Scotland

I was told that Brighton was dead in the winter. So I put a bit of thought into where I would spend a British winter. Scotland was top of the list.

The seasons hold Britain in such a thrall, that one must pick where one lives based on the time of the year.

London and Brighton are brilliant in the summer as there are lots of tourists, everyone dresses to impress, there are outdoor gigs, and one can sit in the sun on the sidewalk outside a favourite pub till ten o’clock at night.

Scotland is better in the winter when the ‘midges’ have disappeared (to Ibiza I think), the air is crisp and clean, and snow dusts the tops of the Munros.

York, better in winter. Newquay, better in the summer.

Germany, great in winter. Greek Islands, brilliant in the summer.

So I decided to visit Scotland for a bit. A mate from OZ also wanted to check out the top of the island so she borrowed a mates car and we filled it full of backpacks.

On the way up we stopped at a pub near Loch Lomond that felt like a movie set from an old British film.

It was jammed with suits of armour, stuffed animal heads on the walls, and lots of strange odds and ends I avoided in case I caught some ancient ‘long thought wiped out’ disease.

The bar looked like it was built in the eighteenth century.

The roads up there are brilliant for testing ones  driving metal, cause one wrong twitch of the wheel and you’ve buried the nose of the car in a cliff, or sunk it in a Loch.

Magic place up there. Lots of browns, greens, and purples (including tones through the rock cuttings on the sides of the roads).