Lost In Scotland

One More Country – One Last Adventure

// July 5th, 2009 // 1 Comment » // Scotland

Louisa has been looking forward to today the whole trip…it finally came. Allison, her and I headed out nice and early into the deserted streets of Bristol (the whole city had a hangover I think) to grab our car and head to Wales. Today’s adventure was a whole day of horseback riding in the Black Mountains of Wales.

It was another amazing day. The scenery was fantastic! Allison was assigned a white horse named Whiskey

Louisa got a SLOW horse named Kitty (she was on her own agenda and got Louisa cause she cna boss a horse around!)

I got the teenager, Troy

Our guides, Tom and Polly, led us up the mountain and across a ridge where we got spectacular views of the valleys…we were fairly close to the border so you could see England on one side and Wales on the other. Once we got on a little flatter land, we were able to trot the horses which was pretty fun. Since it was all day, we descended a bit and stopped by a local pub for lunch. This meant tying up our horses and heading in for a pint and some good pub food.

Then we headed out again and had to navigate a monster downhill…this terrain was tough!

It started raining a bit in the afternoon, but it wasn’t a big deal…especially with our Army helmets on! It was an awesome day and a great way to end my trip to the UK. We are very, very sore…but happy. Tons more pictures on the Flickr page (My Photos)!!

Thanks for reading! I’m heading back to the States tomorrow and Louisa’s off to her dig in France. It was fun documenting our research quest and adventures.  I feel almost like a true archeaologist now…I’ve trekked through graveyards, dug through libraries, talked to interesting people, camped in the wilderness and met interesting animals…also, I’ve ventured into the world of chronicling through this little blog…I’m glad Louisa will have a little electronic record of her quest for her master’s degree…Lord knows my research was not this fun!! Hopefully when it’s all written and she has degree in hand, she can look back and have a good laugh…Lord knows we laughed our whole way through this trip (probably added a few years to my life!). Maybe I’ll get invited back as a research assistant for her PhD…although it might be the swamps of North Carolina…till next time!!

Happy Birthday America

// July 5th, 2009 // No Comments » // Scotland

There’s nothing quite like celebrating Independence Day in the country you defeated to gain your independence…they didn’t quite get our enthusiasm about the holiday but were good sports. Louisa, her Canadian flatmate Allison, and I headed over another classmate’s house. Austin and his wife Allison and their three kids are heading back to California in a few days so they invited their British friends and of course the Americans and Canadians for a good ole fashioned July 4th BBQ.

There were burgers, pasta salad and they even found American style hot dogs (in the “tinned meat” section of the grocery store!). Allison found a huge cookie in the store that actually said “Happy July 4th”…I think they have independence day jealousy cause they don’t have one. The British people at the party were cracking me up though with their turns of phrase. It was BYOB and normally if I were home in South Carolina choice drink would be ice tea (lager of the south)…here it’s just real lager.

All in all a wonderful July 4th. Food, drink, sunshine, and friends…what it’s all about. Hopefully our parents are enjoying their annual beach weekend and doing some of the same. Thanks to Austin, Allison, Darcy, Tag, and Stapley for a little slice of America for the afternoon…

Home

// July 4th, 2009 // 2 Comments » // Scotland

Well, on of us is home…the other, me, is still camping on my sister’s dorm floor…but it’s good to be in a place that doesn’t need to see set up and torn down and has electricity.

We started our journey home on Thursday by getting on yet another ferry. This was an almost 3 hour ride, so we had plenty of time to read and entertain ourselves. It was super eerie how similar the ferry was to the one we took out of Alaska…same layout with a lounge at the front and a cafe at the back…super de ja vu. I decided to sketch a bit since I haven’t done much of that on this trip…here’s a sketch of my book and a pint glass as well as my sister reading her book.

We had a fair amount of free time and we both got tired of reading so my sister taught me all the algorithms for solving the Rubiks Cube…this is why she is too smart for her own good and why there is no more room on her brain desktop for important thesis information. Who memorizes the algorithms for the Rubiks cube?!?…okay, so I’ve started to cause it’s kind of fun to actually be able to solve the damn thing…but my brain operated a little slower than my sister’s.

We also had two older ladies sitting next to us in the lounge and when they got up to totter off somewhere for a bit, my sister looked at me with a mixed troubled and amused expression and said “Have you been listening to their conversation? They are us in a few years!”…Apparently one of the ladies was reading the newspaper while the other looked out the window and the one lady said something to the effect of “oh, now this is a very interesting article…” to which the other lady replied “uh-huh, that’s great” and kept doing what she was doing…they are us…oh, well, they seemed nice

We got off the ferry close to 5PM, and we had decided to drive all the way to Edinburgh to the campground we first stayed at. We arrived around 9:30PM and set up camp remarkably fast…we had our makeshift boombox cranking the tunes out to motivate us.

We had grabbed some takeaway curry at an ASDA (Walmart) in Perth, but when we got it back to the car to tuck into it, we discovered it was cold and had to be heated…FAIL…so we busted out the camp stove and heated up our meals and were happily eating curry around 10 o’clock at night. It felt good to be spending our last night in a familiar place. We got up early to start the last leg home. It was a bright, sunny day, which was great because it meant we could pack up a nice, dry tent. I reorganized the whole car to ensure quick offloading when we got back to Bristol. I was very proud of my work…almost as organized as our helicopter after a Costco run in Alaska!

The journey should have taken us around 6 hours and gotten us home around 3PM, but unfortunately we hit a few traffic jams (tailbacks) and ended up getting home around 5:30PM. We had to quickly unpack the car and get changed to go out to dinner at my sister’s friends’ house (a super nice couple she’s housesitting for). It was a little surreal to be camping in the morning eating instant oatmeal and then to be sitting in a beautiful back garden eating fresh potatoes, meat and salad with chocolate cake, fruit and ice cream for dessert. We’ve pretty much decided to stick with fruit, veg, and whole grains for a few days.

All in all a great trip. We lucked out big time with the weather! Everyone kept asking about the midges, but they really weren’t too bad. I only applied the 100% DEET I brought from home on one night. I think I had to use sunscreen more.

We’ve got a pretty packed weekend before both Louisa and I leave on Monday. I’m going home home and she’s off to catch the Eurostar to France to go dig up some Iron Age hill fort for a couple weeks (apparently a big deal in archeaology circles – she’ll be digging very near where we used to live in Germany as kids, right on the border). This afternoon we’re headed to another American student’s house for a big July 4th BBQ (and also a belated Canada Day celebration). Then tomorrow Louisa, Allison, and I will be heading to Wales for an all day horse trek through the countryside. Louisa has been talking about nothing else the whole trip. She is a HUGE horse fanatic and I believe likes them more than people. Allison has never been horseback riding and the last time I was on one was when I was about 7 and got bucked off by a pony named Zebide during a jump competition…I actually got bucked off twice…I’m hardheaded. So we’ll see…I’m looking forward to the scenery and supposedly we tie up our horses at a pub for lunch…should be an adventure…I’ll write a post and add pictures.

Meanwhile, time to get some laundry done and pack up for our next trips before heading out to the BBQ. A few last pictures up on the Flickr page…more to come.