From France to Scotland

After living the high life camping in France we skipped across the channel to the UK courtesy of a cheap Ryanair flight. We thought the flight left from "Paris" but turns out the airport is a good hours drive north in some little village. Anyway we arrived in Scotland fine, struggling to find enough warm clothes and then grabbing a new rental for our few weeks in the UK.

We spent a week driving around Scotland with Rachel's long lost brother and girlfriend Nina. It was good to see Rodney after about 4 years. We left Glasgow after one brief night and headed around the usual western and northern tourist circuit. We visited Loch Lomond drove to stay in Oban for the night on the coast. Then we did a long misson in the rain to the Isle of Skye which reminded me of the remote parts of the south Island scoured with large glacial valleys.

We continued the circuit north checking out Lochness and then eventually to a very grey town of Inverness. From here we drove diagonally south back towards Edinburgh so we could drop off Rodney and Nina at a huge music festival 'T in the Park'. We enjoyed chilling in Edinburgh, literally and metaphorically. It had a nice feel with lots of students, a few tourists and heads of pubs and good food.

Since then we have leapfrogged south to York for a night. I ran around the town for a while trying to avoid what seemed like half of England out for a Saturday afternoon walk. From there we are visiting lots of friends for a week. We are currently in south Manchester visiting one of Rachel's close friends Kat, this afternoon we will head to Sheffield to see Bryn and Piret, orienteering friends and flatmates and do some fell race. Then we will visit Leicester to see friends who we meet in South America before spending out penultimate week in London and Paris before flying back to Singapore.