New Years In Scotland

Instead of heading somewhere warmer for the festive season we decided to head north. (For those of you down under this is heading further into the wintry weather)
Instead of flying we decided to put out good kiwi road trip experience into practise and hit the road bound for Scotland!
We stopped off in the Lake District and stayed a night in the beautiful town of Windermere.

Although the weather was misty and cold it provided magical atmosphere as we walked along the ancient stone walls.
Windermere is definitely a place we would like to go back to, perhaps in the summer.

After a relaxing night and morning, we hit the road again Scotland bound. Driving to another country seemed like quite a cool concept. We were looking forward to catching up with Martha - the wee Scottish lass we met back in New Zealand. She lives in Glasgow and kindly offered us a place to stay.

Our first night was spent playing Trivial Pursuit with a group of Martha's friends. We discovered that the Scottish accent can be very hard to understand!! We needed questions repeated several times only to discover it was a football question (soccer)

The next day we hit the shops - post Christmas sales!! Duncan unleashed the shopper within and was the one dragging Becs around the shops. There was one item that we thought would look great in our lounge but unfortunately came with a £5000 price tag.

We took a trip with Martha up around some of Scotlands Lochs. The terrain up in Scotland really is beautiful and if it wasnt for the cold, it could be compared to NZ. The Scottish people more than make up for the cold with their warm laughs and wonderful accent. We called into a birds of prey sanctuary on the way back which was actually closed but the workers there showed us around for free anyway. Duncan got to hold a huge owl which was more like a cat in size and trustworthiness.

The weather New Year's Eve was awful. Horizontal rain and freezing temperatures. We were determined not to chicken out but..... after we narrowly avoided flying debris and Duncan was almost bowled over by a flying portaloo we decided to call it a day. Shortly after leaving, Edinburgh officials followed Glasgows call and cancelled all celebrations due to severe weather. We saw in the New Year with a bottle of champagne, Trivial Pursuit and Martha's fantastic Scottish dancing!!

MORE PHOTOS






The Tardis - city centre Glasgow
















At the Birds of prey zoo in Loch Lommond

The zoo keeper getting a cuddle






























The Falkirk Wheel. This piece of engineering replaces 11 locks (these are used to travel up hill when travelling in a canal boat)

New Year's Party!

Freezing in Edinburgh at Hogmanay
(about 1o layers being worn!!)