hallo, blogspotters.
Well, it's a few weeks since i have keyed in to the site, but we have not been idle.Spurred on by the arrival of our friends Chris and Jenny, who had unwisely forsaken a New Zealand summer for the rigours of a Northern hemisphere winter, we took to the road again. First visit was to Scotland. We stayed in cuz Hugo's lovely wee flat in Cathedral square in Glasgow, overlooked by the Necropolis (a good word to look up if you don't know its meaning). What Glasgow lacked in terms of warmth of weather was more than made up for by the lovely hospitable people and neighbours.
Glasgow has apparently been receiving a facelift but, although it was quite a 'fun' city to visit, it still showed signs of great poverty. Possibly not a city i would choose to live in, except perhaps for its proximity to the North. But then again, it might be a much more pleasant place when the temperature rises above zero.
But just north of Glasgow, by about half an hour, is what to me is the gateway to the Highlands, Loch Lomond - very wild, very beautiful, and very serene. Here goes - I'll try and pop in a picture. Bother. I never seem to get it in the right place, but you get the impression.
As well as Glasgow, we also visited the fair cities and castles of Edinburgh and Stirling (the latter being an old Drummond stamping ground a few hundred years ago). Again, we visited Drummond Castle, but the gates were still locked. We must try again in the Springtime. Both castles were big, impressive, and cold - small towns - or collections of halls, barracks and prisons - inside extraordinarily stout walls on top of huge bluffs. Both were surrounded by fair and beautiful towns that deserved more than the one-day cursory glimpse we were able to give them. Who knows? A day and a night in the Lake District, popping into Wordsworth's house, and that was us in the North.
What i do love about that end of the country is that, after all the green, pleasant, flat and largely tame country, suddenly you are into wild country, where the trees grow where they want rather than where they are planted, and the land slopes upwards - I guess its got all that i love about New Zealand.
After a bit of a rest, while C&J visited rellies in Ireland, we girded our loins and took off for Tuscany. What a wonderful part of the world! You're not quite sure whether you're living in a picture postcard, a time capsule that was arrested about 800 years ago, or a madhouse - perhaps a bit of all three. We stayed in a 12th Century apartment built into the stone walls of a tiny mountain village, called Pereta, perched on top of a mountain. The plumbing had been upgraded, but that was about it. There was electricity - of a sort. One more attempt at a piccy.
Loved the Italians, their food and their kindness. With my non-existent italian and their often non-existent English, we nevertheless got on remarkably well, and by the end of the week, i was getting quite adept at the Italian equivalent of Chinglish. Every now and then, we could understand each other.
And, of course, we did the proper thing and visited Siena, Florence, Pisa and Rome. The time warp thing got quite weird at times, switching from Medieval to Renaissance to Ancient Roman, and sometimes all in the space of a few hundred yards of each other. But my lasting impression is of high and ancient buildings, impossibly narow streets and mad driving. Definitely a wonderful place.
And now it's back to Blighty - but a wonderful thing happened today. Right on cue, first of March, the clouds rolled away, for a whole day, crocusses and snowdrops started blossoming, the temperature got up to about 7 degrees, and people started smiling. Now, one swallow may not make a summer but it was a pretty good start to Spring.
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