The Braemar Gathering

I have always quite fancied seeing some of the highland games, so when we knew we were going be in Scotland for the Fringe, we decided to go.  The best known is probably the Braemar Gathering largely because, being close to The Queen's summer hideaway of Balmoral Castle, Her Majesty pops in for a while each year.  If it's good enough for HM then it must be good enough for us, so this is the one we chose.

There was no mega bus to Braemar, so we paid quite a lot more for our bus journey here, but at least the scenery was nice as we passed through the Cairngorms.  Being used to city living where public transport has standing room if you're lucky, we got a reminder of how different it is to live in a sleepy rural place like this.

The coach we were on must have seated around 55 people, and because a number of other people were heading to Braemar for the Games too, it was busier than usual.  The driver was getting terribly worried because she had to pick up some schoolkids and wasn't sure she'd be able to because the bus was 'really busy and almost full'.  In fact there were at least twenty seats still available and plenty of standing room - let's hope she never has to drive a London bus in rush hour!

After a quick shop for food and wine at the little Co-op, we walked the short distance to the hostel.  We had booked months ago, but some were turning up now on the off chance - which turned out to be no chance within about a forty mile radius.

In the morning we had a good Scottish cooked breakfast to fortify ourselves for the day and then headed off to the show ground where the pipe bands and Scottish dancers were already in full swing.  Whilst these were good to see, especially when the six pipe bands massed together and paraded around the arena, they weren't the main draw for us. Somewhat predictably, I wanted to see the heavy weights, and in particular the tossing of the caber.

There are no Olympic standard bits of equipment for the weights throwing here.  The hammer really is a huge Thor type hammer.  There is a big old fashioned weight with a ring handle, and the stone is exactly that - a big lump of rock weighing 12.7kgs. Some of the throws were pretty impressive, although one cameraman was nearly rueing the day that he left a large and presumably very expensive lens near the edge of the field.  The hammer just missed smashing it into pieces.

One man did very well in the throwing events, walking off with three trophies.  I guess at least he wouldn't have found them too heavy to carry!

Kilt wearing is compulsory for the throwing events, and with all that twirling and the gusting of the wind, it is just as well that the men are allowed to wear a pair of shorts underneath!  Perhaps this was a special request from Prince Phillip because he doesn't want The Queen getting an eyeful!

And it is all men in the heavy events; women are only allowed to compete in the light events such as the running and jumping.  Most running events are also handicapped, which can make it a bit confusing to work out who is doing well when there are such big gaps in their starting positions to reflect their various genders and ages.

 But the main running event had no handicaps and was certainly not for the feint hearted.  The 5.3km hill race did allow women, and had its fair share of somewhat older competitors, but everyone started together.  And it wasn't joking about being a hill race.  After a lap around the arena, they set off on the 390m climb up the Morrone hill behind the show ground, disappearing into the trees at the base and reappearing some ten minutes later as little specks halfway up.

When the first person made it to the top, they set off a beacon and then turned around and ran back down, with one final lap in the arena before they could finally finish and collapse in mud splattered exhaustion.  The arena lap was good as it meant everyone got a good cheer for their efforts, wherever they finished.  Some seemed to be far too fresh long, as if they hadn't really tried hard enough, while others clearly had legs that had long since turned to jelly and were lucky to make it across the line.

The winner finished in around 28 minutes, some way behind the under 25 minutes record, but then there had been a lot of rain this year which had made the trail pretty even rougher going than usual.  Some of the stragglers were still finishing around 20 minutes later.  Personally, I think I would still have been trudging my way up that hill as everyone was leaving in the evening.

But it's not all hard work.  There was time for a bit of light entertainment when the drum majors competed to see who could be the best at throwing the mace over a twenty foot high banner.  Some showed off their twirling skills on the walk up, but the real test was to get it over the banner and catch it again without breaking time with the marching step.  The wind wasn't on their side at all, and there were a few drops and running catches, but one emerged victorious with all but one of his catches just about making the grade.


A surprising favourite of the day was the inter services tug'o'war.  Various military teams from the area made strenuous efforts to win this event and whilst some ties were over very quickly, others were a real battle.

The royal party turned up at about three o'clock and stayed for about an hour. Prince Philip had rallied from his recent illness to make it here with The Queen, and they brought with them the Duke and Duchess of Cornwall and Princess Anne.  All seemed to enjoy the event, and like the rest of us, they weren't able to prevent themselves from laughing at the atrociously bad childrens' sack races.

You would think that, knowing that they would be racing in front of royalty, press and 20,000 others, they would have had a bit of a practice first.  But no, some of them clearly idea at all how to race in a sack.  Some tried a little shuffle, others went for huge leaps and fell straight away, while one reason did lots of tiny hops that at best moved them forward a few millimetres at a time!  They were truly terrible, but at least it was funny.

And then we got to the main event of tossing the caber.  For those that don't know, the caber is a huge wooden pole that is about nine inches at one end tapering down to about five inches at the other.  The famous 6m long Braemar caber is a relative lightweight at only 59.9kgs.  They tend to be on average slightly shorter, but around 8kgs heavier.



Competitors hold the caber upright, with the smaller end down, take a run up and then throw it.  The aim is to have the top end of the pole hit the ground with the pole vertical, and then for the pole to fall in a perfect straight line.  Imagine that the pole is thrown from the six position on a clock face, the tip of the pole when it falls should be at the twelve.

This is much easier said than done.  Many don't even manage to flip the pole over, let alone hit the right position.  But some did very well, and when they did, they got a huge roar of approval.

We thoroughly enjoyed our day at the Games, and we also managed to meet up briefly with one of our fellow Antarctica shipmates who happened to be over from the States visiting family in the area.

The Granite City

From Inverness we took another mega bus to Aberdeen, this time with the prized £1 ticket.  And they have free wifi on board, so at £1 for a three and a half hour journey, they could put Internet cafes out of business and just have people going back and forth on the bus while they get connected!

Lots of people are dismissive of Aberdeen, saying it is an ugly city with little to offer.  Perhaps it is just that our expectations were low to start with, but we were pleasantly surprised.

Yes the city is largely made from granite, which can make some buildings look like they're made out of breeze blocks, but there are a lot of large and very grand buildings, and when the sun catches them the silvery flecks in the granite sparkle beautifully.  There is a big park in the centre of town, the small cobbled streets add character alongside the big wide ones.

It isn't the grandest city, or the prettiest, or the most interesting, but I have certainly seen a lot worse.

We were only really going to Aberdeen as a stopping point on our way to Braemar, so we had no real plans to do much here.  We did have a few very lazy days in the hotel - it was nice to have a hotel room for a change -  feeling decadent about doing nothing but drinking some wine and watching the Paralympics.  Otherwise, our time in Aberdeen was largely spent just wandering around the city and finding a few pubs to eat in while we took advantage of the free wifi.

Mind you, one thing we definitely refused to do was to get any washing done in our hotel.  I know that hotels can be expensive - as we found out to our cost that time in Curitiba - but this was truly extortionate.  I have pictured the price list in case you need a scare, but if I just tell you that a pair of pants costs £3.20, then you'll see why we decided not to bother lining the pockets of the Ibis!

In search of Nessie

From Edinburgh we took the mega bus to Inverness.  For those of you that have never used a mega bus, they can offer some great deals if you buy early enough.  We just missed out on the best offer for this trip as we had to pay £5 each, but still much better than normal bus prices or the train.

Although it is the main town of the Scottish Highlands, Inverness is still only small itself.  It has its own castle, and sits prettily on the river Ness, but there is not much else in the town.  We did find a couple of decent places to eat out, and on our first night we had a free hearing of the Status Quo gig nearby, but on one day it rained so much that we decided to stick with the log burning stove in the hostel rather than go out and get wet.

I suspect that most visitors here use Inverness as a base for trips out into the Highlands.  You can get tours to various peaks, castles, islands, and distilleries, many of which we intend to get around to at some stage.  But for now, our primary objective in Inverness was to go and look for Nessie!

Loch Ness

Nessie, or more formally The Loch Ness Monster, is the reason that Loch Ness is famous.  The first alleged sightings of Nessie go way back to the 6th century, when St Colomba apparently saw something lurking in the Loch.  The first twentieth century claims of monster sightings began in 1933 with a Mr and Mrs MacKay.  Some photos have been taken, usually at dusk or dawn and always grainy and indistinct, so there is little chance of proving or disproving her existence from those.

The first photograph was taken by Hugh Grey in 1933 and was published in the Daily Mail, which then hired a big game hunter called Marmaduke Wetherell to find Nessie.  Unable to do so, he apparently faked some footprints in the sand, which were believed to have been made using a dried hippo foot, more than likely one of those old game hunter's souvenir umbrella stands!

Then in 1934 a surgeon called Colonel Robert Wilson produced probably the most famous Nessie photo, known as the Surgeons photo.  It appeared to show a definite head, a bit like that of a diplodocus dinosaur, rising out of the water.  

This got everyone quite excited and did a lot to further the legend of Nessie until in 1984, analysis of the photo appeared to show that sadly the 'monster' could only have been very small, so was unlikely to be Nessie.

Even worse for believers, in 1994 a man called Christian Spurling made a dying confession that in fact he had built the creature in the photo from some sculpted wood and a toy submarine.  The hoax was apparently the idea of his stepfather - none other than Marmaduke Wetherell.

 

Urquhart Castle

So is the legend true?  Well like countless others who have visited the Loch, we didn't see her.  We took a boat trip from Inverness, down the Caledonian Canal, and onto Loch Ness.  We saw Urquhart Castle and the old Bona lighthouse, and we heard about the old Wellington bomber that was pulled out of the Loch in remarkably good condition some 45 years after ditching there in 1940, but we didn't see Nessie.
 

Bona Lighthouse

But then Loch Ness is Britain's second largest surface area of freshwater, over 21 square miles, and so deep that it is actually by far the largest volume.  It is deep enough that you could completely submerge London's BT Tower in it, so the odd monster or two would certainly fit.  And because the water is very peaty, the visibility is incredibly poor, so it would be an easy task for Nessie to hide away.

They have made a number of attempts to either prove or disprove the legend, by trawling the lake with sonar but even then the results have been inconclusive.  Some suggest there is nothing, but others have hit some disturbances to the readings that could something entirely innocuous, or they could be a large creature.

So could there be a monster in the Loch?  Perhaps a last remaining prehistoric creature?  Who knows.  No one has found any real proof to say it is true, but until someone can categorically rule it out, the legend will remain.

Edinburgh

Our second day in Edinburgh was also the last day of the Olympics, so we again had kept the day mostly free to watch that, with just the one show booked.  We figured that as it was early evening, we had a reasonable chance of making it back in time for the closing ceremony, and with the help of a cab back, we only missed a little bit, so we were able to watch the Olympics draw to a close and the extinguishing of the flame.

With the Olympics no longer here to distract us - it was slightly strange to get up and not turn on the TV for the sport - we threw ourselves into the fringe properly.

When we had decided what to go to, we hadn't researched any reviews of the acts at all, we had just tried to pick out a mix of different types of comedy where we liked the sound of the show. With only a few lines of description to go on, we were well aware that we could have picked a few real duds, but we were hoping that at least some would be good.

Overall, we were mostly happy with our choices. There were a couple of ones that we wished we hadn't bothered with, but most were enjoyable and a few were very good. Not sure that we have really seen much in the way of emerging new comedy superstars, but there at least some that we now wouldn't overlook if they were on the bill nearby.

We figured that the free ones were probably even more of a risk, as they are obviously the newcomers, who have not yet earned themselves a paying show. But in fact, some of the free shows were also very good.

We have been to Edinburgh a couple of times before, so we've done the castle and some of the other sights previously, and with all of the shows we were seeing, we didn't have time for a great deal else. But we did manage to catch up with a few friends while we were there which was nice.

With one of the couples that we met up with, we had arranged to meet at a small bistro for brunch. They had got there first and ordered some coffees that still hadn't arrived when we tried to order, even though the place was empty apart from us. With it being only 11am, we had to choose from the breakfast menu, but that was OK, until we asked for the full cooked, only to be told that they didn't have any eggs, sausages, bacon or most other things. They could apparently do us a smoked salmon bagel or some croissants, but that was it.

And apparently it was far too early for the chef to be ready for the lunch menu instead as he was busy cooking pasta! Needless to say we went elsewhere and took bets on how quickly that particular place would be out of business if it couldn't be bothered to take advantage of about the busiest periods that Edinburgh ever has!
Aside from meeting people, probably the most interesting thing that we did was to try out the much talked about local delicacy of the deep fried Mars bar. Nic had been looking forward to this for a while, although neither of us had been especially optimistic about what it would be like.

In fact, it was pretty good. The batter was a light coating and not overly greasy, and the inside had softened into a warm and tasty gooey chocolate caramel that was actually surprisingly nice!

Since then we have been advised that we should also have tried the deep fried pizza, but that seems like a step too far.

Off to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival

While we were working, we had often meant to get around to going to Edinburgh for the Fringe Festival, but never had managed it.  So while we were in South America we decided that as we would be back in the UK at the right time, we would take the opportunity to go this year.

We booked up a rental flat, joined the Fringe Friends, and then spent days looking at the hundreds of shows available and trying to decide which ones to buy tickets for.  We figured that, although Edinburgh is also hosting the rather more highbrow International Festival and the Book Festival at the same time, we would go solely for the fringe, which is largely comedy with some drama and musical acts.

Having picked out our preferred shows, I then spent more hours with a map working out where they all were so that I could group the shows in sensible ways to avoid traipsing all over town everyday.  When I was finally done, we bought the tickets for thirty-four shows over the thirteen days we would be here.

We had decided to get the Caledonian Sleeper train from London to Edinburgh on the Friday night straight after our Olympics session, so having done a quick dash back to Kentish Town to pick up our bags, we were off to Euston to catch the train.

The train wasn't bad.  The two bed compartment was pretty small, with not much room for the suitcases, but had a little wash basin and aside from being a bit warm, it was generally OK.  Although we didn't need to make use of it, the food and drink was reasonably priced for a trapped market.  And we did get a cup of tea and some shortbread biscuits when we were woken up, albeit that it was at 6:45am!

We arrived at Edinburgh Waverley at 7:15 and were piped in with bagpipes.  Personally, not being a fan of the sound of bagpipes, I think that was just their way of making sure everyone was awake and off the train quickly, but perhaps that's just me being cynical.

We couldn't check in to our flat until 10:30, so we looked for somewhere for breakfast.  At that time there was little available around where we were, so we had a cup of tea at one place before finding a little cafe for a cooked breakfast.  And very nice it was too - the Elderberry Cafe in Elder Street if you're looking for somewhere.

The flat is on the way to Leith and is very nice, although not so keen on the three long flights of stairs to get up to it!  We settled in for a bit and, in common with much of the country I'm sure, watched some more Olympics.  We had only booked the one show today, partly in case there was a problem with travel, and partly because we knew we'd still be glued to the TV.

Later, we set off to see our first show.  With all the tickets being unreserved seating, we got there quite early, and soon found that ten to fifteen minutes was all that was needed.  However it was good to be at the front of the queue, as then you can get to pick your seats.  We are tending to go for seats in the second row where there is still a good view and you can hear well, but you are slightly less likely to get picked on.