Landing in Ireland!!

Well it's official - we have arrived in the Emerald Isle, land of Guinness and leprechauns. We came in to Dun Laoghaire port on an earlier swift ferry so had an extra few hours to play with in Dublin! Perfect sunshine greeted us after a rainy start, so we managed to see the Dublin castle and gardens, 2 famous cathedrals and do a bit of noseying through the shops.

St Patrick's Cathedral

At Dublin Castle

Dublin at night - over the river Liffey

The Lakes District, England and Wales!!

On the way down to Wales we decided to drive through a bit of the Lakes District in Cumbria, England.

We visited Lake Windermere which is the largest of the English lakes, and it was a lovely sunny day there. Hamish tried some Kendal Mint cake, which is like a bar of solid sugar (with extra glucose syrup!) that tastes like mint oil. You can even get chocolate covered ones! Good for endurance sport and the like, apparently some went up Mt Everest with the Hillary crew!


Then we moved down and crossed the border into WALES!!!


First stop in Wales was Conwy, where there is an awesome castle with city walls still pretty well intact.

This is Hamish at the top of one of the turrets; check out the one top left!


From there we moved on to Llandudno, a victorian seaside town where we stayed the night. Has a really different atmosphere!
Here's Hamish skimmin' his stones

The Last of Scotland

We have now farewelled Scotland :( On the way down to England and Wales we did check out 2 highlights though - Rosslyn Chapel and Hadrian's Wall.

You can't take photos of Rosslyn Chapel but most of you would have seen (a replica of) it in the Da Vinci Code. It was built in 1446 and has a fascinating history involving Knights Templar, Freemasons, murder, treasure; all the good stuff. We were able to get into a guided tour of the place and learned a lot about the carvings inside. Some of the really kool features were;
- A copy of the death mask of Robert the Bruce (that guy from Braveheart)/ a famous Scottish King.
- Over 100 'Green men'; these weird little faces of men with plants coming out of their mouths, supposedly a Pagan symbol of the bond/link between man and earth.
- 2 famous pillars at the front of the chapel; the Mason and the Apprentice pillar. The Mason carved his pillar, and then set off to a nearby town for inspiration for the 2nd one. Meanwhile the apprentice had a dream and beautifully carved the second pillar. When the Mason returned and saw the work, he flew into a jealous rage and killed his apprentice with a mallet. At the back of the chapel is a carving of the Mason's face, nearby is the Apprentice with a bump on his head, and then the Apprentice's crying mother.
- There is a carving of an angel carrying a heart. This is supposedly because the chap who had the chapel built (William St Clair) and his brother were chosen to escort the heart of Robert the Bruce (King of Scotland) to Jerusalem. Robert the Bruce had wanted his heart to be returned to the Holy place when he fell. If you read the Da Vinci code, there were certain other ties of the St Clairs to Jerusalem!
- The Crypt was where limited filming took place for the movie. Apparently Tom Hanks walked down an aisle and down into the Crypt, but the rest of the church was shot from a model, as the real chapel is currently under restoration and is covered in scaffolding. Apparently the film crew put up a sticker of a pentagram over the entrance of the crypt, which was removed after filming to leave a white mark where it had taken off the surface of the 600year old stone!!!! So now there is a nice white circle above the entrance to the crypt, lol.

After that, we left Scotland and passed over the English border.


Hadrian's Wall was built in ~130AD by Roman Emperor Hadrian as the frontier of the Roman Empire, and to keep the Picts at bay haha, the ancient inhabitants of Northern Scotland proved a bit much for the Romans to handle. The wall is now broken in places but originally stretched the whole way across the country. We visited it in several places, the most memorable being the Sycamore Gap. Here the is a beautiful Sycamore tree in the place where the opening scene of Robin Hood; Prince of Thieves was filmed. Lol.

This is me at the Sycamore Gap.

Here's Hamish with his bow n arrow :)

Almost there

Only 10 days to go before we start off on our travels, so we're busy with packing and organising!! We also moved back to the highland resort staff accomodation so that's kept us busy over the last few days.

This morning we were a bit homeless (between moving out of our house and into the resort later on) so we drove to Carrbridge nearby and ate our cereal (with all our cutlery and dishes and entire belongings haha) at this nice bridge amongst the squirrels.
Apprently this bridge was built in 1717 so that people could reach the burial place across the other side of the Dulnain river, bodies in tow :S

Our European Adventure Begins SOOOON!!

Hi Everyone,
Mish and I are really excited to be embarking on our travels in just a few weeks (1 month and 1 day to go!!!).

First we will be driving from Aviemore to Edinburgh, seeing the Rosslyn Chapel and Hadrian's wall on the way down to the Lake District. From there we drive to Wales and stay a while in the north (check out Llandudno on your google-de-google, it looks soooo nice!) and then catching the ferry to Dublin, leaving the car behind til we get back. We have a day to check out the Guinness factory and then we are on a 3 day tour of the Republic / 'Emerald Isle'; http://www.shamrockeradventures.com/SouthernRocker3Day.html


From there we catch a bus to Belfast and spend a couple of days there checking out Northern Ireland (like the Giant's causeway and the Carrick-a-Rede Rope Bridge) before heading back to Dublin and then Wales on the ferry. We've got 1 day to drive through Wales and see it's National Parks (staying in an old school house in the middle of a forest), before checking out Cardiff. Next stop from there is Bath where we will soak our travelling selves in the Roman Baths, on the way to Stonehenge!! Then we're off to London, to start our Contiki tour of EUROPE!!!!

Here it is folks;
http://contiki.co.uk/tours/106-europe-camping-46-days. This tour is really great because camping saves so much money on accomodation. We'll be rocking through; France, Spain, Monaco, Italy, Vatican City, Greece, Turkey, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Albania, Montenegro, Croatia, Bosnia, Hungary, Slovakia, Austria, Czech Republic, Germany, Liechtenstein, Switzerland, Netherlands and Belgium!!

Some highlights of the tour;
Moulin Rouge, Eiffel Tower, The Louvre, Wine tasting in France, Monaco's Casinos, Punting in Venice, Juliet's balcony in Verona, The Leaning Tower of Pisa, Vatican City, watersports in Capri and Corfu, Greek Island cruising, Athens Acropolis and Parthenon, Troy, Istanbul's Mosques, Croatia's coastline, Budapest, Opera in Vienna, Prague, Liechtenstein, and a visit to the Swiss Alps!! We'll even get to visit Gallipoli which I am stoked about.

We leave Aviemore on the 27th April, and start our Contiki on the 12th May. Wohoooooooooooooo!!!!!!!

Nelle takes on Snowboarding

Check out my board!!! I got up early on my day off and headed up the mountain for a snowboarding lesson, which turned out to be fantastic. I'm now feeling muscles that I didn't know existed, but it was great fun. I had the PERFECT day for it - enough snow, no wind, clear sunny skies, GORGEOUS!

This is the view from the Ptarmigan restaurant where I work (that buidling in the picture). On a good day, you can see the sea from here (the Moray firth at Inverness). It's stunning!

This is the summit of Cairn Gorm mountain, right above the Ptarmigan restaurant. It's the 6th highest mountain in the UK apparently!!

My jump shot; the look of pain/worry on my face is the fact that I'm standing on a ski run and there are skiiers bearing down on me!! Only got one chance to take a shot and wasn't gonna risk my neck again!

A new (cheaper) flat

As most of you know we moved out of the resort staff accomodation as it was a bit pricey, so we're now down the road a bit. The photo above is the area we live in - it has colourful houses and funny speed signs; "twenty's plenty" lol.

Here's our new place;


It's on a little avenue off ROBERTS ROAD!!!