Great Glen Way: COMMITTED.

Just booked a train to Fort William and several nights' accommodation along the way.  I am officially committed.  I leave on Thursday and start walking on Friday!

An explanation: the Great Glen Way is a long-distance route that runs southwest to northeast for 73 miles, from Fort William to Inverness.  It is so called because it runs the length of the Great Glen, a valley formed by plate tectonics which pretty much divides Scotland in two.  There are four lochs in the Great Glen, connected by the Caledonian Canal: Loch Linnhe, Loch Lochy, Loch Oich, and Loch Ness.  It is possible to travel from the Atlantic Ocean to the North Sea via these lochs and the Canal.

I'm planning to take 6 days to walk the GGW, with overnight stops in Gairlochy, South Laggan, Fort Augustus, Glenmoriston, Drumnadrochit, and finally Inverness.  Most of these legs are between 10 and 12 miles in length, with the exception of the last one (Drumnadrochit to Inverness), which is 18 miles.  I'm quite nervous about that one and would split it up if I could, taking 7 days in all rather than 6, but there are very few places to stay between Drum and Inverness and none at all cheaper than 50 quid per night.  So I'm sucking it up and hoping for the best.  Surely after 5 days of steady walking, 18 miles in a day won't be too bad? 

I have accommodation booked everywhere except Gairlochy and Inverness.  There seems to be a dearth of places to stay in Gairlochy, and the one place I've contacted so far (selected for its proximity to the GGW) hasn't gotten back to me.  There are more places in Spean Bridge, some of which do pick-ups and drop-offs on the GGW, but I'd prefer to avoid that logistical hassle if I can.  I haven't booked accommodation in Inverness yet because I think I might want to swing over to Stromeferry for a couple of days, rather than going straight back to Edinburgh.  Still thinking about it.

And now I have to plan what to pack.  Stay tuned...

Cheers, y'all.

Changing seasons.

The season is changing.  The days are getting cloudier, cooler, and slowly shorter.  If I want to have any serious outdoor escapades, they need to be relatively soon.

I am tentatively planning to walk the Great Glen Way next week.  This is the trip I had originally planned for May, and ended up postponing so my data collection trip to the States could happen sooner.  I am also toying with the idea of doing some hillwalking while I'm in the area, especially since it's going to be too unseasonable (for me, anyway) for such things soon.  Details to follow as things get booked.

Cheers, y'all.

A birth announcement. :)

I'm a cousin-once-removed, once again.  Welcome to the world, Abigail Rae Bennett!

Cheers, y'all.

Waiting.

My life is a waiting game at the moment. I'm waiting to see if my dissertation will pass (although I don't have any reason to think it won't). I'm waiting to hear back about jobs I've applied for. In the meantime, I'm trying to enjoy my free time. I've been doing a lot of cross-stitching over the past few days, and the project I'm working on is finally nearing completion after about four and a half years of on-and-off work. I'm also close to finishing a couple of books. It was a nice day today, so I walked to the bottom of the Royal Mile and laid on the grass in front of the Scottish Parliament and read for a couple of hours (The Fiery Cross by Diana Gabaldon).

If nothing is happening on the job front by the end of this upcoming week, I think I'm going to take a trip somewhere.  Probably the Uists.  I'm also aching to get back to Ben Lomond and finish climbing it, but Rowardennan is bloody difficult to get to even if you've got a car, and impossible to reach by public transportation.  Western Scotland, y u so remote?

Cheers, y'all.

Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo

On 20 August, I went to the Edinburgh Tattoo, which is a big pipe and drum show that gets put on every year during August.  It takes place on the esplanade in front of Edinburgh Castle, and military bands from all over the world come to perform.

The first hour of the show was quite good.  The opening pipe and drum number, in which the esplanade is filled with hundreds of bagpipers, was a grand spectacle.  I had chills.  Also, before the pipers came out, a bunch of little kids dressed up as Picts came out and did a little pantomime, which was very cute.  Here's an amateur video of it:



The rest of the show was really quite kitschy and twee.  There were various military bands playing the usual military band fare.  There were highland dancers, doing dances meant to represent whisky-brewing and the industrial revolution.  The one truly awesome performance (aside from the massed pipes and drums at the beginning) was a drumline from Switzerland.  They were AMAZING.  Truly the best drumline I've ever seen.

The last 45 minutes were kind of disappointing, to be honest.  All of the performers came back out onto the esplanade, but only a couple of the bands actually played.  This part of the performance was a celebration of QEII's diamond jubilee, and was essentially supposed to be a reenactment of her coronation.  So some of the bands played a couple of the pieces that were played at her coronation, while everybody else stood to attention for ages.  Toward the end, they played the theme to the James Bond film Diamonds Are Forever, and there were fireworks.  The fireworks were being launched directly behind me, which was annoying, and they also weren't all that impressive.  I had heard that the tattoo ended every night with a big fireworks display, so I thought "Okay, this must be the warm-up."  Then the lone piper played, high up on the castle battlements, and everybody marched out to "Scotland The Brave," which always ends every tattoo...and that was it.  No final bombastic fireworks display.  So that was a let-down.

All in all, I'm glad I went, because it's something you should really do if you're in Edinburgh in August.  But having done it, I feel like I can check it off the list and never do it again.  But who knows?  Maybe next year's show will be better.

Cheers, y'all.

Let the job-hunt begin!

This summer has been a whirlwind, and I've spent the last two weeks recuperating from it. 

I've also begun looking for jobs.  The jobs I'm applying for fall into two broad categories: temporary, part-time stuff that will keep me busy and moneyed until my visa expires; and more serious jobs that would enable me to switch into a Tier 2 visa and stay in the UK longer.  I'm discovering that if I do end up staying in the UK, I'm pretty much going to have to move to London, as that's where the jobs in my field seem to be.  So far I've had one interview, for a local part-time job.  I'm supposed to find out about it next Tuesday, so we'll see.

Truthfully, I'm bored.  Dissertation-writing is terribly stressful, but at least you're never bored while doing it!  I spent the first week after the hand-in being grateful for the boredom, but now, as hard as I try, I can't enjoy the empty days anymore.  Reading and embroidery (both of which I've been doing a lot of lately) are great, but I can only do them for so long before I want to do something else.  I'd love to do some traveling right now, but I'm anxious about my finances.  I spent a lot of money in Shetland, so I'm reluctant to spend any more right now.  This is another reason why I'm looking for a job.

So, until further notice, I'm hanging out in Edinburgh and looking for a job.  I'm also going to try to be much more diligent about updating this blog, now that I have so much spare time.

Cheers, y'all.

One year!

One year ago today, I arrived in Edinburgh with four suitcases, a student visa, nowhere to live, no local bank account, and the determination and resolve to make this work.  Now, one year later, I've discovered where the decent and not-so-decent places to live are (the hard way), met some interesting new characters among my classmates, flatmates, and various traveling companions, been to new places including Tiree and Shetland, and finished an entire Masters degree.

My Masters dissertation is the single hardest bit of academic work I have ever done.  I can say without exaggerating that I've never worked so hard on anything before in my life.  And I think it paid off, because I turned in a finished product that I'm quite proud of...and a day early, no less!  I learned a new skill in qualitative analysis, and I've learned quite a bit about where my own interests and priorities lie.

This past weekend has been one big party.  I went to dinner with my classmates and a Peatbog Faeries concert with Ewan and Kath on Friday, to the Edinburgh Book Festival, where I met Garth Nix and he signed my well-worn, well-loved copy of Sabriel (AAAHHH fangirl moment!) during the day on Saturday, and out drinking and to a nightclub with my classmates on Saturday night, and to the Tattoo last night.  I also went to a comedy show yesterday, put on by the same girl whose comedy show I saw last year, on my first day in Edinburgh, which seemed like a great way to come full circle on this year.  I have free time for the first time in a month, and I don't know what to do with myself.  And it's great.

I don't know what the next few months are going to have in store for me, and I find that genuinely exciting.  I'm at the point now where I'm going to have to make some decisions about where I'm going to live and what I'm going to do, and I feel like the entire world is at my feet.  Many are the options.  And I'm thrilled.  I can't wait to see what happens next.

Cheers, y'all.