The Quest for Good Nachos in Edinburgh (or at least edible ones)

I really miss the almost ubiquitous availability of nachos in North American pubs. A few places over here offer something on their menus called "nachos" but for the most part these dishes bear little resemblance to the nachos of home. One of the biggest problems with nachos on this side of the Atlantic (and channel) is the lack of proper sour cream (sometimes called "soured cream" on Edinburgh menus). Here's a rundown of the places I've tried (with the nachos graded out of 5). Check back again for updates:

La Favorit. A recent documentary about JK Rowlings showed her writing productively at one of its tables. Since it's across the road from my office I decided to try it. Several types of "nachos" are listed on the menu. I tried the ones with tzatziki. Sadly the base chips they used were Doritos and the Dorito flavour overwhelmed everything else. Plus the chips got soggy under the weight of the generous dollop of tzatziki. Not worth trying again. 1

Espresso Mundo. A beautiful art deco building. Nachos arrived with cheese and brown sauce on them. I will say no more. 0

Buckstone Bistro. Passable nachos, made with restaurant grade plain nachos that do not get soggy. Sour cream surprisingly good for this part of the world. Salsa and guacamole, low end supermarket varieties. 3

Lupe Pintos. Mexican deli. Okay, so they don't actually serve nachos here but they sell all the ingredients to make a perfect plate of nachos at home. High food miles. Guilty pleasures. 5

British Television Line-up

It has been brought to our attention that we have not blogged in over a year. This is partly a technical problem, our camera needs its battery connections fixed and Mike hasn't figured out how to download photos taken on his mobile, and partly that the shine of newness has worn off our lives here. It's less interesting to blog about routines.

But in the interest of keeping this blog alive, I thought I'd write up some of the good British (and other) television we've been watching here, in case people across the pond have some way of watching it (ahem!).

Doctor Who. Matt Smith, the 11th and youngest ever Doctor, has finally hit his stride this season, as have the writers (who had to recover from the retirement of Russell T. Davies, one of my favourite television writer-creators). The highlight of this second Smith season has been the episode written by Neil Gaiman, but then I'm generally a Gaiman fan. Across the pond viewers should be up-to-date with Doctor Who, as it is being broadcast simultaneously on BBC America.

The Misfits. Actually introduced to us by my sister who was living in Slovakia at the time, a very funny show about ASBO superheros. You might need to be living in Britain to really enjoy the humour, but I am assured that it has broadcast in Canada within living memory.

Spiral (Engrenages). A French crime show that's been shown with subtitles on BBC. What Law and Order could be if it took more than an episode to explore a case, was set in Paris and wasn't aiming at proving the law is always good and right.

Campus. Falls into the category of immature male humour, but if you're living through the higher learning cut-backs we're living through over here, it's good to have something to laugh about. Brits showing they can make fun in a compassionate way. Proves Canadians are the real evil empire.

The In-Betweeners. An explicitly teenage boy show. Very believable and oddly enough occasionally R-rated: apparently teenagers aren't allowed to listen to and watch the sorts of things teenagers actually say and do.

Vera. A typically well-done detective show set in rural Northumberland and featuring a middle-aged woman detective. Before moving over here I always thought the British crime imports were done by BBC, but they're actually almost all ITV, one of the private networks. Go figure.

The Crimson Petal and the White. A disturbing period piece set in Victorian London with a disturbing cameo by Gillian Anderson. I confess I couldn't watch the last episode because I was convinced it was going to go really badly for everyone.

Mike and I got mentioned in the Guardian

Intrepid readers of our blog will recall that we went on a cycling trip in Fife last autumn, led by a storyteller and accompanied by a journalist. Well, the story of our weekend has made it to the Guardian:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/travel/2010/may/22/fife-scotland-storytelling-cycle-family?page=all

Walking the Speyside Way

Speyside Way Walk

We absolutely loved The Speyside Way long distance route, particularly the bit from Craigellachie to Aviemore and would recommend it to anyone. We definitely plan to return to this part of Scotland, which is a relatively inexpensive and has a huge number of walks and lovely, diverse scenery--particularly if you're partial to trees. (To see more photos, click on the photo above).

Day 1. We travelled by train and local bus from Edinburgh to Buckie, a fishing town on the North Sea coast. This is a real working town rather than a tourist destination, but the architecture was much nicer than the "gray" description our guide book gave it. We stayed at the Rosemount Guest House, which is cycling and walking oriented. Our hostess told us upon arriving that the water is very good and that we shouldn't buy bottled water, as it is a waste. She showed us the extra high tap she'd installed in the bathroom so that reusable bottles could be easily refilled. Drizzle.

Day 2--Buckie to Fochabers (16km). Woke up to blue skies with fast moving, low clouds. Set out from Buckie, walking along the coast into the wind! The trail took us right through the middle of a Traveller's camp, ponies and children staring at us as we went by. We lunched at the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society Wildlife Centre in Tugnet at the mouth of the Spey River. I should pause here and mention that the Spey is the only wild river left in Scotland--a phrase that repeated often to us on our journey. It is a meandering river and is allowed to meander at will. Spey Bay itself changes regularly. We didn't see any dolphins, though there had been sighting from shore the morning before. We left the WDCS Centre resolving to come back north for dolphin watching sometime soon. We stopped off at Baxters Highland Village--Baxters is the Scottish soup empire equivalent of Campbells. In Fochabers we saw our first Scottish red squirrel. North American grey squirrels are much despised here for killing off the local reds. We stayed at the Gordon Arms Hotel which was overrun by recreational fisherfolk.

Day 3--Fochabers to Craigellachie (21 km). Picked up a slice of cheesecake from The Quaich, a diner across the street from the hotel that advertised gluten-free cakes, gf mac and cheese, and gf bacon rolls. One of the best cheesecakes I've eaten, nice and light. Walking on pavement is always the hardest, and on this day we had 10kms of it. Lots of woodland, though, most of it plantation. The nicest bit was the beech woods of the Arndilly Estate which went on for many kilometers ending in Craigellachie, where we spent the night at The Speybank B&B. Highlights of Craigellachie included the Fiddichside Inn, run by an octogenarian, and the Highlander Inn, where we had a fabulous dinner and Mike got his first Real Ales of the trip. In Craigellachie we discovered that the Spirit of Speyside Whisky Festival was on--Speyside is one of the main whiskey distilling parts of Scotland. Unfortunately for us this meant that all the distillery tours and the Speyside Cooperage Centre were fully booked up, so limited our tourist options.

Day 4--Craigellachie to Ballindalloch (19km). A nice easy walk, mostly on old railway track, with beautiful, mostly wooded scenery pretty much the whole way. We even passed a man in an electric wheelchair trundling down the Speyside Way on this section. Since we knew the day was going to be short and easy we poked around Aberlour for a little bit before hitting our stride and found a pretty fabulous deli there. This part of the trail took us past several distilleries including Aberlour, Knockando, Tamdhu. Most of these distilleries seem to be owned by the French company Chivas. Many of the Speyside distilleries had their roofs damaged by the huge--by Scottish standards--amounts of snow this past winter and so were closed pending repairs. We also passed an environmentally-friendly waste treatment plant for Dailuaine Distillery. Ballindalloch was little more than a collection of houses. It was our higher-end accommodation night and it lived up to expectations. We stayed at Cragganmore House, right next to the distillery of the same name. Cragganmore House is owned by the former chef of the Craigellachie Hotel. He grows a lot of his own vegetables (though not in this season) and keeps chickens and ducks--though he doesn't get many eggs as they lay them haphazardly all over the lawn and crows get to them first. We had a fabulous 3-course supper at the Cragganmore House, which was entirely gluten-free, just for me.

Day 5--Ballindalloch to Grantown-on-Spey (21km). This was the most challenging day of walking, not because of hills but because of bog. Fortunately we were sent us off with packed lunches (mine GF again, thank you Helen). The landscape on the first part of the day was exactly what I pictured the boggy, peaty, Northern Scottish distillery area would be like. A number of sections in the early part of the day had large stepping stones for us to walk across. Unfortunately, many of the stones had sunk into the wet ground. Mike nearly lost a foot to a hungry bit of ground and spent most of the day walking with a soaker. Our guide-book had warned us that we might have to wade through a burn, but fortunately a bridge has recently been installed over it. We also walked through a diverse range of forest from mono-cropped plantation to mixed-plantation to open birch woods draped in lichen and grazed by cattle. The last 4 kms were through the community-owned Anagach Pine Woods outside of Grantown. The woods are a sanctuary for the endangered capercaillie. We were exhausted by the time we reached Grantown, but we managed to have a look around town and even found an excellent wee bookshop: The Bookmark. The owner told us about a folk music concert happening at the local high school as part of the Strathspey in May festival, so we grabbed a quick supper at the Seafield Inn and then followed the locals down to the auditorium where we were treated to an Edinburgh band fronted by a local boy who is now studying at Stevenson College, Gallus, and then to the really fabulous and somewhat famous Ewan Robertson and Gary Innes Band (which was actually a four-man band). We spent the night at the quiet Kinross House B&B. Grantown was probably my favourite town, it had a tourist side to it, but not overwhelmingly so and it was surrounded by forest.

Day 6--Grantown to Boat of Garten (17 km). After my favourite breakfast of the trip (GF toast and an assortment of fresh berries, Mike had a full Scottish as usual) we headed out of town. Again we were mostly in woodlands, the landscape theme of the trip. It was cold and we got snowed on a couple of times (light snowball type snow, almost hail). We'd planned on visiting the Spey Valley Smokehouse on our way but they had a huge "No Nuts" sign outside and since were packing a pretty big bag of trail mix we had to pass them by. Next point of interest was Balliefurth Farm, which is a LEAF demonstration farm (Linking Environment and Farming). A number of placards were posted along this section of the trail that explained how their practices encourage local biodiversity. We had planned to eat lunch at Nethy Bridge. However, they weren't yet serving food when we got to the hotel and the menu looked pretty mediocre. So we bought snacks at the local Spar and ate them on a picnic table. By the time we'd finished eating we were both freezing so we hung out in the Explore Abernethy Centre and chatted to the ranger until we could feel our fingers again. Unfortunately, the toilets at the centre were not heated and a sign on the door read "Please keep the door shut in order to prevent frost from entering". The stretch of the trail after Nethy Bridge was probably the highlight of the whole trip for me traveling through the RSPB Abernethy Forest Nature Reserve, home of the famous Osprey Centre (where we both saw an osprey and a capercaillie). Ospreys were driven out of Britain early in the 20th century. The first confirmed returned Ospreys made a nest in this forest in the 1950s. There has been an RSPB Osprey Centre in the forest ever since. More than 2 million people have visited since it opened. While the ospreys were wonderful to see, it was Loch Garten itself that I fell in love with. (BTW, we had to take a small detour off of the trail to see the loch and osprey centre). We stayed in Boat of Garten ("The Osprey Village") at the Boat B&B, which was basic but met our needs. We had a fabulous dinner at the Boat Hotel in their bistro/bar. The woman at the next table asked the waiter in an indignant tone of voice "is there no place better than this to eat?". He led her off somewhere, so I suppose there was a place with table cloths, but we were quite happy with the food and the selection of Real Ales.

Day 7--Boat of Garten to Aviemore (9.5 km). The walk to Aviemore was short and very easy. Walking out of Boat of Garten in the morning we saw why the tiny village is able to support two gourmet restaurants and has no normal ones. Boat of Garten appears to be where the rich keep their huge summer homes in this part of Scotland. Between Boat of Garten and Aviemore we passed through moorland with spectacular views of the still-snowy Cairngorm Mountains. The Strathspey Steam Train passed us on the way. We beat our bags to the Ravenscraig Guest House, had a decent pub lunch at The Winking Owl, walked the main drag several times since we had nothing better to do until we eventually found our way to the Cairngorms Brewery for a tour and free tasting. Too late we discovered that the Mountain Cafe had an extensive GF menu for breakfast and lunch (closed at 5:30), so we returned to the Winking Owl. Our evening entertainment, as on a number of previous nights, was watching the snooker championships on BBC2.

We took an early train back to Edinburgh the next day only to find ourselves transported from winter to spring. Whereas it was still ski season in Aviemore, the leaves in Edinburgh had finally unfurled and the cherry blossoms had bloomed.

Favourite pub with real ale: The Winking Owl (Sheepshaggers Gold was particularly good)
Favourite suppers: Highlander Inn, Cragganmore House
Favourite B&B accommodation: The Speybank B&B, Cragganmore House
Favourite breakfasts: Kinross House, Ravenscraig B&B
Favourite bookstore: The Bookmark, Grantown

Voting in the UK

This past week, I voted in my first UK election. Despite not being a UK citizen (like my beautiful wife), the rules of the UK Electoral Commission allow resident Commonwealth citizens to vote in UK elections. Similar rules would also allow me to vote in Scottish Parliamentary elections, as well as European Parliamentary elections, but not in elections of The City of Edinburgh Council (in which case I would need to be an EU National).

I was surprisingly excited to vote. In some sense, the election involved similar players and issues compared to Canada. Though I still feel like a bit of an outsider which, in some strange way, made it a little easier for me to make my voting decision. As the results indicate, more than 65% of eligible voters cast their vote (which is similar to Canadian participation levels from 2006, but more than those of 2008).

In our riding (Edinburgh West), we elected a Liberal Democrat (see local results), as has been the case since 1997 (though with three different representatives).

Return to Cairndinnis

(Click on photo for more pictures.)

Faithful readers may recall that for my birthday this year Mike took me alpaca trekking in East Lothian with Cairndinnis Farm. As part of the outing, I got a skein of alpaca wool (from Belhaven) to play with. I made a headband out of it and enjoyed the feel of working with this yarn so much that I decided my next major knitting project would be made out of Cairndinnis alpaca yarn. A week ago I got an email from Carole to say that their latest stash of yarn had arrived and would be available on a first come first serve basis.

I started plotting immediately. The roads have been icy of late (worst winter in 50 years here in Britain), so Mike was not keen on getting a City Car Club car and driving out there. Fortunately, a search on Traveline Scotland showed that it was easy to get to East Linton by public transit and a further search of walking routes revealed an off road path from East Linton along the River Tyne to Hailes Castle and from there up to Traprain Law, which is right beside the farm.

Today we made the trek, catching a bus two blocks from our flat that took us to the heart of East Linton in under an hour. From there we followed the well marked trail along the Tyne to the Castle and then up to the base of Traprain Law. The walk also took just under an hour. When we arrived, Carole and John insisted on serving us hot bowls of soup, bread and cold cuts. Through the kitchen window we could see the alpacas peeking out of their barn every once in a while to see if the snow had gone away yet.

I bought enough of Pride of Place's yarn to make a genuinely 25-mile jumper. It's DK weight, so the project should take me most of the year (I'm a slow knitter). It knits to the same gauge as Berrocco's Ultra Alpaca Light, so I'm going to use one of their patterns.

It was an absolutely beautiful day out and it was truly enjoyable doing business with such generous, hospitable people. Having already spent some quality time with the beast whose fur I'll be working with is an added bonus.

Doctor Who Nation

Sci Fi has a bit more cred over here in the UK. It is a well-respected Christmas tradition to sit around and watch the good doctor save the planet (or at least London). Coffee-vending police boxes make coy references to Torchwood and the Tardis. In fact, Tardis is a word in common usage amongst the general public. And paraphernalia from the show is considered worth appearing in special exhibitions at publicly-owned museums (which we went to see in Glasgow before Christmas, Mike forgot to mention that in his previous post).

As mentioned in a previous post, we have been blessed with plenty of snow this year. We returned home Saturday night to discover our neighbours had been busy building a Snow Ood (photographed above). As someone who did an "interest talk" in grade 5 on set and costume design for Doctor Who, I have to say I'm enjoying living in a country where such interests are not seen as a sign of incurably nerdiness.

(I'm sure Mike will want me to make it perfectly clear that it is me, AJW, writing this and not him.)

Having just watched all five episodes of Torchwood: Children of Earth, I have to say that the Doctor Who spin-off series has finally found it's legs. The previous two seasons suffered from silliness, but in Children of Earth Russell T. Davies treats his characters brutally and creates a gripping story-arc that provides an at-times painful portrayal of what people are capable of when their backs are to the wall. Well worth watching if it makes it across the pond.

Christmas Snow

We welcomed Christmas snow to Edinburgh this year (not to be confused with Christmas Snow), making for a more festive, somewhat brighter, and more slippery holiday period. Faithful readers of our blog will no doubt recall that Edinburgh does indeed receive some of the white stuff, but it last arrived in February, and was nowhere to be seen last Christmas.

This year involved the traditional Christmas and Hogmanay traditions, including the Christmas Dr Who Special, and the Edinburgh Torchlight Procession. With the additional company of Alette's family, we also enjoyed a Christmas goose, spent Christmas day at the Edinburgh Zoo, and spent an afternoon in Glasgow. We also plan to attend Edinburgh's "Light Night" event, taking place over a couple of nights, though the first night seemed a little treacherous.

Click on the photo above to see our pictures.

Early Solstice Present

Unexpectedly (at least the Met Office didn't expect it), we got snow today! An early Winter Solstice Present. Edinburgh is a beautiful city on an off day. Snow just makes it look magical!

Taiko Connections

The other evening, Alette and I went to Queen's Hall to watch the Mugenkyo Taiko Drummers. It was a great performance, but also presented a number of interesting connections for me. As a performance, it was quite similar to Stomp, which we went to see in New York City a few years ago. Not that surprising I suppose, since both are percussion performances. Taiko drumming relies solely on, well, taiko drums (which, if you read the link, is redundant since 'taiko' actually means a Japanese drum). And if I remember correctly, Stomp relies on pretty much anything that makes noise (including a lot of garbage cans).

But there were other connections for me as well. Complementing the drumming was also some very good dance performance by Lale Sayoko. And Lale strongly reminded me of Inara, the "companion" from the tv series Firefly and movie Serenity. It might have been her variety of dresses, or perhaps a link with the oriental back-story in Firefly.

One of the taiko drummers, Teresa Brookes, strongly reminded me of Uma Thurman in her role as Beatrix Kiddo in Kill Bill. If you've seen the movie, don't worry, there was no sword play at the performance, only drumming. I think it was Teresa's stature and strength, and the way she carried herself on the stage. The blonde hair helped too.
On a final note, Queen's Hall serves up some good local beer from Williams Brothers Brewing. They serve from kegs, rather than casks, but I found it to be quite tasty. There's no real connection here. I just liked the beer.

Edinburgh, Where Christianity and Science are on Speaking Terms

Before I moved to Edinburgh, I heard the previous bishop of Edinburgh, Richard Holloway, interviewed on CBC's Tapestry about reconciling science and Christianity, so I already had reason to suspect that organized religion might be organized a little differently over here. In October, Mike and I got a first hand glimpse at the warm relationship that appears to exist between at least some sectors of Christianity here and at least some sectors of science through the Gifford Lectures.

In 1885, Lord Gifford bequeathed money to Scotland's four original universities (Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Glasgow and St. Andrews) so that they could invite important, ground-breaking scientists and philosophers to come and talk about their work to the schools of divinity and to the public in general. I am paraphrasing and putting my own slant here. What Gifford actually left the money for was "natural theology", that is the idea that the work of God can as easily be seen in the findings of scientists as it can in "revealed religion". I'm not a theologian by any stretch of the imagination, so if you want to know more about natural theology you'll have to look elsewhere. In practice, the last will and testament of Lord Gifford appears to be interpreted in such a way as to lead to some of the most prominent scientists and philosophers in the world coming to talk in Edinburgh to interested listeners of all walks of life, who do not have to pay a penny to attend.

Some of the prominent figures who have been Gifford Lecturers include: Hannah Arendt, John Dewey (ditto), Paul Ricoeur, Noam Chomsky, Richard Dawkins, Werner Carl Heisenberg, Michael Polanyi and the list goes on. This year Michael Gazzaniga, a neuroscientist from California who made his name studying people with split brains was invited to give six talks in Edinburgh. I managed to get to all of them, Mike just missed one.

Gazzaniga gave a fascinating overview of what brain research tells us about who we are. He only had six hours to cram in a lot of interesting research, so it was just a taster, but a tantalizing one. A few tidbits I got out of it:

• The left-brain, right-brain thingee is a lot more complicated than pop culture allows for
• We are wired from birth to be ethical beings
• Brains fire differently in different cultures
• We can be trained at the neuron-firing level to stop recognizing some people as humans. That is to say, we can be trained out of Levinas' response-ability
• There is a part of the brain whose sole purpose is to tell stories about our experiences and our decisions, this part is associated with out sense of self and this part comes into play after decisions have been made

If I've said enough to intrigue you, you can watch all 6 lectures on the University of Edinburgh's YouTube channel.

Gazzaniga did not talk directly about religion, though he did touch on implications of this research on our ideas of free will and on the legal system. However, our neighbour (literally) the current bishop of Edinburgh, Brian Smith, attended all of the lectures (we even sat with him for one of them) and he led a discussion on the lectures after the last one was finished. Unfortunately, Mike and I had other engagements that evening.

Samhuinn in Edinburgh

Mike and I celebrated Samhuinn (pronounced Savane over here), the Celtic New Year's Eve, or Hallowe'en to modern folk, by going on a guided walk of Celtic Holyrood Park, followed by lunch at Scotland's oldest continually operating pub, The Sheep's Heid Inn, and then ghost stories at the Scottish Storytelling Centre in the evening. A good time was had by all.

Holyrood Park is a scheduled ancient monument and is managed by Historic Scotland. One of their rangers led a dozen of us on a walking tour of the park as a Celtic site. On the walk, we learned that there were several hill forts on the Holyrood hills during the Celtic era, the ditch and mounded wall of the enclosure are still clearly visible when you know where to look, as are cultivation terrarces. Apparently the local Celts spoke a variation on Welsh, rather than Irish and cultivated the land as well as raised cattle.

From the hilltops we walked down into the village of Duddingston, now fully absorbed into Edinburgh like Dean Village is. However, they still have their local pub, unlike Dean Village, which has good food and beer: The Sheep Heid Inn.

In the evening we went to the second last night of this year's Scottish International Storytelling Festival, which featured tellers from Canada, the US, Jamaica, New Zealand and Australia. Anne E. Stewart told a true to her mom's life ghost story from Australia. We heard an Iroquois story told by a Cherokee woman, Gayle Ross, about a vampire skeleton--surprisingly similar to European vampire lore. Amina Blackwood Meeks, the woman from Jamaica, told us the story of why donkeys sit down when there is a spirit nearby--it involved donkeys in bowties. We also got the tale of how fire came to the people from a Maori teller, Rangimoana Taylor. A Scottish teller, Grace Banks, told a witch tale, but I find I don't have the stomach to hear stories of burning witches, even when they are fairytales. Earlier in the week we had some classic Quebec stories about the devil from Isabelle Chartrand-Delorme and Melanie Cloutier which would have fit well with the Samhuinn mood as well.

We've been getting reports from Ottawa about numbers of children coming to doors for candy. We weren't home to find out if anyone came along our block here in Edinburgh, but we suspect not.

Happy Celtic New Year everyone.

Mel Bells is Closing

Those of you who came to visit over the summer will be as sad as we are over the news that our friendly, local organic grocery store is closing down next week. It looked exactly like a grocery store ought to look with lovely wooden shelves and a table in the middle covered in baskets of fresh produce. Unlike too many organic stores, this one was not vegetarian and we could nip in on our way home to buy chicken or lamb, or lovely merguese sausages.

Mel Bell's departure will leave a hole in our neighbourhood that will be difficult to fill.

Mel herself is off on another adventure: catering. So we wish her well.

Redecorating Glencairn

On October 1st, our original lease expired. In the lead-up to that date, Mike and I seriously considered moving out to North Berwick, a perfect little seaside village with a 30 minute commute to downtown Edinburgh. We looked at a number of holiday flats that owners let out cheaply over the winter months, but none of them had a landline let alone an internet connection, so we had to rule them out. We did find one place that was a regular rental, right across from the train station too, so it would have been convenient for commuting. It was in a relatively new building and had a landline already installed. We got all excited about the view of Bass Rock out the living room window and the huge kitchen with all the mod cons. Unfortunately, the landlord didn't return our calls for over a week and when she did she went back on the "fully-furnished" condition, so we had to turn it down. Fortunately, during that week long wait our current landlord offered us a new lease with a reduced rent, so we took it.

One of the things that I (AJW) got excited about with the North Berwick place, was that it wasn't decorated. You see our Glencairn flat came fully furnished including artworks. And while it was nice to have things on walls, the art is not what we would have chosen ourselves. So to compensate for the lack of a seaview, I made a few purchases of local art. Nothing fancy, nothing expensive, but something that we chose.

During the Festival Season in August there was a big craft fair in one of the old central graveyards. Unfortunately, I only managed to make it to the fair on the last day, but on that day I spied some funky, reasonably priced print-on-canvas art by local crafter and graphic designer, BoxArt. So I ordered a set of 5 8X8 canvases to go over our bed (pictured above). BTW, according to lease agreement we are not allowed to put any holes in the wall, so all the art purchased had to fit our landlord's previous hanging arrangements. The second purchase I made was a poster for an exhibition of bird prints by Alice Melvin at an Etsyesque shop called the Red Door Gallery on Victoria Street in the Old Town.

So now we have two rooms that look a little more like places where Alette and Mike dwell.

Storybikes Across Fife

This past summer, long-time storyteller and Edinburgh resident Andy Hunter started up an environmentally-friendly, narratively-informed, tourism business: Storybikes. His goal, to get people to slow down, get out in the fresh-air and re-learn how to see the world through stories.

At the moment, Andy runs tours in Fife and along Hadrian's Wall. Mike and I were busy all summer with visitors from Canada, so it wasn't until this past weekend that we were able to fit in some storied-cycling, joining Andy on a weekend trip around Fife. (He offers both week-long and weekend tours). The only other two people on this particular journey were a travel-journalist from the Guardian, Kevin Rushby, and his 6 and a half-year old daughter Maddy. Maddy rode behind her dad on a tag-a-long.

Public transit is fabulous over here and very accommodating of cyclists. On the local train routes, every second car seems to have a bicycle rack, so it was simple enough for Mike and I to get ourselves and our rented and borrowed bikes out to Kirkcaldy Saturday morning, where we met up with the rest of the group.

From the Kirkcaldy train station, Andy took us down to the banks of the Firth of Forth, to Ravenscraig Castle, where we had our first story, this one about the fair Rosabelle St. Clair. We followed the coastline for a wee while to Dysart, where monks used to retreat to their equivalent of the "desert". We had tea at a lovely little tearoom/info centre/community centre called the Harbour Master's House. From there we turned inland heading through Thornton and Glenrothes and then over to Vane Farm, one of the Royal Society for the Protection of Bird's nature reserves. We had lunch in the Vane Farm cafe, which overlooks Loch Leven and its marshes and meadows. There were several thousand pink-footed geese in temporary residence in the nature reserve. Every once in a while something would set them off and they would all take off squawking and wheel in a circle before settling down again.

After lunch we took a leisurely cycle around the Loch, stopping for stories about St. Serf and to watch the pirouettes of the local gliders. Not only is Loch Leven a destination for birds, it is also a destination for tourists, having two major historical sites: St. Serf's Inch, or Island, where he founded a priory; and Loch Leven Castle, one of the many places that Mary Queen of Scots was held prisoner, and one of the various places that she escaped from. As you can probably gather by now, this is a very storied landscape.

We spent the night in Kinross, which is a town that has definitely seen better days. You know you've hit on bad times when your beautiful old town hall is boarded up and on the market. We stayed in the Salutation Hotel right in downtown Kinross. The food was good and was served in a separate dining room, which was good since it was Karaoke night in the bar. We shared a few stories before taking our sore muscles to bed. The room was also fine, but the rowdy drunk and singing locals kept us up a bit later than we'd have liked. And the guy climbing the chain link fence onto the neighbouring roof, also kept us from falling asleep.

After a huge Scottish breakfast we set out away from Loch Leven up the Cleish Hills and then down to Dunfermline. At the top of the hills we had a small break to hear a traditional tale about a farmer outsmarting a highwayman and in Dunfermline there were tales of Saint Margaret. From Dunfermline, Mike and I caught the train back to Edinburgh. And that was our introduction to storybiking. I have to say that biking 40 miles in two days after not setting one's butt on a bike seat for at least 13 months, is not necessarily to be recommended : )

mtnoise do Scotland

For a whole other perspective on our Edinburgh life, we invite you to check out the travel blog of our friends Wayne and Trish, who made a stopover here in between London and Berlin on their great journey east to the Far East. We envy them the adventure they are on and we are grateful that Scotland made it onto their final itinerary and we had the chance to show them around.

See: Haggis Today, Haggis Tomorrow, Haggis Everyday
and Scottish Delights
not to mention their fab photos on picasa

Alpacas for my Birthday

Alpaca Trekking

My favourite birthday present is an unusual experience, and over the last few years Mike has done a great job of picking interesting things for us to do. The first year we went to Upper Canada Village for a sleepover. The second year he took me to see Wicked. This year we went Alpaca Trekking in East Lothian.

Last Saturday, Mike and I drove out to Cairndinnis Farm, just past Haddington, where we were greeted by farmers John and Carole, and Carole's brother Bill. We had a chat inside while the clouds squeezed one last shower out and then went to meet the females and their crias. Alpacas living in Scotland have to be fed supplementary vitamin D, which they love. So all the moms and their babies came rushing over when we brought it for them.

Next visit was to the males' paddock. They have to be kept separate from the females or else they fight too much. We fed them and then corralled them and watched John and Carole put halters on them. Alpacas are not as docile as you might think. There was no way they were going to let Mike and I harness them up.

We then went for a walk with three of the males: Archie, Pod and Pod's son Deuchar. This was the "trekking" part of the adventure. We went around some of the farm fields, saw the stone that once marked the burial spot of King Loth (for whom this area is named). and then got onto some public walking paths that took us down to Castle Hailes.

It was a slow walk. Alpacas are incredibly timid--as Carole was fond of saying, they are prey animals and they know it. And an alpaca is heavy enough and stubborn enough that they can't be simply dragged forward if they've got their mind set on standing still. We often had to pause so the alpacas could stare down haystacks, plastic bags, waving branches etc. Retracing our steps didn't speed them up either.

I have now officially given up my dream of having an alpaca in our backyard. They are clearly herd animals as well as being prey. Carole assures me that an alpaca on its own would pine away and die. And we don't have enough room in our yard for more than one. But at least I got to spend half a day with a herd of the lovely animals. And come November I'm hoping to get a couple thousand yards of yarn from one of them so I can crochet myself and nice warm jumper.

Edinburgh: City of Literature but not Bookshops

The Edinburgh International Book Festival has set up shop in a shared garden a few blocks from us. Unfortunately, I didn't realise that tickets for anything in this festival season have to be booked well in advance so a lot of the authors I wanted to see were sold out by the time I got my act together. Fortunately, it's been mostly the adult events that have been sold out, so I've still been able to indulge my love of children's and Young Adult books. I've gone to two sessions with Chicken House authors Cornelia Funke and Gill Arbuthnott and both of them have been accompanied by their publisher, Barry Cunningham famous for not rejecting J.K. Rowling's novel when it came across his desk. Trivia fact, Cunningham got his start in the book industry by dressing up as a giant puffin.

The other great thing about the book fest is that they've put together an amazing bookstore on site, actually two, one for adults and the other for non-adults. Having access to a great independent bookshop even if it is only for 2 weeks has been a reminder of just how barren the bookshop scene is in Edinburgh, despite it being a UNESCO City of Literature. While there are loads of independent second-hand booksellers, not to mention the charity bookshops, I've only managed to find two independent booksellers who sell brand new books. Word Power Books is the Octopus Books equivalent here, only it takes itself way too seriously. The other independent is a speculative fiction bookstore here, Transreal Fiction, which is a plus for someone who is a speculative fiction fan and writer. However, I read more than SF.

Unfortunately, the bookshops that I've really bonded with have been ones I've met while away from home. I found an amazing bookstore on the Old Square of Prague that had a wall of English-language books. They stocked just about every book I'd ever read and loved as well as just about every book I've wanted to read. However, my very favourite bookshop so far has been Kew Bookshop, a wee place near the London Underground stop for Kew Gardens.

Closer to home but still not close enough, on our recent trip to the Borders area of Scotland, I kept stumbling across bookstores that I'd love to have access to on a weekly basis: The Forest Bookstore in Selkirk, Talisman Books in Melrose, The Main Street Trading Company in St Boswells, and Latimer Books in Kelso. I may be forced to take the two hour bus journey down to the Borders every month or so to soak in those new book vibes.

Borders Walking Vacation - The Beer

(This is the third of three blog entries on our recent walking trip to the Scottish Borders.)

In addition to great walking and scenery, our trip to the Scottish Borders was also a great opportunity to experience some good local ale. This meant good access to cask ales - as faithful readers of this blog will no doubt know.

Day 1 - The Fox and Hounds Inn (Denholm) - 4-5 cask ale taps, though only two active: Ossian Ale and Wylam Gold Tankard. Observant readers will recall my previous sampling of Ossian, hence I opted for a tasty pint of the Tankard.

Day 2 - The Crosskeys Inn (Selkirk) - 2 cask ale taps, serving Theakston's Old Peculier and Black Sheep Best Bitter. I'd previously tried (though not blogged about) Old Peculier, so opted for a pint of the Bitter. While it was a reasonable ale, I'm starting to learn that bitter beers are not my favourite.

Day 3 - The George and Abbottsford Hotel (Melrose) - 3 cask ale taps, though only two active: Houston Warlock Stout and Inveralmond's Thrappledouser. We'd previously visited the George and Abbottsford on our shorter Borders holiday, at which time we bought some local bottled beer. Knowing they were beer connaisseurs, we stopped here for lunch. Not only was 'on tap' ale excellent, but so too was the food. So, we went back for supper as well. Obviously, I tried both ales, having a strong personal preference for the stout.

Day 4 - Buccleuch Arms Hotel (St. Boswells) - 1 cask ale tap, serving Stewart's Edinburgh Gold. Anticipating that both the food and beer couldn't top our previous day's experience, I was pleasantly surprised by the Edinburgh Gold.

Day 5 - The Cobbles Inn (Kelso) - 2 cask ale taps, serving Stewart's Edinburgh No 3 and Newcastle Pioneer Bitter (not to be confused with Newcastle Brown Ale). The No 3 was similar to the Gold, and reasonably tasty. I tried only a sample of the bitter to remind me of my apparent dislike of bitters.

Here endeth our 3-part blog series on our Scottish Borders vacation.

Borders Walking Vacation - The Towns

(This is the second of three blog entries on our recent walking trip to the Scottish Borders.)

Our recent walking trip in the Scottish Borders gave us a good opportunity to see several Borders towns up close. We started in Jedburgh, which is only 10 miles from the English border. Since Jedburgh served as the start and end of our journey, we didn't end up spending much time there. From our photos, you can see the ruins of the Jedburgh Abbey.

Hawick was a town that felt like it had a little rougher edge to it. I don't know what it was exactly, perhaps the abundance of ne'er-do-well's around town, or that a number of places looked to be permanently closed. Or maybe that the Scottish pronounciation of the town name sounds like one is 'horking a loogie.' It did seem to have a lot of woolen mills though. On the way to Hawick, we walked through Denholm, where patrons at the local watering hole seemed surprised to see tourists. They were friendly enough though and it seemed like a nice town.

Selkirk looked a lot like some of the other towns, except that there seemed to be less to do and see. It also seems to have a big wool reputation. It's a strange thing though: while we've seen lots of sheep, and wool clothing production here, there doesn't seem to be a lot of local wool for sale. Melrose was similar to Selkirk, except that there was more to see. The downside was that there were also more tourists. We had visited Melrose previously as part of an earlier Borders vacation.

To give ourselves a short day on our way from Melrose we slept over in the village of St Boswells, not much to say about it. Other than a great looking independent bookstore with a cafe (unfortunately we didn't see it until after hours), there's not really much to St. Boswell's.

The highlight of our trip was Kelso. A busy and bustling town with lots of tourists but with lots of locals as well. The people in Kelso were also by far the friendliest, and that's saying a lot 'cause Borders folk are friendly. For me (AJW), Kelso had just about everything a town needs to have in the way of services: an organic vegetarian cafe that sells organic cotton clothing, a health food store that sells gluten-free food that I haven't even seen in Edinburgh, a library with a quiet outdoor courtyard where you can go and read in the sunshine, and a great independent bookstore, for Mike there were also lots of pubs with cask ales. Unfortunately, Kelso is a two-hour bus ride from Edinburgh, the closest major place of employment, so not really the best location in that respect.

Highlights of our trip, from the town side:

• Most picturesque spot: Dryburgh Abbey
• Best meal: a tie between The George and Abbotsford Hotel in Melrose, and the Queen's Head Hotel Restaurant in Kelso
• Best historical site: Abbotsford House, which still houses the intact library of Sir Walter Scott, a collection that Giles would be proud to consult
• Best B and B: hands down the Edenbank House outside of Kelso, this was luxury accomodation in an old Victorian mansion.
• Best beer (and cider): also The George and Abbotsford Hotel