Mid-life gap year Tanya and Craig

Sometimes as you drive along a highway you see a work of art that catches your eye. Those who travel the Eastlink in Melbourne would be familiar with the Bird and Worm, Smarties, and the Hotel. As we drove on the M9 past Falkirk in Scotland we saw two large horse heads rising above the landscape. These are the Kelpies, shifting spirits that make a monument to the horse powered heritage of Scotland. They form a gateway to the redeveloped Forth and Clyde Canals. Canals and canal boats criss-cross most of the UK. Before road or rail services, canals formed the most efficient highway for goods to be transported. The limiting factor of a canal is navigating any change of altitude, this requires lochs where the water level can be adjusted and this takes time slowing the trip. In the 1930’s the Forth and Clyde canals had become disused and sections filled in. Resurgence in using the canals for pleasure craft saw a demand to reopen them. Re-digging the canal would be relatively ea...

Arriving in Scotland we saw Highland Games advertised in almost every town that we visited. The problem for us was the events were either the week before or in 4 days time; never at a time convenient for us. Our luck changed on the Scottish Borders town of Peebles; all the stars aligned.  Highland Games are when local communities get together and celebrate Scottish culture. All Highland games include: a pipe band competition, highland dancing, and traditional heavy events including caber tossing, hammer throwing, and the crowd favourite of haggis hurling.  Pipe bands and dancing are open to all ages and cover a range of abilities Shot putt is the same as the Olympic event but competitors are free to use whatever technique works for them. Some use a standing throw, others use a run up or spinning preparation.   Hammer throwing, unlike its Olympic equivalent the hammer has a wooden handle and the athlete does not spin in a circle before throwing it. ...

Before meeting Tanya I had never heard of Charles Rennie Mackintosh (CRM). For many years Tanya has owned an item of jewellery designed by CRM, every time she wears it she say “I love CRM designs”.  But who was CRM and what is so special about his designs? In Glasgow Tanya made it her mission to make sure we both learned more. We went to the Willows Tea Rooms, The Lighthouse, the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and the CRM House in the Hunterian Art Gallery.   The staff at the CRM House were extremely passionate and knowledgeable about all things CRM and were able to put his designs into perspective.  In the late 1800’s and early 1900’s Glasgow was leading the world in architecture and design largely due to the influence of CRM.    CRM was born in 1868 in Glasgow where he was educated. At the age of 27 he was attending art school and working as an architect when he designed his first building for the Glasgow Herald known as The Lighthouse....

Isle of Skye Skye, simply beautiful.  Our highlights were The Storr and the Kendram Turf House. The Storr Our GPS told us that we’d arrived, so we parked. At this stage we couldn’t see The Storr in fact we could not see much through the fog and rain. Being a wet cold day, we donned our waterproof jackets, hoods up to protect our ears from the wind. Craig felt the need to double up and wore a beanie as well. We set off, walking up the steep mountain for about 30 minutes before the fog cleared revealing The Storr, and in particular, The Old Man. The Storr are rock pinnacles, some 100+ metres high clinging to the top of a steep hill. The slopes of the hill are covered in lush grassland. Like the 12 Apostles on the Great Ocean Road, The Storr has been formed through erosion.   The Old Man is the most prominent of these rock formations. The walk up to the Storr starts with a steep gravel path that gradually becomes steeper then deteriorates into uneven rocks, m...

When you visit Scara Brae on Orkney you are made aware that Scara Brae is “Older than the Pyramids, older than the Great Wall of China, older than the Incas or Aztecs”. It is 5000 years old, which in itself is very cool, but if you didn’t know better, you could be left thinking that this is the oldest settlement in the world. Of course there are older sites, the Lascaux cave art in France is dated at 14,000 BC and some Australian Aboriginal cave paintings are 40,000 – 70,000 years old. Scara Brae is significant because it is 5000 years old; a complete village and is so well preserved. Scara Brae is a neolithic, new stone age village that was uncovered (it was buried in sand) in 1850 during a storm. It is a village that was largely intact with workshops and tools; homes with furniture, running water and in-home food preservation devices. It is a series of eight interconnected dwellings accessed through small tunnels. The homes had a bed on either side of the room, a...

We loved Northwest Scotland, it is a beautiful place and rather than try and use words to describe it we thought we would let our pictures speak for themselves.  View of Enard Bay Hairy Coo near Loch Torridon W ild Red Deer near Applecross U llapool Harbour Knockan Crag Geopark (Geological National Park) where the continents containing Scotland and Britain collided 300 million years ago. The low cliff at Knockan (the Moine Thrust) expresses older rocks on top of newer rocks. It was here, in the early 1900s that Ben Peach and John Horne challenged the established thinking and first theorised about plate techtonics. Point of Stoer lighthouse designed by Robert Stevenson (Author Robert-Lois Grandfather) where we celebrated Tanya’s birthday Sheep at Point of Stoer   View over the Eddrachillis Bay   Hotwheels near Badcall   Smoo  Cave – limestone under Durness   Tanya back in Hotwheels ...

To a Scottish person, a Munro is a mountain over 1000m in height. To hike up one is to "bag" it. Every Scot can tell you how many Munros they've bagged.  Now a 1000m doesn't sound that high but the base of almost all Scottish mountains is close to sea level.   Yesterday we bagged our first Munro, Ben Nevis the UKs highest peak. Ben Nevis is walked by 12,000 people a year. In rough figures that is 400 a day. It is not walkable all year. Even without the winter snow, the almost constant cloud cover and accompanying rain mean that there are few great days to climb it.   We had checked the forecast and saw a window in the morning and knowing that thousands would attempt the climb we resolved to start early. The alarm went off at 5am. We started at about 5m above sea level and hiked the 1345m to the summit. The hike has three distinct sections: 1. The base to the saddle: the path winds its way through silver birch forest and sheep paddocks w...

Rugged, windswept, rainy and raw.   Stunning in its beauty. It has inspired me to both poetry and drawing; neither worthy of sharing but rewarding none the less. The vivid colours of the green mountains, orange kelps, grey stone, white washed buildings, and the blue lochs left a lasting impression.   The dominating features of the island are the layered volcanic mountains that have been sheered by glaciers defining both the lochs and coast. We were fortunate enough to have long spells of sunshine interspersed with rain showers. The principal town of Tobermory is a group of brightly coloured buildings clustered around a small harbour.   There we had our first tasting of peated and unpeated whiskies in the Tobermory Distillery. Later walking near our campsite on Loch Na Keal we could recognise the smell of peat. It is like a cross between coal and wet sheep and will always remind me of the Isle of Mull.