eptivity

When one moves to a new country where it is nearly impossible for things to happen in a timely and/or efficient fashion [see: 15 pieces of mail from our bank, none of which contains our actual bank cards, which are required to get Internet at home], one may find it difficult to blog consistently, as one’s Internet access may be limited to the following: a) staying in a hotel, b) going to work with Stephan, c) traveling approximately 1 hour by train to visit Stephan’s boss’s wife, c) using the library’s Internet for 30 minutes at a time, d) paying £5/hour for Starbucks’ Internet, or e) hanging out in McDonald’s parking lot. All of which have been employed; may we recommend McDonald’s.

So instead of blogging, we’ve been going places. Like Scotland.

Highland cows! Lots of tiny baby lambs! Lots of bunnies! Too many pheasants to count! And more Scotch broom than I’ve ever seen in my life.

We got to see a great deal of countryside, which was beautiful, because Stephan was traveling to 15 different towns for work and also because the satnav likes to send us on as many single-track backroads as possible. But we did drive from Fort William to Inverness along the north side of Loch Ness. Stephan has yet to upload his Loch Ness monster and Urquhart Castle photos, but I hear that they’re lovely.

We stayed one night in Carnoustie, which has something or other to do with golf… I did manage to take one picture there, of the North Sea:

A few days at home, then off to Wales on Saturday afternoon. Barmouth, on Cardigan Bay on the Irish Sea:

They have these great things here called public footpaths that crisscross the country through all kinds of places: private property, industrial estates… For many of them, it’s kind of an imminent domain issue, in that the footpaths have been established for millennia and so belong to the public. I read somewhere or perhaps made up a story about an organization that walks all 130,000 miles or so of England and Wales’ public footpaths on a certain day every year so that they retain their public footpath status. Like this one, just sitting there on the side of the road.

And look what else I found! I win!