My humble apologies for not updating my blog for so long. Apparently I am better at keeping it up to date while traveling and not now that I am at home with a smidging more free time. I feel the best thing would be to update on our recent activities and fill in the gap from Romania to Germany to London to Scotland later. Very briefly we had a whale of a time with the car in Romania, undoubtedly the most adventurous and interesting portion of the journey and then we went to Germany. In Germany Kelly got to meet my German grandparents and other family members who I myself have not seen in 6 years? Shameful I know. We also had a house all to ourselves to stay in which was bliss. An absolute highlight of the time there (aside from seeing everyone again) was Oma’s cooking. We both, with our full and eager consent, put on a reasonable bit of weight in those 8 days. After that we flew with the orange airline to London where I had the great pleasure of meeting many friends again. Everyone seems to be ending up in London! London was pleasant with endless exciting and interesting distractions and most definitely lived up to its reputation of being horrifically expensive. After a tanoshii night spent with Josh, Charolette and Perry at Walten upon Thames we made out way across to Wiltshire to pay a visit to my Aunt and Uncle who live there. Lovely to see them and a delightful piece of the world. Then with funds rapidly diminishing we scampered up north with uncomfortable high bus usage and with a pit stop in Glasgow made it up safe and sound to the edge of the world, the for north of Scotland.

As I do not wish to bore you to tears by endlessly describing our doings blow by blow I shall post a great hunk of picture and intersperse this great hummock of photographery with veins of informative yet not exhaustive script. Perhaps I aught to split it into bite sized chunks; places, beasties, pairties, and ye olde historical stuff (for youuuuu Elina!). I will in the main cover only the oldest historical stuff though, prehistorical to be exact. We did visit various medieval and newer places of interest but really those are, being practically just beyond living memory such as they are, of limited interest and must be saved for a later post.

So off we go with places (around my home). And now that I have uplaoded the photos I realise I have made my usual mistake and uploaded them in the wrong order! So without further ah-do here are pictures of old stuff: Oh hang on this is taking ages, OK old stuff with follow in a specific purpose made post, sorry Elina.

So here are the first hummock of photos of parties:

Kelly and Mum enjoying a tea party!

On our second night back up north we had a little entertainment curtesy of the 'north coast jazz band'. And entertaining they were!

A couple of my attempts at arty shots of the Jazz.


I and Kelly spruced up for the Jazz at the Lyth arts center, a fantastic little place that brings a welcome bit of culture to our wee home up here in the lonely north. They host art exhibitions and performances of all sorts from all over the world during the summer months.
We went back to the lyth arts center for some big band and then this jazz jamming session with members of the Scottish youth orchestra together with the Caithness Big Band.

Beasties

The greatest hairy beastie of them all the Highland Koo.
We were lucky enough to spot of few seals at Gills bay, actually they are pretty common around these parts.
While at Johno'Groats we spotted a crab boat coming in so we bought a few from them. Here we are wrestling with the giant crustations, they proved most delicious, better than lobster in my opinion.
Some other Highland Beasties, the jump suited kind. It was Aarons Birthday, Habushuu was present - nuff said.
A pretty stunning sunrise, I am rather fond of the skies we get up at these rarefied latitudes. I ran down the road in my dressing gown to get this unobstructed shot and then just made it back in time to narrowly avoid a shower of rain.
Kelly peering into a rock pool, one of my favourite childhood pastimes.
A wee fishy!
So it seems it is still one of my favourite pastimes.

And so now we come to places:

Kelly playing chicken with the sea on Dunnet beach, it is a lovely long sandy beach about 5 or 6 km from my house. The dog gets a walk in Dunnet forest evermorning and a run along dunnet beach each evening. Lucky dog!
Looking at Dunnet head from Dunnet beach, Dunnet head is the most northernly piece of land on the Scottish (therefore British) mainland. You can see it quite easily from the back of our house, I guess it is 10 or 15km away.
As the sun gets low we turn around and make back towards our bikes, it gets dark around 5.30pm here! The long dark winter is coming!


Kelly and Mum walking along the cliff top towards the Duncansby stacks.
Kelly and my Mother at the stacks of Duncansby, the red sandstone here is full of faults which the sea erodes first forming an arch as you can see just behind the two of them and then the arch collapses and a true stack is formed.
Kelly standing at the viewpoint on Dunnet head
Looking at Dunnet beach from Dunnet head, it is about 4km long.

Kelly pausing as we walk over the dunes (which were all thrown up in one almighty storm a wee while ago)

And that has to be all for now, I will post a post about the old bits of rock we have been visiting. We are blessed with many piles of rock piled up or otherwise set in a variety of ways by those delightful neolithic folks who lived here all those years ago.

Toodles!