Pottering about the place

Hello!! just a few photos I've taken around Skye during our mornings off so far.

This is Hamish at the pier in Broadford, which is the town closest to us here at Kinloch Lodge. Its about 7 miles away (which doesn't mean much to me because I still think in km). There's a supermarket there and stuff even though it is only a small town, its nice for us to go in there every week or so just so we don't get complete cabin fever here!

There are lots of strange beers here

Some of the staff that also live here; Mon and Ben (Aussies), and Jeanette (South Africa). All good value :)


Hamish at Beinn Na Caillich, the mountain over Broadford. There's a Norwegian Princess buried up there - saucy Mary!

Scottish sheep! They actually have 4 horns, but for some reason they remove only 2 of them and leave the front set. We thought maybe it was so the sheep could gore snakes. Or hang their socks out to dry.

This says "Welcome to Isleornsay" in Gaelic. Isleornsay is another even smaller town in the opposite direction of Broadford. We walked there on the way to Armadale, which is where the clan Donald centre is, and is also where a ferry goes back across from Skye to the mainland.

We had to buy really warm hats as its already quite chilly here! It was -1 degree the other morning! Can you imagine how cold its going to get in winter?!?!?!?

The kiwivan

Here it is; our new home.


It has a lounge, kitchen with sink, gas oven and cook-top, and a fridge! awes!



It's really nice to have a bit of extra space and our own bathroom etc, so we're really happy with it :) Just a wee bit cold in the am!!

Miss you all!!

Finished!

Hello all! I've finally finished blogging our Haggis adventures (they're further down the page under Inverness). I haven't got around to putting all the photos up on flickr yet, but I will do soon. For now, I have put a bunch up on my facebook page if you're keen for a look.

xxx R

UPDATE

I have only managed to complete blogs for the first 4 days of our Scotland tour so far... but getting there :)

In other news; Alex Salmond, the First Minister of Scotland, was at Kinloch Lodge for dinner on Monday night! Scotland now has its own Parliament, and Alex Salmond is the head of the Scottish Cabinet. I guess he would be Prime Minister, if they had one. I’m still figuring out how their system works, because all the Scots I’ve asked so far aren’t sure themselves how it all works! When we were in Kyle of Lochalsh on tuesday (the town where the Skye bridge comes into mainland Scotland) the police were guarding the new medical centre as apparently he was going to be there to open it!

How are you all doing? Miss you lots!!
xxx R

First days at Kinloch Lodge

Well, we’ve now started our work here at Kinloch Lodge. Here's Hamish in his work gear, and this is our room in the staff quarters called the kennels (Kinloch was built as a shooting lodge so our rooms used to be part of the kennels). Hamish has started training at the bar for seating guests, pre-dinner drinks, canapés and the like, and also serving wine and drinks during and after dinner. They have these ‘wine flight’ things which are like wine tasters they do to compliment the particular meal a guest is having. So Hamish is learning all about wines and what compliments what, and also carrying around these fangled frames which fit all the glasses in them! There’s a lot to remember for sure. I have started training as ‘food runner’ which involves service of food, clearing plates etc. But it’s a lot harder than it sounds, as the meals here are 5 course fine dining experiences, and I need to be able to present the food to the guest with its full name and list the ingredients. Also the hotel has a policy of not asking a guest what meal they ordered, so we need to remember which plate goes to which guest. There’s also a lot of cutlery and things that I had no idea even existed :S

The first night was a bit of a disaster for the both of us because there was just so much information to take in and it was all new. The second night we coped a bit better and hopefully from now on we will be able to keep up with the busy-ness of dinner service. Lunch and brekky are a little less crazy paced so we have been ok with that so far.

The dining room dinner service seems to bring in between 20 and 40 guests per night. It’s very formal, with classical music playing in the background, silverware on display and paintings of the MacDonald family ancestors on the walls.

All the staff here are amazing. The chefs are wonderful and they also cook meals for us too (lunch is made for us and put in the ‘larder’ or pantry) and then they make a lovely meal for us at 5pm before we start work for the dinner service at 6pm. Also, the service team have been really good to us, especially because we are starting from scratch and so we’re a bit slow.

The only things that aren’t so pleasant here are the midgies. Scottish midgies. They’re like a tiny version of our NZ mozzie, and they leave terrible itchybites. Apparently they will die off soon, but until then we will both be devising ways to shelter from the dreaded midge.

I guess I won’t be posting that many blogs from now on, unless we do a bit of sightseeing on our days off. There are lots of great walks on Skye which we will try and do as soon as possible while the weather is still relatively nice. The last few days have been a bit overcast and rainy, but apparently in the winter it is really stormy, windy and rainy! So we’ll have to do the walks before that kind of thing sets in

Hope you are all well

xxx Renelle

Kinloch Lodge

Hello everyone, I’m writing this to you from the Isle of Skye!! We arrived here this afternoon on the train from Inverness, which was a really lovely journey through the highlands. We have installed ourselves in our room, which is in a kind of staff wing thing, about a 7 second walk from the kitchen and our place of work. That’s already an excellent saving on transport to work, is it not?

Tomorrow we both start work, I start at breakfast and Hamish starts at lunch time. They operate on a roster system and the shifts are either covering lunch and dinner, or a split shift covering breakfast, lunch or afternoon tea and dinner. The nice thing is that we will get our days off together so we can explore the island a bit.

We met most of the team here tonight and everyone is really lovely. We had an afternoon tea here when we arrived, to have a wee taste of the hotel’s food (it’s really well known for its food), and I have to say the brownies here are wayyy better than mine. SO good. It even had crumbled pistachio on the top.

A bit nervous about starting tomorrow because I have NO experience in the hotel industry, but I will just do my best and go from there.

Kinloch Lodge is the white building in the background, across the sea loch Na Dal. So kool!

Now some administrative information;

- We crossed time zones from Belgium back to the UK, so we are now 11 hours behind NZ.

-The address of the lodge is; (so you can send us lots of letters!!)

Kinloch Lodge
Sleat
Isle of Skye
Scotland
United Kingdom IV43 8QY

-We don’t have cell phone reception here (or at least not in our room). There may be reception up on the hills around the hotel but we haven’t checked that yet. So I guess the best way to contact us is by email (we can access wireless in the laundry room hehehe) or calling the hotel. If you want to skype us, email and set up a skype-date J

-There is a phone right outside our room which you can call, but we will only be there to answer it at night or very early in the morning. That phone number is 0044 1471 833381. If you need to reach us during working hours, the hotel phone number is; 0044 1471 833277.

-Don’t forget to keep checking the blog because I will update it as soon as I can with all the goss and happenings of our tour of Scotland.

Okie dokie?

Lots of love,
Renelle xxx

Inverness

We had 2 nights in Inverness to rest up before heading to Skye to start work, so we decided not to do too much sightseeing and just take it easy. We stayed in a hostel that turned out to be right on a main street of the place, which luckily wasn’t too noisy. We spent most of our time perusing stores selling woven products like kilts and scarves and stuff, looking for beanies. But they only seem to sell those Scottish-type hats you see around the place with red fake hair attached to the bottom, haha. We did have a walk along the river Ness (Inver = river mouth, Ness = the river Ness, so Inverness means ‘mouth of the river Ness. Incidentally, Invercargill does not mean mouth of the river Cargill, because there isn’t a river Cargill, but Cargill means something else in gaelic which completely escapes me now but I will probably remember later…) We also visited the Inverness Castle which has a good view of the city.

Hamish at the castle looking over Inverness. I really like the way the Scots pronounce 'Inverness', but I can't think of a way to describe it. Anyways they tend to put a different intonation on their words which I think is what makes it hard to understand them sometimes.

Inverness Castle with statue of Flora MacDonald. The story goes that she sheltered Bonnie Prince Charlie and helped him escape from the Isle of Skye disguised as a woman.

Mish on the walls of the Inverness Castle

Then, once we were packed and ready to go, we decided to go out for dinner and celebrate our last night of travels with some proper food, rather than our usual scrape together tuna and tomato buns that we’ve had ‘on the road’. Of course we went to a place that serves haggis. Hamish had a haggis meal with ‘neeps n tatties’ aka mashed potato and mashed yellow turnips, also with black pudding and oatcakes. Good old oatcakes. The haggis was really yum – again tasting like a spicy sausage stuffing (see post on day 4 of our tour for the first haggis experience). I had a ‘steak pie’ which turned out to be a delicious stew on a plate, with a piece of pastry on top. Lol. Dessert was the best though, the best sticky toffee pudding I had ever imagined. Yum!!! It all worked out really cheap too so that was a bonus!

Hamish and his Haggis

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