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Travel
Back from Stornoway
Hey, I’m back from Stornoway! As soon as I came back I got knocked down by the worst winter bug, and was out of it with fever delirium for three days straight. I somehow made it in to work for one of those days, and ouch, was that one day difficult.
I’m still converting the photos of Stornoway to show you next week, but here’s how my ‘cool things I did’ list ended up looking compared to my original to-do list:
- Walk round the Lewis Castle grounds.
- Visit the Callanish stones.
- (NEW!) Visit the Caroloway Broch, an Iron Age drystone house.
- (NEW!) Visit the wind turbines.
- Check out the beaches if the weather is nice (went to Dal Mor beach).
- Try an Oreo Sundae from the posh cafe there.
- I have family in Shawbost and hey look there’s a Norse mill over there. (Nope, ran out of time! But I visited my Shawbost family, who have relocated to a nursing home).
- I never knew the Whalebone arch was actually considered a tourist attraction, it’s just something cool that we notice on every visit, but I’m linking to it anyway. (This is out Shawbost way.)
- Take some photographs and generally research the town because it ended up a key part of my just-finished novel. (I did lots of this! But REBEL work suffered because of it.)
- Pine, in a homesick fashion, for my dogs, ferrets, other half and best friends.
I’ll see you next week with some photos from the trip, and when I’m not here I’ll be busy at work and revising REBEL. Now that NaNoWriMo’s over, what’s everyone else up to? (Relaxing, I hope!)
Off to Stornoway!
I’m heading across the water to Stornoway on the Western Isles. I’ve posted photos of the way there before.
I’m hoping to do a few tourist-y things on this visit:
- Walk round the Lewis Castle grounds.
- Visit the Callanish stones.
- Try an Oreo Sundae from the posh cafe there.
- I’d like to visit St Kilda, but money and time don’t seem to be on my side there. Maybe some day.
- Continue work on revisions for REBEL AGAINST HEAVEN.
- I have family in Shawbost and hey look there’s a Norse mill over there.
- I never knew the Whalebone arch was actually considered a tourist attraction, it’s just something cool that we notice on every visit, but I’m linking to it anyway.
- Take some photographs and generally research the town because it ended up a key part of my just-finished novel.
- Pine, in a homesick fashion, for my dogs, ferrets, other half and best friends.
- Check out the beaches if the weather is nice.
See you guys in a week!
On the way to Stornoway
Morning droogs, hope you all had a good weekend and a Happy Hallowe’en.
I’m off to Stornoway all this week, so posts will be scarce — but I’ve got my camera so I should return with pictures. :)
(And the lack of WiFi hotspots or housework duties will hopefully lead to more writing time.)
Here’s hoping for sunshine and calm seas for the ferry crossing!
Visiting Duffus Castle
Myself and a large group of friends went for a sporadic picnic at Duffus Castle today. I’d heard of the motte-and-bailey castle, just outside of Elgin, and most of the Nairn/Lossie-based people I knew had been – but I’d never been up there.
It’s a gorgeous castle with no fees to view it, and we got lucky and had brilliant weather to see it in – the grass was bright, and you could see the sun moving across the yellow fields that stretched outside of the castle grounds. The land itself is huge, with lots of open space considering that only a small amount of ruins remain.
Metal plaques across each section of the ruins describe what each area would have been. When a short rain shower hit our picnic, we sheltered in an archway where the portcullis machinery had once been, and now only a hole remained. There was also a latrine just down from the portcullis – a gaping hole pointing down the side of the castle.
‘Inside’ the castle, the roof is now gone and large chunks of the second floor have collapsed into the hill due to some severe subsidence – the most amusing of these being the latrine from the castle lord’s bedchambers, which is now planted in the hillside with a long chute pointing down the mound.
It’s a beautiful ruin, without any of the tourist shops and entry fees that tend to spoil historic areas these days. You just need to follow the trail to the castle (use a map, it’s difficult to find), and then you’ll join a small group of dog walkers, locals and tourists out enjoying the beautiful scenery. Nobody thought anything of our group sitting out on the grass with a picnic (and a few families had the same idea), and we were left to ourselves to play frisbee and ball games across the mound and flat lands surrounding it.
If you’re out exploring the Nairn/Elgin/Lossie/Morayshire area and the weather is nice, don’t miss your chance to take a look at the ruins. The area is open to the wind and rain, so carry a warm jacket in case the weather shifts. Bring food and friends to get the most out of it!
Internet Treasure Hunting
It’s November, which means NANOWRIMO (National Novel Writing Month) has begun – where hundreds of thousands of people try to write 50,000 words in one month. Not something that works for me, because I’m really bad for going back and editing my work before continuing on, but it’s still a cool event.
With Halloween now over, I’m kind of annoyed I didn’t decide to dress up as a Hunter zombie from Left 4 Dead (pictured in this post)… but the idea only occurred to me five minutes ago so I’m a biiiiit late. Next year! In the spirit of Halloween, here’s a creepy and beautiful comic.
My actual Halloween was spent out Geocaching – basically, treasure hunting using the internet or an Android phone/iPhone to find certain hidden items using clues and GPS co-ordinates. There’s a fair amount in Nairn and a lot in Inverness, and it’s good fun wandering around in the dark, searching nooks and crannies for the ‘caches’ and praying the police don’t ask what you’re up to (because ‘internet treasure hunting’ may not sound convincing).
Finding a geocache is a lot of fun, though – and we had two successful findings, thanks to bringing along two friends who were like geocache snifferdogs. Awesome snifferdogs.
Then the temperature dropped to 1°C and I, being terrible at handling the cold, started handling the cold terribly. So I was very glad to get to bed!
It’s all horribly geeky. So I love it.
One last thing – the Nicholson Institute, Stornoway’s only secondary school, decided keeping an autistic 18-year-old in a ‘cage’ (a fenced-off area of the playground) was a smart idea. I’ll just be shaking my head over here…