Ride to Dumfries

Here it is

Mariazinha

Eight months after getting to Scotland I finally had my first visit from a friend (ie not belonging to the family)

Isabel, or as I call her, Maria, arrived to Glasgow in a mid-September Wednesday.

Not having planned it, she got to Glasgow during the "Glasgow Open Doors Day" week - several buildings are opened to the public, along with some other cultural events.

Thursday, after having visited some things I had planned for her in Glasgow, she met me close to where I now work for her late birthday present - a ticket for Flashdance, the Musical!

It was much better than I thought, a great way to spend an evening :)

Over the next days we did some more interesting things, here's a preview of what "you" may expect of you come visit me in Glasgow!

My favourite restaurant




A Ceilidh

A church with live music, that is, there was a known guy playing the organ!

Maria told me that she had to see one of those typical Scottish castles in a loch while here. So I took her to one!

I chose Kilchurn Castle, on Loch Awe - about one and a half hour distance from Glasgow.

I first saw that castle in February, here's a pic I took then.

And here are the pics I took now.












Those were five great days in Bonnie Scotland! :)

The new job!

As written before, in the end of July I left the previous company I was working on along with other engineers. I started searching for a job back then but the construction market crisis didn't help.

One month later, in the end of August, I was decided to work on anything at all as long as I would get some money, in the meanwhile I could search for a job on my area.
I contacted a recruitment agency and the next day I got a phone call asking me if I wanted to start working in one hour from then - on a food/drinks distribution company, unloading alcohol into the bars. I thought it would even be a good idea, I would get to know the nice bars around town and travel a lot :)

As I was getting to the building I was supposed to get to I got another phone call, from another recruiter. This time it was a nicer job and I was supposed to start the next day - and so I did!
I got to know that day that I got the job because of a very very nice reference given to me by my previous boss, I was glad to know that :)

That was more than two months ago, I'm now working in Edinburgh in one of the best companies I could possibly want. Why is it that good? Because it's on the area I want, it's not too big so what I do really matters, I'm doing a lot of varied stuff and most of all, the projects are great!!!

Here are some examples:


The Unicorn - a warship of the Napoleonic era, needs some conservation works (the structure is just like working on a wooden house turned upside down!)



St. John's Church - we're adding a visitors centre



Sir Walter Scott's House - conservation works on the house of the most famous Scott of all times!



And by the last but not the least...

Rosslyn Chapel - conservation works and construction of a visitors centre




And yes, this is THE Rosslyn Chapel, the one from the Da Vinci Code! :)

Ride to Glen Coe

Here it is

To fish or not to fish, that's the question!

23rd of August was a very fishy day!


I joined the folks from my previous job to go fishing, here are the pics










Here's a little video that made on the way back to the harbor

In the end I won the prize for the biggest fish. Unfortunatelly I don't have any picture of it but it was a bit bigget then the one 3 pictures above.

PS: all the big fishes were returned to the sea, even the kamikaze ones that came back and were caught twice. The small ones didn't deserve to live, so we had a nice big dinner that evening.

Trip to the Isle of Skye

Few days after the trip to the South of Scotland I got an invitation from my flatmate to go to the Isle of Skye by car with him, wife and some family that was visiting. I had for a long time the dream of taking my bike up there so the car idea wasn't very inspiring, besides the 20 and 21st of August were weekdays - but I was unemployed and the fuel would get really cheap by dividing with the other so... why not?
We got out of Glasgow on the 20th of August, Wednesday, early in the morning.
The plan was to get there by one road and get back by another one, to see as much of Scotland as possible.

The first stop was at Loch Lomond, still close to Glasgow, to show the area to the "tourists" :p


On went by my favourite nearby valley - it wasn't difficult to convince the others after having shown the pictures I had from there.


It's true, looks much nicer on a sunny day!


Next stop: Inverary Castle



This is bridge is on Loch Etive’s estuary, which means that some Lochs are opened, connected to the ocean, unlike lakes! They have tides and of course salty water. Loch Ness and Loch Lomond, probably the most known Scottish lochs, are both closed.


Castle Stalker


Half the way into the trip we got to Fort William. Unfortunatelly the weather was awful (or in a Scottish term – lovely!) so it wasn’t possible to see the top of Ben Nevis, the highest mountain in the British Isles.
Fort William is placed on the bottom of this mountain, by an opened loch, which means that it’s possible to see the whole 1344 metres of the mountain from sea level to it’s top.


We stopped nearby for lunch, a nice Portuguese one as demanded by our religion!


A few more stops to stretch the back.



Finally the typical landscapes from the Highlands started appearing.


The valley of the five sisters – 5 consecutive peaks on the other side of the valley from where this picture was taken.


The road was a tad moisty, it seems


Here’s Eilean Donan Castle, one of the most known castles in Scotland



We finally got to Skye, with the weather getting worse, almost no visibility, hell on earth (aka drippy, in Scottish).
Still the countryside had something magic about it, made me wish I had an old VW camper to just stop there, stay overnight in the total silence.



By nightfall we got to the hostel, on the north of the island (which is around 60 kms / 38 miles long.
Just before getting there we stopped by a cliff what should look much nicer with a clear skies sunset!


The hostel was in the middle of nowhere, which made gave it a special charm


“Us”, following our religion!





Next morning was still gray and cold but the views from the hostel were still great (click the picture to see it full screen)






Finally the sun started appearing.











Portree, very nice little town.



We changed our plans about the way back, so we decided to follow the same road which should seem much nicer on a sunny day.






Half way back to Glasgow we decided to go by Glen Coe, It was already dark but the valley looked amazing so I made up my mind about getting back there as soon as possible – that took me 3 weeks, so don’t miss the next blogs!



Overall it was a nice road trip, great company and lousy (aka Scottish reasonably good) weather!


Now, almost 3 months after that road trip, I promised myself to get back to Skye with my motorbike. For me, the difference between the car and bike is comparable to the one of… sex with or without condom! lol (sorry for the sensitive people but you know what I’m talking about!!! :p )
Besides that, with the bike I can stop whenever, wherever, for a nice pic!