We flew into Edinburgh in the evening, a little late but were so pleased to have Moira pick us up. It has been many years since she visited family in New Zealand, nice to catch up and talk about our two boys who had recently visited her. She whisked us north to Dundee to be reunited with her Mum, Helen. These two have to be two of the happiest souls in the country, there is a bright side to everything. We had a great catch up and enjoyed having a homely house to live in for a few days. Attention to my aching shoulder was also brought into a brighter light as well. Moira is a practicing physiotherapist and both Helen and 'my sweet' are trained nurses. There was no wait in consulting rooms and no need to have have explanations made by expensive medics. Not sure that I would understand their English though as just as you seem to be getting onto the right wave length they throw in an "och aye" and you wonder if you missed something. So I now know that I have a trapped nerve and it will take a few more weeks before everything comes right. Just knowing that makes me feel better.
One of the most interesting things that 'one' can do in Dundee is visit the Royal Research Ship, "Discovery". This is the ship that was built in Dundee for Robert Scott to visit the Antarctica in 1901. Shackleton was also aboard and these guys did some pretty daring deeds. To think they were headed for the South Pole with no GPS makes my attempts and failure at finding a geocache with coordinates, a description and a hint.....and a GPS! Pretty pathetic. Fortunately I wasn't aboard but did give myself a few moments to pretend that I was thrashing through pack ice at the South Pole. A really well presented museum display and the old ship is being kept in excellent condition.
Dundee is a city built of stone, either grey or brown. It is an old city with numerous pubs and churches. If one isn't on a street corner the other is. It seems everybody is either drinking or praying....maybe doing both! The stone doesn't brighten what is a fairly dour climate......I felt that a maniac with some pots of high glow paint could brighten the place up, (British Paints isn't flavour of the month with the current situation of Jake the Peg). So it is very grey and when the temperature is in single figures and there is a cool wind off the channel it is unpleasant. Current season tells us that it is coming on summer and we have had some cold days and some not so cold days. However when the weather does nudge into the top of the teens it means summer and off with the jerseys, t-shirts and shorts are order of the day. Out the families come and down to the 'rec' they go. I am pretty sure that if skinny white legs are an inheritable characteristic then I have some Scottish ancestors. It is hard to believe that they can sell convertible cars here and we also surprisingly note a number of solar panels on roofs.
An improvement in my arm means we have made a plan to have a couple of days in a rental car around Aberdeen then fly from Edinburgh to Berlin early next week. Surely more adventures to be had in Europe.
We headed north in our wee Ford Fiesta this morning and spotted a few castles on the way. Mention of William Wallace brought back memories of "Braveheart", tough times. There are so many amazing castles in this part of the World, hundreds of years old.......we could spend months wandering around here but we must get back to Edinburgh airport by Monday morning.
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