Highland Weekend

Last Saturday, sporting exhaustion-hangovers from running a bop (for Skyros!) the night before, Lachy and I headed into the Highlands for a spot of hiking. It was the first time I'd been to the Highlands proper, not including Pitlochry (since I was a child at least, and all I remember is my mum saying 'This is the Highlands!' and me saying 'Why?') and we were headed to the village of Tomintoul. I'd heard of the village because of the Tomintoul and Glenlivet Development Trust, an initiative which is trying to regenerate the area and attract more tourists. Since there was no specific Highland destination I wanted to visit, why not select a rural village and play it by ear?

We took three trains from Leuchars to Dundee to Perth to Aviemore and a taxi from there. Our hostel's website had said the taxi would cost £24 but it unfortunately cost £50, rather more than I could really afford. Then again I could have just misread it since the next time I checked the website the price had changed - either way, it was much cheaper on Monday morning when we left. We arrived at the Smugglers Hostel, a converted village school building, where we were welcomed and shown around by Simon, who helped us plan our hike for the next day and lent us a map and a guidebook. The hostel gets its name from the whisky smuggling that was once prevalent in the area, and our hike the next day actually crossed one of the old smugglers' trails.

We took a quick walk around the village just before dark, then made ourselves some dinner in the spacious, clean kitchen, chatting with some fellow hikers who were making their way through the Highlands. We got a very early night. We were very tired.

In the morning we partook of the hostel's breakfast buffet, a huge, tempting spread of cereals, eggs, bread and spreads. Scrambled eggs on toast with a glass or two of orange juice - a damn good hiker's breakfast. Cereal just never fills you up for the morning. We left the hostel with our maps and packed lunches and promptly set off in the wrong direction, then found our way to the correct end of the village and set off along the wrong path again. My orienteering skills have never been great and Lachy was too polite to question me, so it was a farmer and a herd of cows that finally set us walking on the right path. But we did get to see some deer up close on our brief detour.

We walked the Speyside Way through some beautiful valleys and over a couple of hills, through an amazing forest. Within an hour we were far from any roads; the silence was beautiful. We had been planning to walk a circular route to Glenlivet but by the time we reached the place where the guidebook's walk began there was no way we were going to get the whole thing done before we lost daylight, so instead we walked for a couple of hours until we reached the village of Tomnavoulin and then walked back. We passed a total of three people (one group) the entire day.

When we were back in the village, we wandered around the local shops, and I bought some fudge and tablet for my brother while Lachy tried a few drams of whisky in the Whisky Castle and bought a bottle of something. For dinner we went to the Glen Avon Hotel where Lachy had a local venison burger, then to the Richmond Hotel where I had a veggie burger since the Glen Avon was out. We had a couple of bottles of Cairngorm beer, White Lady being our mutual favourite. Then an episode of Peaky Blinders and another early night following a very hard day's walk.

Tomintoul is a lovely village. There are plenty more walks I'd like to have a go at in the area, and the Smugglers Hostel made us feel so welcome, I hope to return many times in the future!

Teaching is Not My Calling and Other Lessons Learned in Romania

This summer I spent a month in the town of Suceava, Romania, otherwise known as Whitehaven, Romania. The reason I call it that is that, like my home town of Whitehaven, there is very little to do there. Yes, there are museums and shops and so on, but it took about two weeks to have visited every place of interest in the town, and unfortunately, we (myself and the other teachers from Scotland) were there for four.

Since I spent such a long time there, this won't be a day-by-day record of my activities. Instead, I'm going to organise it thematically, by lessons learned.

All right, this was a good day

Teaching is not my calling
This, I'd say, is the most important lesson I learned during July. As an English student I have often felt that I don't have many career options and one of the questions I get asked most is whether I plan to be a teacher. Well, I thought, I may as well see. So I signed up for ScRoLL (Scottish-Romanian Language Link) to see what it was like. Please note: I really have no problem with the programme, only with teaching. For the first two weeks I was teaching twenty-two 12-16 year olds in a classroom big enough for twelve. I struggled to keep up with my students, who were very good English speakers and difficult to palm off with colouring-in. In the second week, however, I realised they were so good we could easily take up two to three hours with discussion of who was the best superhero and whether the Harry Potter films were as good as the books. I got to know my students really well and we even hung out outside of class.

The second two weeks I taught 8-10 year olds. At first there were about twelve but when my friend Beth's class was reduced in the second week we combined our efforts and taught our classes together. This took a lot of the pressure off and meant we could divide the class into awesome Hogwarts houses and play games and have competitions with them. It was a lot of fun. They were very sweet, but they didn't speak much English, and some of them obviously didn't understand a word I said, and that was hard. Unfortunately, I don't have the patience for teaching, and since I used to be very shy and not enjoy standing up to give presentations, I found it quite hard to be the centre of attention for four hours a day. Lesson learned: teaching is not my calling.

I don't like meat
Over the year preceding my summer adventure I made a valiant effort to eat meat, despite having been a vegetarian for more than ten years beforehand. I thought it might not be easy not to eat meat when I was travelling, and to an extent I was right. Some parts were easy; I always loved saveloy and pork pies. Other parts were not; there was no way I could stomach a steak. I ate meat with greater frequency while I was abroad, getting stomach aches afterwards, and in Romania, after being sick for two days after eating some chicken, I gave it up for good (well, almost). I don't like eating it. The end.

I love beer
I knew this already, but the extent of it wasn't really clear until this summer. I spent my first two weeks in Romania with a family that didn't drink, and when I once had a beer in a pub with my fellow teachers, I received some pretty shocked looks from my host. Then, when I moved to a different family in my third week, we spent the first day at the extended family's shared cabin by the woods, and I was given beer after beer from one o'clock in the afternoon until I fell asleep in a caravan at five. Nothing like making up for lost time.

Family camping trip

Gypsies are not Romanian
I'm kidding. This was quite the contentious issue.

We drove past a guy driving a cart. 'There! There's a gypsy!' says my host. 'How can you tell?' I ask. 'Look at his face!' is the response I get.
We drive past another cart. 'Is that a gypsy?' I ask, pointing to a similar-looking man. My host laughs in scorn. 'No!'

Family member: 'The worst thing is, it says Romanian on their passports, so people think they are Romanian!'
Me: 'If it says Romanian in their passports, surely they are Romanian?'
Family member: 'No.'

There is a huge divide in Romania. My hosts drove me through a 'gypsy village' (part of their own village) and said 'The gypsies live like kings!' Their houses were no less ramshackle then the others. Which leads me to my next lesson.

Romania is like The Sims
It is traditional in Romania to buy land and build your own house. As a result, the landscape is dotted with huge houses in every colour. I really like the idea. In some cases I have to say it might have been wiser to employ a contractor. Others were architectural masterpieces. Many houses in the village were built around courtyards with a barn and a well which I thought was lovely.

Street in my village

Agricultural technology has not yet reached Romania
One thing that really struck me was the prevalence of carts and the near-absence of tractors. On two occasions I got to drive a neighbour's cart and loved it. We would pass several carts on the way to school, speeding by in our cars. Scythes are used to cut hay and the hay is baled up in the fields, piled onto huge sticks and wooden racks; no baling machines to be found. Agriculture seems to be one of Romania's largest industries, so its methods obviously still work - it just struck me, coming from a rural area where I've never seen a cart on the road but have been stuck behind tractors many a time.

In the driver's seat

I romanticise
The final lesson. Before I headed out to Romania, I read William Blacker's book about his time in Romania, Along the Enchanted Way. It was a wonderful book about falling in love with a gypsy and an agricultural way of life. Suceava, however, was a large town, not a tiny village with no tarmac roads (although I spent two weeks in one) and Romania is a twenty-first century country, not a historical wonderland. It is beautiful and I enjoyed my time there but it is not my country the way it is for William Blacker.

But I'm looking forward to find it.

Still pretty damn beautiful.

What this summer made me realise about my life

This summer, I was too busy with trivial thoughts like 'how am I going to afford breakfast' and 'now I'm in Berlin, where actually is my hostel' to have any startling revelations. Actually, this revelation wasn't really startling at all, even when it did show its face. It just gradually built up until it was glaringly obvious.

In my daily life I spend a lot of time at a desk. I sit at a desk to write my essays. I sit at a desk to translate Old English. If a book is particularly painful, sometimes I have to sit at a desk to read it so I don't fall asleep in my bed. I'm a hotel receptionist, and when I get to work, I sit at a desk. For an eight-hour stretch.

Sitting on a mountain. Preferable to sitting at a desk

Over June, July, August and a bit of September, I must have spent about eight cumulative hours sitting at a desk. I'm not saying I didn't sit. I sat at restaurants and on sofas and on the bed while I read a book (for pleasure, not for my degree!) but I barely even saw a desk the whole summer.

I never had sore shoulders or a sore neck, I barely had a single headache (apart from one strange week of tension headaches, but that may be because I'm not really used to sunlight...). I was tanned, and I felt strong for the first time in years.

Sitting on a horse. Preferable to sitting at a desk

Now I'm back in St Andrews, a town that I love, in a house that I love, with people that I love. That's all great. And the desk. The desk is back. I've already had to go to a physiotherapist about the ache in my shoulders and the pain of trying to maintain good posture and keep from hunching over my books is almost as bad.

Like all other fourth years I am continually battling The Fear about graduating in a year, but at the same time, it can't come quickly enough. I don't want to sit at a desk any more. 

As an English graduate I used to think I wouldn't have many job options, but then I started to get the message that English equips you to persuade just about anybody that you're the man for the job. One thing is kind of a given, though: you're going to have to work at a desk. But I'm not going to.

If you thought this might mean I know what I'm doing with my life - no. Of course not. I'm a fourth year English student. I know I like to write, and I don't mind spending an hour or two at a desk. I think what I want is to work with horses in some capacity.

For an English student, and a university student in general, this feels like a lot to admit. It's difficult to realise after three years that you're not doing what you want to be doing. But I am in the place I want to be. So that's enough for now. :)

This got way deeper than I anticipated! Next blog post will be about silly things that happened in Romania. Over and out.

What's In My Pack? (after three months)

Since my pack has been through a lot this summer, I felt it deserved some recognition.
The original list is in regular type - strikethrough has been ditched along the way - bold is a new addition.

Clothes
6 x pants
4 x ankle socks
3 x regular socks x1 (holes/missing)
2 x bras
4 x vests
1 x t-shirt
1 x trousers
2 x shorts (1 pair ripped and mended)
1 x dress
1 x blouse
1 x skirt x 2
1 x belt
Waterproof jacket
Jumper
Scarf
Flip flops
Sandals
Trainers
Hiking boots (time came to admit they just didn't fit)

Teaching supplies
Folder
Scotland flag
Toy Collie (somehow couldn't bring myself to part with it...)
Stickers
Colouring pencils
Crayons
Scottish tablet
St Andrews pencils
Scottish playing cards
Fudge
Scottish recipe tea towels (gifts for host families)
Post-its

Misc
Snorkel
Laundry liquid
Micro towel
Olive oil (gift for family)
Ouzo (gift for family)
Romania magnets x 5
Romania playing cards
Romania calendar
Romania bookmarks
Traditional Romanian Easter eggs x 6
Handmade halter (all of the above were gifts to me)
Castile soap
Beer mug shot glass (gift for family)
Colossal wooden spoon (gift for family)
Straw hat
Toiletries (various)
Wooden religious icon
30 year old handmade Romanian tablecloth (both gifts to me)
First aid kit (minus a few plasters)
2 x sun tan lotion x 1
Insect bite cream
Camera (slightly broken)
Chargers for phone/tablet
Tablet
Kindle (with 100+ books... man it was handy)

Carrying the wooden spoon for a month around Europe has to have been the biggest packing challenge as it stretched from the bottom of my pack to just stick out the top. I had a very minimal wardrobe but nothing was forgotten in the bottom of my bag and I had just enough to get through.

A Change of Plans

(Anyone who noticed that this blog was retired for about a month, forget everything you saw.)

I've now been abroad for just under three months - well, I left on the 30th of May and it's now the 20th of August. The plan to walk the West Highland Way this summer went out the window when I had to spend 50 euros on a taxi across Rome at the last minute (fuck you very much, WizzAir) and overspent in Greece and basically realised I couldn't really afford to fly home, and it made more sense to wait it out on the continent until my family showed up to drive me safely back to England.

Yeah, that's a pretty stupid plan, I know. I am now out of money. However, the next couple of weeks will be spent with various family members - the last couple of weeks, actually - and then I will have made it. Sort of. Back into my student debt and whatnot.

So far, I've spent a month working on my beloved farm in Greece, a month teaching children and living with families in Romania, and three weeks city-hopping with interrail which brings us to now - chilling out for a week in an airbnb flat beside Lake Como until we meet with parents. After bouncing from Suceava to Cluj-Napoca to Vienna to Prague to Berlin to Amsterdam to Brussels to Bordeaux to Lyon and finally to a friend's near Grenoble, this is a very welcome break. It's nice to be able to cook for ourselves at last, too - who knew you could get tired of eating in restaurants...

It has been a very eventful summer - I learned to drive a horse-drawn cart and a motorbike, stood in the way of a herd of galloping ponies, ate more meat than I have for ten years, got sick, swam in Lake Geneva while waiting for a train... there are more stories, and they'll get their time eventually.

When I get the time I'll be writing more about my Romanian experience (really the most apt word), my second summer in Greece and the adventures that followed. Until then.

The Great Adventure 2013

What you see here is the map which has been growing beside my bed for the past year. There are maps of the places I've been, postcards I've received and collected, a photograph, a play programme and a Lord of the Rings themed map of St Andrews. There are also maps of places I've yet to visit... or one, at least. 

For the past year I've been planning the most epic summer of my life so far. For three months I'm going to be travelling Europe, sometimes alone, sometimes with others. Here's the breakdown:

• 30th May - 27th June: Greece. I'm going back to the stables to work with Amanda, Stathis and the Skyrians for another month, this time with my friend Karen :)
• 27th June - 27th July: Romania. I'll be teaching English to kids in Suceava, and living with families there.
• 27th July - 17th August: Interrail. Lachy and I are heading to Scandinavia via Berlin. That's the current plan, anyway!
• After the 17th August... at some point: The West Highland Way. Walking it with Lachy.
• 3rd September: a week in France with my family.

Then back in time for freshers' week! Well... hopefully.

I've never travelled for so long before - and certainly never so long on my own in between places. It's going to be a test as well as an epic adventure. Maybe I can finally get over my fear of spiders? 

Packing has so far already been a challenge. Trying to hold myself back from packing clothes for every eventuality is rather difficult, and I have three notebooks packed already - despite paring them down to the essentials. I also have to take my dissertation reading with me - that'll be fun! My hand luggage is so far composed of books and important documents, while my main bag is full of clothes and teaching materials.

I'll do my best to post updates of my adventures when I get the chance, but since I haven't got room to carry my heavy computer the majority will have to wait until September.

Hasta luego, friends! Wish me luck!

Pitlochry and Blair Atholl

Lachy and I decided that if I had a couple of days off work together during uni's revision period, we'd go on a little break. Originally the plan was to go over to Inversnaid but since I only had two days off (travelling back the morning before my evening shift) the rather complicated journey wasn't really realistic. So I started googling youth hostels in Scotland and stumbled upon one in Pitlochry, which it would only take us three trains to reach, in two hours of travelling (more straightforward at least). Neither of us actually knew anything about Pitlochry but it seemed like there was a loch and some hills nearby and that was good enough, since we were primarily there 'to study', of course.

The window in the turret? Yeah, that's our room

The hostel was pretty much opposite the train station so that was nice and easy. We were handed our key by a fellow Australian (fellow to Lachy, not me) who offered us the room in the spire i.e. the turret of the building, as long as we weren't going to be upset by the music of the dance party at McKays next door. Well, we were in a tiny Scottish village, so we didn't think the night life was likely to disturb us, and living in a turret! That was the dream. The room was fairly basic but nothing was wanting and we had a little circular annex with a table and stools for us to work in - not bad really. From our study turret we could see down into Pitlochry's main street and the hills beyond.

Once we'd dropped off our stuff and had some lunch in the Old Mill Inn we set out for a walk. A quick visit to the John Muir Trust shop over the way procured us a map with walks to follow. Luckily Lachy can read maps (I think I can but ... I can't). We took a route that would lead us around Loch Faskally via the dam. I hadn't been up close to a dam before so it was pretty awesome to see the high, still loch on one side and the wide river rushing out on the other. After the isolated idyll of Loch Lomond I felt a bit betrayed by the wire fencing, the county council's signs claiming ownership of the loch and the occasional diversion to walk along the road because some selfish goose had chosen to build his house right on the shore. On the other hand, there were some beautiful little spots like this little grove straight out of a fantasy novel, and it's hard to be unhappy in the hills.

Halfway around the loch we stopped for ice cream at a little shop and decided offhand to rent a pedalo. I had never been in one before and didn't quite expect the hardship my legs would have to endure, especially on the seemingly never-ending journey back to the shop across the lake, and I got out with a very wet bum from a boat left in the drizzle for days. Okay, I wasn't feeling as 'at one with nature' as I had with Jess at Loch Lomond. But we had a good giggle and finished our walk. After a couple of hours of actual studying on our return to the hostel, we cooked a huge dinner of pasta in the ample and very clean kitchen. There were a whole range of people there of different ages and nationalities; French and German were spoken more than English in our vicinity the first night. Invernsaid being my first experience of an actual hostel, I hadn't realised hostelling isn't just confined to young people, so that gave me hope for the future... We went out for a drink at the Old Mill again and listened to some country music before going over to the Old Smiddy for a pint of Corncrake Ale, produced on the Isle of Orkney and just about the sweetest, most delicious ale I've tasted to date. Need to get me some more of those.

The following morning we decided to take the train out to Blair Atholl, 'the gateway to the Cairngorms', just a ten-minute ride away. The drizzle had ceased and the sun was out in all its glory. As we sat in the common room waiting for our late Sunday morning train, we saw a crowd of people in the street outside, staring at and taking photographs of something just out of sight. Lachy guessed it had to be a famous person, so we high-tailed it out of the hostel to take a look for ourselves. From the top of his curly head above an open car bonnet Lachy recognised Jeremy Clarkson. We stood quietly while he filmed a scene, presumably for Top Gear (see: the car) and then he and the crew wandered off. An average day for Pitlochry.

Hiking through the forest in Glen Tilt

The train ride was only ten minutes (though we forgot to look at the platform and nearly boarded a train to London instead) and we were deposited, thankfully, in the middle of nowhere, with some snow lying on a far-off mountain like some scene out of Switzerland. Our map guide suggested a walk down Glen Tilt, supposedly one of the most famous glens in Scotland, so we followed the path along the river and up into the forest along a wide track. It got quieter and quieter as we walked, until a deer off in the trees was actually surprised by our appearance - though I scared it off with my gasp. We kept saying we'd sit down for lunch as soon as we found a nice spot but the forest just kept getting higher and quieter... then we finally emerged, passed a few groups of people, and followed the path through some fields for a while, alongside a lamb who hadn't yet really learned to be afraid of people.

It started raining and we couldn't see the bridge the map promised, so eventually we cut down to the river and sat on some rocks to eat our lunch of cheese and crackers. The map showed a firing range on the route back but said it was only occasionally used... unfortunately this turned out to be one of those days. We could see, from the opposite hill, people shooting huge distances at large targets on the hillside, and the path just below them. There was no way that was safe. We decided to walk back along the river, on the safer side of it. After a while we realised we'd missed a turning just before the bridge and gone further than the map had suggested... but after all, we are adventurers.

The walk back was much faster and we still had a couple of hours to kill before the train back, so we stopped in a little cafe for a coke, made a brief foray into the Museum of Country Life where some free-wine event was taking place, and then walked up to Blair Castle to sit and write for an hour or so. Unfortunately we had to pay entry to the castle and gardens just to sit in the coffee shop, but we made full use of our tickets and explored the castle first. The collection of weapons and antlers the castle has is incredible... there's even a pair of giant elk antlers found on the Isle of Man. It's one of the few times I've felt I was getting my money's worth for entry to a castle. Blair is still the home of the Duke of Atholl, where biannual dinners for the Keepers of the Quaich are held; it hasn't been forgotten and half-heartedly set up as a tourist attraction. The avenue entrance and the gardens are also beautiful.

We had dinner in Cafe Biba when we got back to Pitlochry that evening, and while the pizzas we had were perfectly fine, they were nothing special. We went back to the hostel and fitted in a bit more of the revision we were supposed to be there for. We set off home early the next morning so there was no time for any then, except on the train. But hey, no point wasting a beautiful day in a beautiful place on studying, right?

Until next time :)