Edinburgh and Celts

donich_admin — Thu, 31 Mar 2016 20:04:47 +0000

I decided to put my reporting day for this week off until tomorrow and have a day in town. The Celts exhibition is on in Edinburgh at the moment, and as I missed seeing it when it was on in London last year, I thought I would make the effort and go and see it with J (who lives in Glasgow). It is a bit of an onerous trip getting to Edinburgh from Lochgoilhead. In order to get there at some reasonable hour you have to catch the 7:10am from Arrochar. Then there is a change in Dumbarton (trying to avoid Queen Street which is in chaos with alterations at the moment) and another train crawling along through the central belt, stopping at every place you have ever heard of (and some you haven’t – in some cases twice), finally getting in at 9:50. They also charge £57 for an on-peak ticket which is a bit of a joke as the Dumbarton leg was mobbed (I was lucky to get a seat) and has no tables, no catering, no first class and (bizarrely) no litter bins.
Anyway, the first part of the journey (which is actually the West Highland line to Fort William and Mallaig) is extremely spectacular. It runs right along the side of Loch Long, and then along the coast, so first there is a transition from real Highland mountains and lochs to seaside with oyster catchers and many herons (I saw five on one small mudflat so the pickings here must be good) and then another change to the rather blah scenery of the suburban belt. It is hard to say exactly where the Highlands ‘stop’ on this route, I am inclined to reckon it is just before you get to Helensburgh.
My brother refused to come to see Celts because it is in the (to quote) “midden city, full of tacky rock shops and massage parlours, capital in name only”, but actually the exhibition was very good and he would have enjoyed it. I’m very interested in how the mysterious world of tribes and Druids blended into the Roman Empire and was then transformed via the Christian Church into the modern world, and as this was basically the subject of the exhibition, I was basically right at home. There were some great artefacts on display as well – some of the torcs would have been worth a fortune in gold alone, not even allowing for their historical value. I was especially taken with the story of the guy who went out for a first go with his metal detector and found a horde of more than 12 gold torcs – makes you wonder what he did for an encore.
I left J taking a look at the Thistle Chapel in St Giles’ cathedral – which is also well worth seeing, and caught the train home via a quick trip to the M&S food hall for some fruit for me, prawns for the cats, and whisky for R who is being kind enough to pick me up from Helensburgh.

In Bruges

donich_admin — Tue, 08 Dec 2015 12:33:35 +0000

I just got back from a mini-break in Bruges and Ghent with J (R has used all his holidays for the year – plus we have serious cat-sitter issues at the moment). I have to admit that after recent events I was a bit worried about visiting Belgium, and in particular, Brussels.
But (of course) all was well and on the whole we had a great time. We went down on the sleeper from Arrochar to London, and then on the Eurostar to Brussels. This was great fun – I love trains and hate flying so this was a super start to the holiday.

We stayed at the Marriot hotel in Ghent, which is unusual in that from the front it looks like a row of 17th Century houses, but inside it is a modern hotel with a huge foyer and glass roof. It also had a glass lift which neither of us were that fond of.

Then we went to ‘fookin’ Bruges’ as the film put it. I’ve been before in the summer and it was mobbed with tourists, so actually it was much nicer in winter (particularly as it was sunny) with few tourists and the shops all decorated for Christmas. I more or less forced J to go up the bell tower (266 steps) and then felt sorry as he doesn’t like heights and was genuinely frightened. I had to allow him a large Leffe to fortify himself after that.

So then we set off to come home, duly relaxed, and ran into the stormy weather in the UK. First the power failed on the sleeper and we were stuck outside Carlisle for three hours. Then, for reasons that are not clear to me, they sent the train off to Edinburgh (!) and terminated it there. So then I had to make my own way back to Arrochar via Glasgow. I finally got home, seven hours late, at 2pm. To say I was frazzled wasn’t half of it. Still it could have been worse, because after I got home, R told me that he had thought that they were about to close the Rest and be Thankful – which would have forced us down a fifty mile diversion via Crianlarich.

trains – Donich Website

Edinburgh and Celts

In Bruges