demolish my 2nd breakfast and i'm back, finishing off the coffee (which is good... so good). i'm sitting in The Rabbie Burns - it being the first place i found that looked like it had a decent lunch. in my mind, All Day Breakfast counts as lunch, and their version of the Big Breakfast included haggis so it had to be done. that, and it's warm, dry and there arev nice eastern-eurpoean women who seem more than happy to bring me coffee while i sit here feeling like i've just been beaten up and pissed on by excited Welsh rugby supporters (there was a lot of piss on the streets. i was informed that it was because the Welsh were in town. no love lost there then...).
i was on the street at 9AM. my alarm had gone off before 8, and of course got snoozed - my hand found it before my eyes rembered how to open and instinctively hit the right button. sleeping in a smallish dorm room with 8 or 9 other people left me better rested than i had expected - i passed out not much past midnight and apart from the creaking of the metal bunks as people shifted in their sleep, none of them were noisy or irritating. a quick shower later (and a MUCH better shower than back at base-camp) and i was shovelling toast, cereal and coffee down my throat, got tooled up and headed down towards the hill. Arthur's Seat is at the top of the highest mountain in the area and affords incredible views of the countryside. of course, right after the snow the air's far from clear. not foggy, just not clear, so i don't think many of my photos came out too well. still, for all the sore legs getting up there it was worth the view. coming down was quicker, but treacherous. i wound up on my arse at least twice, and i know i got air on the third slide, breaking the fall on my side. i got up swearing, pondering the relative entertainment of trying to get some laundry dry, imagining just how grubby i was going to wind up and wondering how the fucking hell the two old people ahead of me with walking sticks weren't just keeping pace, but making distance on me (no - seriously. how did they not slip and brek their fucking hips?). one of the benefits of being up a snowy mountain with very few people around was that when nature called, i did finally get to write my name in the snow. hoorjay!
eventually i fetched up back on level ground again and trudged back up the Royal Mile towards Edinburgh Castle. typically, the Mile is UPHILL to the fucking castle which is why i started assessing anything that looked like a relatively budget eatery on the way. this isn't at all the area for cheap food. welcome to Edinburg's Tourist Central. there are kilt shops and bagpipe shops and Historical Taverns so densely packed that if you tripped over one you'd faceplant in the next. still, it's pretty and entertaining. i'll pick this up again later this afternoon/evening.
---
another 4 hours later, another interesting location. right now i'm sitting in a basement scotch whisky bar with a shot of something lovely in a glass that looks like it was designed by craftsmen intent on ensuring that i enjoy its contents as much as humanly possible. it's less than 50 metres from the gates of the castle and had a sign above the door saying "The Scotch Whisky Experience" and somehow i knew i had to go and check it out.
after leaving The Rabbie Burns i
OOH FUCK, MY THROAT IS IN HEAVEN! IT'S LIKE A BURNING SLUG OF HAPPINESS!
sorry, anyway, i continued up the hill to the castle. i'm not going to go into the details of the place. come here. go see it. it's pretty, it's old, it's got a lot of history. i did the tour, which i recommend if only because it's free (well, after you pay the £10 entry fee), it runs every half an hour and you'll pick up a lot of useful information which comes in useful when you start to wander... and the view's spectacular.
i wound up hanging around there for the best part of 3 hours looking around all the little nooks and crannies of the place. by the time i left i was getting towards ruined. another long day with a LOT of walking (climbing, falling on my arse)
OOOOH IT'S SMOOTH, IT'S VELVETY, IT'S LIKE SOME SCOTTISH BASTARD LEARNED HOW TO TRAP JOY IN A BOTTLE!
erm... yeah. tired. sore. getting REALLY sore now, and i've still to do the cemetery tour i missed out on last night. plan of attack for the moment is to sit around in this little bar for a while longer and try something else. at £3.50/shot it's not the cheapest way to spend an afternoon, but they have nearly 300 different bottles of scotch on the wall and a lot of them i'll not get the chance to taste without spending over $150/bottle somewhere out in the world. that, and the bar attendant has a gorgeous accent and knows her stuff incredibly thoroughly.
hmm... note to self. find a single malt tour. probably best done from Inverness. i should get the chance to finish this off later tonight.
---
a chair in the bar downstairs from the hostel, my drink's changed to Guiness and i'm hearing american accents from the groups of people doing the pub quiz. i'd be in on it... in fact, i'm almost a little disappointed that i didn't pay attention to the signs saying it was on, but what the hell. i did the cemetery tour instead.
i bogged out of the whisky bar after having another shot and chatting to the bar attendent for a bit, getting some suggestions on out-of-the-way pubs to visit while i'm here. i wandered off and found one of them down on Cowgate and wound up having a couple of pints cruising the net. there was no "Free WiFi" sticker that i noticed, but their wireless router had pride of place, hanging in an ornate birdcage over the left-hand side of the bar, so i settled into one of the big, plush couches and drank local beer (which tasted oddly of peat) and cruised the net while i ate, catching up on the news from back home. i still read The Age, The Australian and (when i'm really bored) the Sydney Morning Herald to find out what's going on back home, otherwise i'd never know about the $950 K-Rudd wants to give me for Anzac Day.
anyway, fortified by my 3rd big meal of the day and happy from the two pints with which i'd followed my scotch i wandered back to the hostel to dump some stuff and have a bit of a sit down before wandering off to the ghost tour, which was also good fun. the guide for this evening was actually from Wollongong. she was trying to cover her accent with a bit of an english one, but her aussie kept shining through. it was fun, informative, theatrical, and i got a couple of pounds off the price because i'd gone along to the Vault tour the night before and had missed out on doing the cemetery last night.
i hiked back to the hostel through the wet, dark streets of Edinburgh's Old Town feeling exhausted. it's not that i covered a lot of miles today, but the place is hilly. REALLY hilly... compared to anywhere i've walked around before at least. the Old Town's also completely riddled with alleyways. as the buildings were built they just left bits out. some of these Closes are wide enough to drive a car down. one i walked down this evening was narrow enough that if someone had tried to pass me we would have had to both be pretty friendly. walking down one of these wet cobbled streets with insufficient lighting is actually really spooky, although that could have had a lot to do with the spooky tours i've done these last two nights. the Royal Mile which runs between Edinburgh Castle and Holyrood Castle (royalty lived in the one at the bottom of the hill, and came up to the one on top of the hill when they had to. links two castles, a mile long, not a very imaginative name) seems to be built along a ridge, and if you turn off in either direction you wind up heading down quite a steep slope. it would probably partly explain why i've not seen any fat people around since i got here (or in the local parlance: thaat be whah arve nae seen noo faht people in Ehd'nbraa). they burn it all off walking up and down the bloody hills.
still, ignoring how demolished i'm feeling at the moment (the litany goes as follows: sore chest and shoulders from my shoulder-bag, right bicep for some unknown reason, both knees, quads and calves, right palm from using it to break my fall on the mountain, feet from wearing these boots for 14 hours now and, of course, walking all fucking day) today's been good. i've extended my stay here for another 2 days since i got a 2-for-1 offer and it cost me the same as booking only for a single night. watch me complain - even if i do leave on wednesday it's not as if it cost me any more and i'm a fan of having flexibility.
tomorrow i think i'm going to go fairly easy... although i'm tempted to walk to the coastline directly to the north so that i can dip my toe in the North Sea. i probably won't get the chance at Inverness since it's on Loch Ness. still, while i don't mind trudging for miles on end i'm not climbing any more snowy fucking mountains for the next few days, i'll say that much. i'm relatively certain that my body is going to exact a penance upon me for my exertions today come tomorrow. i'll have a shower before bed tonight in an effort to appease the physical shell, but it's going to hurt one way or another and it'll take some work to get me moving again in the morning. still, another pint should help with the sleeping process. that would make... um... 4 today, plus scotch... but that was only tasting sizes so it doesn't count, right?
oh well. it's 11PM now and i've about had it so i can see an early night in my future... at least, once i finish my fresh Guiness...
a quick break to demolish my 2nd breakfast and i'm back, finishing off the coffee (which is good... so good). i'm sitting in The Rabbie Burns - it being the first place i found that looked like it had a decent lunch. in my mind, All Day Breakfast counts as lunch, and their version of the Big Breakfast included haggis so it had to be done. that, and it's warm, dry and there arev nice eastern-eurpoean women who seem more than happy to bring me coffee while i sit here feeling like i've just been beaten up and pissed on by excited Welsh rugby supporters (there was a lot of piss on the streets. i was informed that it was because the Welsh were in town. no love lost there then...).
i was on the street at 9AM. my alarm had gone off before 8, and of course got snoozed - my hand found it before my eyes rembered how to open and instinctively hit the right button. sleeping in a smallish dorm room with 8 or 9 other people left me better rested than i had expected - i passed out not much past midnight and apart from the creaking of the metal bunks as people shifted in their sleep, none of them were noisy or irritating. a quick shower later (and a MUCH better shower than back at base-camp) and i was shovelling toast, cereal and coffee down my throat, got tooled up and headed down towards the hill. Arthur's Seat is at the top of the highest mountain in the area and affords incredible views of the countryside. of course, right after the snow the air's far from clear. not foggy, just not clear, so i don't think many of my photos came out too well. still, for all the sore legs getting up there it was worth the view. coming down was quicker, but treacherous. i wound up on my arse at least twice, and i know i got air on the third slide, breaking the fall on my side. i got up swearing, pondering the relative entertainment of trying to get some laundry dry, imagining just how grubby i was going to wind up and wondering how the fucking hell the two old people ahead of me with walking sticks weren't just keeping pace, but making distance on me (no - seriously. how did they not slip and brek their fucking hips?). one of the benefits of being up a snowy mountain with very few people around was that when nature called, i did finally get to write my name in the snow. hoorjay!
eventually i fetched up back on level ground again and trudged back up the Royal Mile towards Edinburgh Castle. typically, the Mile is UPHILL to the fucking castle which is why i started assessing anything that looked like a relatively budget eatery on the way. this isn't at all the area for cheap food. welcome to Edinburg's Tourist Central. there are kilt shops and bagpipe shops and Historical Taverns so densely packed that if you tripped over one you'd faceplant in the next. still, it's pretty and entertaining. i'll pick this up again later this afternoon/evening.
---
another 4 hours later, another interesting location. right now i'm sitting in a basement scotch whisky bar with a shot of something lovely in a glass that looks like it was designed by craftsmen intent on ensuring that i enjoy its contents as much as humanly possible. it's less than 50 metres from the gates of the castle and had a sign above the door saying "The Scotch Whisky Experience" and somehow i knew i had to go and check it out.
after leaving The Rabbie Burns i
OOH FUCK, MY THROAT IS IN HEAVEN! IT'S LIKE A BURNING SLUG OF HAPPINESS!
sorry, anyway, i continued up the hill to the castle. i'm not going to go into the details of the place. come here. go see it. it's pretty, it's old, it's got a lot of history. i did the tour, which i recommend if only because it's free (well, after you pay the £10 entry fee), it runs every half an hour and you'll pick up a lot of useful information which comes in useful when you start to wander... and the view's spectacular.
i wound up hanging around there for the best part of 3 hours looking around all the little nooks and crannies of the place. by the time i left i was getting towards ruined. another long day with a LOT of walking (climbing, falling on my arse)
OOOOH IT'S SMOOTH, IT'S VELVETY, IT'S LIKE SOME SCOTTISH BASTARD LEARNED HOW TO TRAP JOY IN A BOTTLE!
erm... yeah. tired. sore. getting REALLY sore now, and i've still to do the cemetery tour i missed out on last night. plan of attack for the moment is to sit around in this little bar for a while longer and try something else. at £3.50/shot it's not the cheapest way to spend an afternoon, but they have nearly 300 different bottles of scotch on the wall and a lot of them i'll not get the chance to taste without spending over $150/bottle somewhere out in the world. that, and the bar attendant has a gorgeous accent and knows her stuff incredibly thoroughly.
hmm... note to self. find a single malt tour. probably best done from Inverness. i should get the chance to finish this off later tonight.
---
a chair in the bar downstairs from the hostel, my drink's changed to Guiness and i'm hearing american accents from the groups of people doing the pub quiz. i'd be in on it... in fact, i'm almost a little disappointed that i didn't pay attention to the signs saying it was on, but what the hell. i did the cemetery tour instead.
i bogged out of the whisky bar after having another shot and chatting to the bar attendent for a bit, getting some suggestions on out-of-the-way pubs to visit while i'm here. i wandered off and found one of them down on Cowgate and wound up having a couple of pints cruising the net. there was no "Free WiFi" sticker that i noticed, but their wireless router had pride of place, hanging in an ornate birdcage over the left-hand side of the bar, so i settled into one of the big, plush couches and drank local beer (which tasted oddly of peat) and cruised the net while i ate, catching up on the news from back home. i still read The Age, The Australian and (when i'm really bored) the Sydney Morning Herald to find out what's going on back home, otherwise i'd never know about the $950 K-Rudd wants to give me for Anzac Day.
anyway, fortified by my 3rd big meal of the day and happy from the two pints with which i'd followed my scotch i wandered back to the hostel to dump some stuff and have a bit of a sit down before wandering off to the ghost tour, which was also good fun. the guide for this evening was actually from Wollongong. she was trying to cover her accent with a bit of an english one, but her aussie kept shining through. it was fun, informative, theatrical, and i got a couple of pounds off the price because i'd gone along to the Vault tour the night before and had missed out on doing the cemetery last night.
i hiked back to the hostel through the wet, dark streets of Edinburgh's Old Town feeling exhausted. it's not that i covered a lot of miles today, but the place is hilly. REALLY hilly... compared to anywhere i've walked around before at least. the Old Town's also completely riddled with alleyways. as the buildings were built they just left bits out. some of these Closes are wide enough to drive a car down. one i walked down this evening was narrow enough that if someone had tried to pass me we would have had to both be pretty friendly. walking down one of these wet cobbled streets with insufficient lighting is actually really spooky, although that could have had a lot to do with the spooky tours i've done these last two nights. the Royal Mile which runs between Edinburgh Castle and Holyrood Castle (royalty lived in the one at the bottom of the hill, and came up to the one on top of the hill when they had to. links two castles, a mile long, not a very imaginative name) seems to be built along a ridge, and if you turn off in either direction you wind up heading down quite a steep slope. it would probably partly explain why i've not seen any fat people around since i got here (or in the local parlance: thaat be whah arve nae seen noo faht people in Ehd'nbraa). they burn it all off walking up and down the bloody hills.
still, ignoring how demolished i'm feeling at the moment (the litany goes as follows: sore chest and shoulders from my shoulder-bag, right bicep for some unknown reason, both knees, quads and calves, right palm from using it to break my fall on the mountain, feet from wearing these boots for 14 hours now and, of course, walking all fucking day) today's been good. i've extended my stay here for another 2 days since i got a 2-for-1 offer and it cost me the same as booking only for a single night. watch me complain - even if i do leave on wednesday it's not as if it cost me any more and i'm a fan of having flexibility.
tomorrow i think i'm going to go fairly easy... although i'm tempted to walk to the coastline directly to the north so that i can dip my toe in the North Sea. i probably won't get the chance at Inverness since it's on Loch Ness. still, while i don't mind trudging for miles on end i'm not climbing any more snowy fucking mountains for the next few days, i'll say that much. i'm relatively certain that my body is going to exact a penance upon me for my exertions today come tomorrow. i'll have a shower before bed tonight in an effort to appease the physical shell, but it's going to hurt one way or another and it'll take some work to get me moving again in the morning. still, another pint should help with the sleeping process. that would make... um... 4 today, plus scotch... but that was only tasting sizes so it doesn't count, right?
oh well. it's 11PM now and i've about had it so i can see an early night in my future... at least, once i finish my fresh Guiness...
Edinburgh - a strangely ominous sort of place...
after the bright lights and modernity of London, Edinburgh was something of a shock. i'd seen a couple of photos before arriving - long shots of the castle, mostly. getting in i was completely unprepared for the weighty feeling of age you feel when you wander around the streets. it turns out that where i'm staying is actually across Market St from Edinburgh Waverley Station which is in the Old Town, and around here they're not fucking kidding with the word Old. in fact, the New town didn't actually fill me with feelings of modernity. most of that was still older than most of Australia, and i'd have been freaking out a bit if it wasn't so downright cool.
i wound up rather enjoying my train ride, polishing off 7 cups of coffee while i sat around and blogged, enjoying the luxury of space, comfort, and a power point. the train arrived on time at 2PM, and by 2:30PM i'd checked into my hostel. dumped my backpack and hit the street again to find Eve. i'd met Eve once before on my trip to Brighton and had faithfully Friended her on Facebook in order to make it easier to keep in touch later if the chance came up - it's the quickest and easiest way i've found to date to expand your social network. when browsing FB yesterday i noticed her status saying that she was up here, so i dropped her a line and we tentatively arranged to meet up when i got here. she's been here since Friday and had tramped across most of town already, but was keen on lunch and kind enough to shout me, so we found a place with a good wine list and ate hearty comfort-food while downing a bottle of good Italin red. we'd only really met briefly back at Brighton and hadn't really had much of a chance to talk, but it was pleasant to see a friendly place in a strange place and she has strong geek-roots so we had plenty to talk about.
we wound up wandering to an infamous graveyard not too far away and looked around until the light started to fade. it's infamous because of one particular internee who's supposedly one of the best-documented poltergeists in history. Edinburgh has a big thing going with ghosts apparantly. i don't know the full story, in part because the tour i was going to go on this evening was cancelled due to insufficient patronage, which is why i'm now sitting in one of the bars downstairs from my hostel having a pint to myself in a window seat, watching the snow fall outside.
as the light faded Eve suggested that we head up to Carlton Hill where there's a great view of the lights of the city to be seen and photographed. it's not the BIG hill nearby - that's a trip for another day with more light and more time, but we climbed up and took some photos before she had to go and pick up her bag and head off for the shuttle to the airport. having nothing else to do for an hour or so i stopped in the hostel to take stock and pull my book and the bottled water i'd nabbed on the train out of my shoulder bag in order to lighten the load a bit before heading off again.
in my research of last night i found a link to a couple of walking tours that looked interesting - one through a series of underground vaults built into one of the bridges between Old Town and New Town, the other which heads through a couple of the grave yards, including the one with the aforementioned poltergeist. ordinarily i'd avoid guided tours - i'd much rather wander the streets at my own pace, but when it comes to locked and out of the way places, or less-than-well documented history sometimes going with a guide can be awesome. fortuntely, the meeting point was just around the corner from my hostel, so i was there with plenty of time. the first tour was the underground, so i joined the crew and followed the David Tennant look-alike around and i'm so incredibly glad i went. he was funny, knowledgeable, and he presented in a remarkably entertaining way, discussing Scotish history in greater detail than you really thought necessary, until you realise that he was setting the scene as an explanation for what was later to come. one point he launched into a story about the visit of King George IV and by the time it was all explained and the relevance understood you were so enthralled that you'd forgotten why he was telling the story in the first place... and really didn't care. if you wind up in Edinburgh and you're looking for something to do of an evening, doing the City Of The Dead (ignore the wanky name) tours are well worth it.
after finishing up i had half an hour to kill before the Cemetery tour started and it was snowing in earnest. you'd think this would ruin a night-time walking tour, but i was excited. spooky cemetery at night? cool. spooky cemetery in the murky snow? FUCKING AWESOME! unfortunately they needed 15 people to run and with only 10 showing up the 9:30PM tour was cancelled. i was a little gutted since that was my plan for the evening out the window, but hey - this is how things go sometimes. i wandered the 10 minutes back to the hostel, grabbed a pint and found a seat to write stuff down.
it's been a long day. i'm tired, i'm achy and i'm certainly more alone than i've been in ages - sitting in a bar in a strange city listening to the bar staff (at least 3 of which are Australian from the accents) banter as they close up. they've let me sit here because i'm not in the way, but i expect i'll be moved along pretty soon. tomorrow will likely involve wandering up and down the Royal Mile, visiting Edinburgh Castle, and (if weather and light permits), hiking up to Arthur's Seat. there're are a few things to see around here, and i can see it occupying at least the next couple of days. right now i'm going to go and check the activity in the main bar next door, and if that's too boring or irritating i'll head upstairs and watch something on my Eee and get some sleep. breakfast's laid on here (which is impressive since i'm only paying £12/night) so i might as well try to get up early and take advantage of it, even if only in the hope that i can avoid spending cash on lunch (i know that's bad - don't start). i'm in a 10-person mixed dorm, but it didn't seem full when i was up there earlier, and with luck no one'll be too noisy, although i have ear plugs just in case.
meanwhile - note to self: buy a padlock for the under-bunk storage. i remember Moonbug once telling me that a padlock was essential equipment when backpacking, but the relevance of the comment didn't dawn on me until i saw the little wire cage under the bed today. i might make that something i keep an eye out for tomorrow... meanwhile, time to go see if there's anyone interesting in the other bar and let these guys close up...
i wound up rather enjoying my train ride, polishing off 7 cups of coffee while i sat around and blogged, enjoying the luxury of space, comfort, and a power point. the train arrived on time at 2PM, and by 2:30PM i'd checked into my hostel. dumped my backpack and hit the street again to find Eve. i'd met Eve once before on my trip to Brighton and had faithfully Friended her on Facebook in order to make it easier to keep in touch later if the chance came up - it's the quickest and easiest way i've found to date to expand your social network. when browsing FB yesterday i noticed her status saying that she was up here, so i dropped her a line and we tentatively arranged to meet up when i got here. she's been here since Friday and had tramped across most of town already, but was keen on lunch and kind enough to shout me, so we found a place with a good wine list and ate hearty comfort-food while downing a bottle of good Italin red. we'd only really met briefly back at Brighton and hadn't really had much of a chance to talk, but it was pleasant to see a friendly place in a strange place and she has strong geek-roots so we had plenty to talk about.
we wound up wandering to an infamous graveyard not too far away and looked around until the light started to fade. it's infamous because of one particular internee who's supposedly one of the best-documented poltergeists in history. Edinburgh has a big thing going with ghosts apparantly. i don't know the full story, in part because the tour i was going to go on this evening was cancelled due to insufficient patronage, which is why i'm now sitting in one of the bars downstairs from my hostel having a pint to myself in a window seat, watching the snow fall outside.
as the light faded Eve suggested that we head up to Carlton Hill where there's a great view of the lights of the city to be seen and photographed. it's not the BIG hill nearby - that's a trip for another day with more light and more time, but we climbed up and took some photos before she had to go and pick up her bag and head off for the shuttle to the airport. having nothing else to do for an hour or so i stopped in the hostel to take stock and pull my book and the bottled water i'd nabbed on the train out of my shoulder bag in order to lighten the load a bit before heading off again.
in my research of last night i found a link to a couple of walking tours that looked interesting - one through a series of underground vaults built into one of the bridges between Old Town and New Town, the other which heads through a couple of the grave yards, including the one with the aforementioned poltergeist. ordinarily i'd avoid guided tours - i'd much rather wander the streets at my own pace, but when it comes to locked and out of the way places, or less-than-well documented history sometimes going with a guide can be awesome. fortuntely, the meeting point was just around the corner from my hostel, so i was there with plenty of time. the first tour was the underground, so i joined the crew and followed the David Tennant look-alike around and i'm so incredibly glad i went. he was funny, knowledgeable, and he presented in a remarkably entertaining way, discussing Scotish history in greater detail than you really thought necessary, until you realise that he was setting the scene as an explanation for what was later to come. one point he launched into a story about the visit of King George IV and by the time it was all explained and the relevance understood you were so enthralled that you'd forgotten why he was telling the story in the first place... and really didn't care. if you wind up in Edinburgh and you're looking for something to do of an evening, doing the City Of The Dead (ignore the wanky name) tours are well worth it.
after finishing up i had half an hour to kill before the Cemetery tour started and it was snowing in earnest. you'd think this would ruin a night-time walking tour, but i was excited. spooky cemetery at night? cool. spooky cemetery in the murky snow? FUCKING AWESOME! unfortunately they needed 15 people to run and with only 10 showing up the 9:30PM tour was cancelled. i was a little gutted since that was my plan for the evening out the window, but hey - this is how things go sometimes. i wandered the 10 minutes back to the hostel, grabbed a pint and found a seat to write stuff down.
it's been a long day. i'm tired, i'm achy and i'm certainly more alone than i've been in ages - sitting in a bar in a strange city listening to the bar staff (at least 3 of which are Australian from the accents) banter as they close up. they've let me sit here because i'm not in the way, but i expect i'll be moved along pretty soon. tomorrow will likely involve wandering up and down the Royal Mile, visiting Edinburgh Castle, and (if weather and light permits), hiking up to Arthur's Seat. there're are a few things to see around here, and i can see it occupying at least the next couple of days. right now i'm going to go and check the activity in the main bar next door, and if that's too boring or irritating i'll head upstairs and watch something on my Eee and get some sleep. breakfast's laid on here (which is impressive since i'm only paying £12/night) so i might as well try to get up early and take advantage of it, even if only in the hope that i can avoid spending cash on lunch (i know that's bad - don't start). i'm in a 10-person mixed dorm, but it didn't seem full when i was up there earlier, and with luck no one'll be too noisy, although i have ear plugs just in case.
meanwhile - note to self: buy a padlock for the under-bunk storage. i remember Moonbug once telling me that a padlock was essential equipment when backpacking, but the relevance of the comment didn't dawn on me until i saw the little wire cage under the bed today. i might make that something i keep an eye out for tomorrow... meanwhile, time to go see if there's anyone interesting in the other bar and let these guys close up...
Sunday, February 8, 2009
Giving Up part 2 - this i did not expect (but could get used to)...
outside there are fields of white - where the city has gone icy and depressed, out here it still looks pure with a stark beauty that doesn't so much smack you in the eyeballs as sit back with a sherry and a pipe, its tweed jacket belying a hooligan past, the look in its eye asking cynically:
"... and?"
meanwhile i'm sitting here blogging while i look out the window, enjoying the graffiti sprayed on the walls around snowed-in soccer-fields enjoying the novelty of blogging while on public transport. what's that? yes, i KNOW i've been blogging a lot on public transport, but this is different - this is LIVE. somehow i managed to book a 1st-class ticket on the 9:05 to Edinburgh. i can only assume that thetrainline.com blindsided me, or that i clicked on the wrong checkbox, or that this was simply the cheapest fare available for today, and... you know what? fuck it. i have an enormous reclining seat in a cluster of 4 to myself, and all the coffee i can drink while i sit here with a power point and a WiFi connection and fuck you if you think i'm not going to make the most of it.
i was supposed to get some sleep last night - alarms (3 of were set for 6:59, 7:01 and 7:07 this morning, and with 4 and a half hours of sleep behind me i was awake, staring at the faint halo around the curtains and wishing for death. 7:33 and i was moving. 8:09 and i was out the door, Death Cab For Cute providing the now standard soundtrack for my "i'm up too early with too little sleep" experience. tube from Oval to Kings Cross St Pancras (Kings Cross is the city overland and national rail terminal, St Pancras is international) with enough time to collect my tickets and find my train, but not enough to get bored waiting. Kings Cross is a fairly unimpressive yellow-beige brick building notable only for its size and the triskell-motif'd clock. next door, St Pancras is far more impressive with a spire rising above the filth not unlike one of the many churches you see damn near everywhere in London.
of course, what you may be wondering (if you've been following the narrative in recent history) is what the fuck i'm doing in 1st-class on an overland train, and where the fuck am i going? see, i could have explained at the start, but starting there wouldn't have been so fun now, would it?
when last i spoke i mentioned that i was waiting for news from jobs to come in. since then i had another interview for a Team Leader job for a small government advisory commission (which went surprisingly well, thanks), and so i waited. then finally, on Friday afternoon i got news from both sets of pimps - their sympathetic speeches so similar they could have been carbon-copied:
"You did incredibly well at interview. They were really impressed with the way you answered the questions succinctly, they thought you have a great personality for the role, technical skills are right up there and your leadership style would work really well for them. It was a hard decision - it was down between you and one other guy, but in this situation they've decided not to move forward with you, but they really want to consider you for future roles if they come up."
well fuckery - you've got to be fucking kidding. 2nd best is 1st loser, and twice more i've been the best of the rest. i've said before that if the jobs i was in for didn't come through i'd be fucking off into the hinterlands and less than 48 hours later, being a man of my word, i'm on a train heading north at "surprisingly ridiculous"-an-hour and onto my second cup of "better than any airline i've ever been on" coffee.
Friday was not one of my shining moments - i waited and i was sick of waiting and 2 weeks of waiting culminated in one afternoon of failure. i'd spent the day bumming around the flat before heading into Leicester Square for a couple of hours, with plans of cruising the job sites, sorting out some paperwork and hitting the National Portrait Gallery (i walk past it almost every day and had never been in before). i must admit that while i enjoyed the gallery, it would have been nice to have seen more photographic work since i was fishing for ideas on composition in the interests of hopefully improving my own photography. the second call came through while i was on the bus on my way back to base-camp and i managed to not blow out the windows with a scream of rage and despair, (later 1/3 of a bottle of scotch helped wash down the bitter pill of failure) and within 5 minutes of walking in the door i was pulling open the bookmarks i'd saved weeks ago and started getting organised. come Saturday morning i booked the train out of town, and the first two nights in a hostel, while i sipped my morning coffee, then proceeded to spend the rest of the afternoon being shown around Greenwich Park (which has ducks and pigeons and squirrels and deer) by SiJ, then the evening watching Stargate, fixing the music player on my Eee, drying clothes and packing my shoulder bag and backpack.
you might notice that i've not discussed my plans, and the canny amongst you will have worked out that it's because i don't have any. i know where i'm staying tonight and tomorrow. past there i can't really bring myself to give a fuck. i can extend my stay in the hostel, or change if i want. i can find transport to get me to the next town. i've got my passport and access to enough cash to keep me for a year if the urge should strike to do something unexpected. i'm past caring and i'm past comprehension. i don't even know when i'll be back in London - it'll be either when the idea sits right with me, or i get bored of wandering. whichever comes first. in the meantime, i'm Dropping Off The Face Of The Planet with my middle finger raised in one final "fuck you" to anyone bored enough to watch me fall.
were it not for the absurd novelty of having a net connection on the train i'd have been officially Offline from the moment i walked out the door this morning. i'm a fairly well connected lad - being an IT professional and technology enthusiast i live a pretty hifi life. one of my great fantasies of the last couple of years has been to switch off and fuck off into the distance for a while. no phone, no net, just me, my PSD, access to transport and hopefully places i've never been. sure, i've got my Eee with me, but that just means i can write to my heart's content and worry about posting it all later. no email, no Facebook, no phone ringing. hell - if i didn't want to be able to take calls form pimps i'd have turned my fucking phone off and thrown it so hard at the fucking wall it'd have embedded in the plaster (i love this phone - i could do that and it'd probably STILL survive). i've been so tempted to fling the thing into the Thames, and wave goodbye and giggle maniacally as it sinks along with the last of my sanity, but i've managed to fight the urge.
so there you go. 4 months in this country is all it took for me to say "fuck it" and drop out. i expect i'll get back into the swing again when i go back to London, but for the time being i'm past making promises or building expectations. promises can be broken. expectations can be shattered. plans can fail, and i'm sick of the cloud of failure that follows me around as if i was Pig Pen in Peanuts. i've Given Up, Dropped Out and Fucked off. time to see how i go out in the world on my own, outside my comfort zone and reliant on no one, and at some stage eventually i'll even get around to telling you about it. meanwhile, if you don't know how to find me it's because i want it that way. leave a message.
Raven Out.
"... and?"
meanwhile i'm sitting here blogging while i look out the window, enjoying the graffiti sprayed on the walls around snowed-in soccer-fields enjoying the novelty of blogging while on public transport. what's that? yes, i KNOW i've been blogging a lot on public transport, but this is different - this is LIVE. somehow i managed to book a 1st-class ticket on the 9:05 to Edinburgh. i can only assume that thetrainline.com blindsided me, or that i clicked on the wrong checkbox, or that this was simply the cheapest fare available for today, and... you know what? fuck it. i have an enormous reclining seat in a cluster of 4 to myself, and all the coffee i can drink while i sit here with a power point and a WiFi connection and fuck you if you think i'm not going to make the most of it.
i was supposed to get some sleep last night - alarms (3 of were set for 6:59, 7:01 and 7:07 this morning, and with 4 and a half hours of sleep behind me i was awake, staring at the faint halo around the curtains and wishing for death. 7:33 and i was moving. 8:09 and i was out the door, Death Cab For Cute providing the now standard soundtrack for my "i'm up too early with too little sleep" experience. tube from Oval to Kings Cross St Pancras (Kings Cross is the city overland and national rail terminal, St Pancras is international) with enough time to collect my tickets and find my train, but not enough to get bored waiting. Kings Cross is a fairly unimpressive yellow-beige brick building notable only for its size and the triskell-motif'd clock. next door, St Pancras is far more impressive with a spire rising above the filth not unlike one of the many churches you see damn near everywhere in London.
of course, what you may be wondering (if you've been following the narrative in recent history) is what the fuck i'm doing in 1st-class on an overland train, and where the fuck am i going? see, i could have explained at the start, but starting there wouldn't have been so fun now, would it?
when last i spoke i mentioned that i was waiting for news from jobs to come in. since then i had another interview for a Team Leader job for a small government advisory commission (which went surprisingly well, thanks), and so i waited. then finally, on Friday afternoon i got news from both sets of pimps - their sympathetic speeches so similar they could have been carbon-copied:
"You did incredibly well at interview. They were really impressed with the way you answered the questions succinctly, they thought you have a great personality for the role, technical skills are right up there and your leadership style would work really well for them. It was a hard decision - it was down between you and one other guy, but in this situation they've decided not to move forward with you, but they really want to consider you for future roles if they come up."
well fuckery - you've got to be fucking kidding. 2nd best is 1st loser, and twice more i've been the best of the rest. i've said before that if the jobs i was in for didn't come through i'd be fucking off into the hinterlands and less than 48 hours later, being a man of my word, i'm on a train heading north at "surprisingly ridiculous"-an-hour and onto my second cup of "better than any airline i've ever been on" coffee.
Friday was not one of my shining moments - i waited and i was sick of waiting and 2 weeks of waiting culminated in one afternoon of failure. i'd spent the day bumming around the flat before heading into Leicester Square for a couple of hours, with plans of cruising the job sites, sorting out some paperwork and hitting the National Portrait Gallery (i walk past it almost every day and had never been in before). i must admit that while i enjoyed the gallery, it would have been nice to have seen more photographic work since i was fishing for ideas on composition in the interests of hopefully improving my own photography. the second call came through while i was on the bus on my way back to base-camp and i managed to not blow out the windows with a scream of rage and despair, (later 1/3 of a bottle of scotch helped wash down the bitter pill of failure) and within 5 minutes of walking in the door i was pulling open the bookmarks i'd saved weeks ago and started getting organised. come Saturday morning i booked the train out of town, and the first two nights in a hostel, while i sipped my morning coffee, then proceeded to spend the rest of the afternoon being shown around Greenwich Park (which has ducks and pigeons and squirrels and deer) by SiJ, then the evening watching Stargate, fixing the music player on my Eee, drying clothes and packing my shoulder bag and backpack.
you might notice that i've not discussed my plans, and the canny amongst you will have worked out that it's because i don't have any. i know where i'm staying tonight and tomorrow. past there i can't really bring myself to give a fuck. i can extend my stay in the hostel, or change if i want. i can find transport to get me to the next town. i've got my passport and access to enough cash to keep me for a year if the urge should strike to do something unexpected. i'm past caring and i'm past comprehension. i don't even know when i'll be back in London - it'll be either when the idea sits right with me, or i get bored of wandering. whichever comes first. in the meantime, i'm Dropping Off The Face Of The Planet with my middle finger raised in one final "fuck you" to anyone bored enough to watch me fall.
were it not for the absurd novelty of having a net connection on the train i'd have been officially Offline from the moment i walked out the door this morning. i'm a fairly well connected lad - being an IT professional and technology enthusiast i live a pretty hifi life. one of my great fantasies of the last couple of years has been to switch off and fuck off into the distance for a while. no phone, no net, just me, my PSD, access to transport and hopefully places i've never been. sure, i've got my Eee with me, but that just means i can write to my heart's content and worry about posting it all later. no email, no Facebook, no phone ringing. hell - if i didn't want to be able to take calls form pimps i'd have turned my fucking phone off and thrown it so hard at the fucking wall it'd have embedded in the plaster (i love this phone - i could do that and it'd probably STILL survive). i've been so tempted to fling the thing into the Thames, and wave goodbye and giggle maniacally as it sinks along with the last of my sanity, but i've managed to fight the urge.
so there you go. 4 months in this country is all it took for me to say "fuck it" and drop out. i expect i'll get back into the swing again when i go back to London, but for the time being i'm past making promises or building expectations. promises can be broken. expectations can be shattered. plans can fail, and i'm sick of the cloud of failure that follows me around as if i was Pig Pen in Peanuts. i've Given Up, Dropped Out and Fucked off. time to see how i go out in the world on my own, outside my comfort zone and reliant on no one, and at some stage eventually i'll even get around to telling you about it. meanwhile, if you don't know how to find me it's because i want it that way. leave a message.
Raven Out.
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