Well finally iv'e gotten around to updating with pics from Scotland over Christmas. What I don't have is a pic from the train on the way to Edinburgh in which was completely sold out due to the 3 days of fog which shut down Heathrow, so it was a 5 hour trip standing in the ailse, joy! I then saw the first sunshine I had seen in a week before night promptly set in at 4pm. The next morning dawned through a thick banket of fog that I had apparently brought north with me. Unfortunately due to things being closed on Christmas an Boxing days, I still had to make the most of it, as they say in Scotland, if they stopped doing things because of the weather they would never get anything done! Hence this wonderful view from the top of Edinburgh Castle: pic 1 I was only 40 metres away from a huge castle!












However, future days did see some ok weather, if not a tad cold.
Christmas day: a spot of walking to get to the top of Aurthurs Seat, took a wrong turn and a very scenic route home but did manage to stetch my self picture taking abilities:









Boxing day:
Went to the beach, the Firth of Forth to be exact, and found an island which you can walk out to at a little seaside village called Crammond. It was low tide so I thought what the hell and wandered out to find it was an old WW2 army base type thing with lots of interesting old buildings to explore, that night I went and watched a pantomime at a local theatre, which was great fun with lots of audience participation and the sort of really bad puns that Stephen pulls out from time to time.













27th:

I took a 600 mile trip into the highlands and up to Loch Ness. The views were amazing, heaps different to England and lots like the South Island. Cold but unfortunately no snow, however we did stop to warm ourselves up at a tourist shop with free whisky tasting, ahh, free whisky, my favourite kind :) The Loch was amazingly calm, mirrorlike even and perfect for spotting monsters but rather unfortunately I spent half an hour in a nice old pub waiting for a burger for which I hadn't lowered my standards enough for, I mean it tasted great but as you can see by the pic, it didn't come with any extras! No time for wandering around the lake as we had to move on but I did get to take some good pics but sadly no monster spotted.













On the last day the cloud finally lifted so I made my way up the right path to Arthurs seat this time, though it was a hard climb towards the top but well worth it for the fantasti views across the city











The trip hoime that night was much more comfortable given I actually had a sleep, though those of you whom I spoke to on my arrival to my mail at home (thank you very much) will know I was pretty wasted from lack of sleep.