A Buchan Odyssey

 Hi all, I was worried as no email came from the airline asking me to check in from London, but there was an email asking me to check in at Bangkok. So I figured it was all OK. But maybe why I woke at 4.30am. Sun was rising anyway. Should I have caught the 8am shuttle? What if there was a traffic delay? Anyway, the lovely Jordanian driver was a bit early, and we bemoaned the horrors of city life, especially around Heathrow. He promised to take me dinner next time I was in London because I was so lovely, asking about his life in Jordan and going/not going back. Traffic was smooth.  At the airport there was an immediate split of the arriving people into two groups according to airline, I took the C/D entry as informed by the board, and was immediately met by a friendly staffer who directed me to Thai check-in. No-one there! Passengers I mean. My case was 1.1kg over , so I removed a few books and got to 22.2kg. Still no other passengers. I love that you can just hand over your pa...

Today I went to the Inverness Castle Experience, a newly opened attraction. Actual Highlanders might find it a bit cheesey, with its 'spirit of the highlands' theme always signalled by iridescent deers passing through woods before dissolving into ? eternity, but there was a lot of actually powerful imagery. It was all done with point-contact audio in each room, which was surprisingly efficient. No need to repeat well known Scottish history, but did you know that Josephine Tey [author of the novel voted the "greatest mystery novel of all time' - The Daughter of Time, about Richard III], was a pseudonym for Inverness-born Elizabeth Mackintosh?? Lots else but I'll have to wait for the pictures to remind me. The highland clearances re-imaged The Experience was just a 5 minute walk from my guest house - Bank House on Old Edinburgh Road. Funny what Google maps gives you - 1 Ness Walk is now a newish building called Ness Church, built in 1902. But in 1864 it was a house w...

Not a lot to report, which is perhaps good news. I am happily at my desk in my St Andrews Square hotel where I can really watch the changeable weather - it is mostly rainy with bursts of sunshine. Here I add the transcribed records gained from the day at the records centre of that day, where I scribble away from 9am to 4pm. Yesterday I did not move from that seat! Generally I stop for lunch and loo visits. Last night I was convinced I had a DVT so I will move more today! View from Ibis Styles Hotel The funny twirl on the skyline is the premier shopping district, St James Centre, and to the right of it are monuments on Calton Hill. On this site there used to be the Bridewell Prison, where Robert Buchan was imprisoned in 1835 and 1836 for being drunk and disorderly on duty. But is he our Robert Buchan? Really, you can find Buchans everywhere, at the National Museum Back to the view from the window, despite the construction site on the left, the gardens on the right are nice. I walk diago...

Morning all, writing this from my 4th floor room of a large, unpretentious but surprisingly ideal hotel.  6.30am and one degree outside. It is a massive, tarted up 70's style hotel with lots of glitz and bars as I wended(?) my way from the back entrance, up three sets of stairs - the front entrance is from the car park! However when I opened the door, it was quite a nice surprise. Great first impressions Two things to spot at first - the view of the Mootfoot Hills, and a decent desk. An also decent window-sill allows me to lean on it, with a cuppa, and watch the weather. Not quite East-West but the light moves across the hills and the green parts of western Edinburgh. The airport is just a little further along the very road where I am.  The desk then really caught my attention. Instead of typing on my laptop on my lap, perhaps how it was envisaged, this desk has it all. Good chair, good height, lamp well placed, a shelf for charger bag, 4 power-points, a coffee maker! My immed...

Hawick has a very interesting custom - the Commons Riding. This is where the young men of the district, with the 'authority' of the big man of the region ride around the boundaries of the district. They were looking to make sure that raiders, called 'reivers', were not encroaching on their land. Reivers stole cattle especially, but were into all sorts of bad behaviour. In particular it also celebrates the defeat of English marauders by the young teenage boys of Hawick in 1514. It is all explained at their website Luckily for me, they practice their big ride on Tuesdays and Saturdays over a six-week period. Below is a 44 second video of the horses as they passed right past the Heritage Hub where I am doing research. A lot of locals had lined the streets to see 'the horses'. Some of the riders yelled out a special cry that I could not understand, a sort of rousing "look at us" or "don't mess with us" with a gesture. One family of three todd...

 Arrived to a comfy Air B&B in Hawick, just one street from the bus station (being how I got here), and a 10 minute walk to the Heritage Hub (but with no luggage!) For those not on my private channel, my big, heavy, present laden orange suitcase is stored at Mike and Celia's in Edinburgh. So I am only carting around a small overnight bag and my backpack. What adventures I had over the weekend hiring a car! Mike is over 89 years old and a little forgetful. So a Sat Nav was essential, even though he was certain he knew the way everywhere having grown up and lived (at times) in Edinburgh. Thank god for the Sat Nav. In ensuring this amazing resource I needed to upgrade to a black BMW that was an automatic and had a very large integrated Sat Nav. With the cheaper option you had to plug in your phone with data (another saga for another day). It was also a hybrid vehicle so it was very quiet even using fuel. It was sleek, it had many controls, when you opened the door it played classi...

It's morning here on Friday 8 May, 7.30am. Some of the group have left already for the airport, those going back to Australia. Breakfast starts soon. I am leaving the hotel at 11.15am by private water taxi, with another woman also flying RyanAir, so no rush for us.  Last night we went to yet another part of Venice (Cannaregio), on foot, to a restaurant on the canal, open to the sky. We had fish dish after fish dish - classical Venetian fare according to the man explaining all the elements - eel, squid in black sauce, sardines, shrimp, unnamed fish bits. Many dishes (the food, not the plate) were not eaten by some people at the table. I did honour to the lagoon.  Sardines, shrimp and polenta Squid bits in black sauce with potato  At the end, our tour leader came to our smaller table to ask how we enjoyed the meal. A chorus of 'We don't like fish' greeted her. We should have told her at the start. One lucky woman who does not like to eat fish, and therefore was 'intol...

Some might have considered missing this tour, and they did. But they missed something special. The line for preview of the Biennale, and some fabulous ships. Biennale is about to begin, and we are spotting installations everywhere - see separate post. Yesterday outside a cathedral we saw 20+ trees in pots, today they are gone! They were clearly in transit. Although less 'uninterpretable' than most' modern art, with St Mark's Square Bell Tower across the water Venice was a maritime power of the middle ages. Built on water, they became skilful sailors of the Mediterranean (west of Italy) and Adriatic (north east of Italy) seas. Their low bottomed boats were manoeuvrable, and they had both cargo boats and war ships. By the 1300s they had instituted an industrial sized assembly line for ships, that could assemble a war ship in 24 hours. How is this possible? Clever Venetians prepared all the different parts in a sequence from the outer hull to the final fitting of mast and ...

 The Armenians are a very proud, but under-recognised people.  Armenians have a deeply rooted presence in Venice dating back to the 6th century , establishing a significant cultural and merchant community. The centre of this community is the island of San Lazzaro degli Armeni , granted to Armenian Mekhitarist monks in 1717, which serves as a world-renowned monastery, library, and museum containing over 4,000 Armenian manuscripts. (Google AI overview) We visited the Armenian Island yesterday. What a gem! A beautifully maintained monastery, I think currently 8 monks, and we saw several who said hello. Their church was very bright blue, a bit new to us in Venice. By far the prettiest church. It was originally a leper colony, a disease which is highly contagious and gives rise to hideous deformities of the face and limbs. So infected people were sent to isolated communities, especially to islands. There was the remains of a bricked in archway, were the lepers were able to hear mas...

  As my readers request - more horses: Starting with the Ark At the seafood restaurant for lunch At the Armenian Island Library - mongol? indian? Glass horse Tintoretto horses A famous mercenary, gave church lots of money