Inverness - The Scottish Highland

After finishing up work in Dundee I was potentially out of work and homeless. I decided to head up North to the Scottish Highland, and payed a visit to my lovely friend Nick who I met travelling in Peru.

Nick and his lovely parents Margaret and Colin took me in for a week and were the most kind hosts imaginable.

On my first day on the highland I headed to Fort George for a tour around. It is still an active fort but it was originally built after the Battle of Culloden to stop any further Jacobite uprisings.

For those who needed a little bit of a history lesson (don't worry I did too) check out.

The next day the weather was miserable so I explored the city which is quite small but very very pretty. That night I went out with Nick's lovely girlfriend Annie, she took me out for some Inverness nightlife which involved me drinking a few too many whiskeys.

The following day Annie's friend Karen took me out to see a local eco community and we walked in the rain along the beach with her super dog "Doog"

who is very cool. Later on the weather cleared up and Nick's mum Margaret took me up to the Culloden Battlefield where the English managed to defeat many of the Clansmen and Jacobites in less than an hour. The field while not that exciting has flags to mark out the battle line and has stones for each of the clans to mark out the areas where the bodies were burried, so it is quite interesting.

The next day off to Loch Ness!!!! And guess what I saw "nessie" check out the photo!
Lochness is actually huge!

The town with all the tourist attractions is called Drumnadrocket there is the official lochness tour and then the lochness experience. However it is not even on the loch! Crazy, but it is where all the boat tours etc are arranged. On the Loch is Urkheart Castle which is in Ruins but has a quite interesting history.

Friday involved me eating vegetarian Haggis, sounds weird I know! But apparently it tastes just like real Haggis. It is actually really really nice, after dinner it was some more Scottish Hospitality ie more drinking!!

On the weekend, Nick's mum Margaret made the most excellent tour guide. She is a very sweet woman and I really appreciated all her hospitality. On Sat we went out to Cawdor Castle a beautiful Scottish Castle with drawbridges, secret dungeons, turrets and beautiful rooms. The castle also had beautiful gardens and a hedge maze as well.

The next day we headed to the Isle of Skye, on the West coast. It was an amazing but long drive with some beautiful scenery lush green mountains. On the Island itself there were very dramatic cliffs. The island areas were controlled by the Macleod Clan. And for those who had the "pleasure" of going to Macleod High. "Rock on Macleod!" and for those of you who never went I can not be bothered to describe what Macleod is like. Anyway we paid a visit to the Dunvegan Castle, yep the very one on our school emblem. They even use the "hold fast" motto! The tartan is quite similar to our uniform.

Kilt Sightings: 4
Piper Sightings: 1

Dundee, the city of discovery

Well, Dundee is called the city of discovery as discovery is the name of an old English boat that sits down the shoreline, but there is not much to discover there.

That said I was somewhat plesantly suprised by Dundee. I had a two week locum position at the Ninewells hospital. Having never even heard of Dundee and what I did hear was a Scottish guy making fun of it I did not have high expectations.






Dundee is Scotlands 4th largest city with around 140,000 people. It was very industrial but it is somewhat undergoing some revamping and it is prettier than I thought it would be.





I lived in the nurses residence on the hospital grounds so getting to work was a 10 minute walk. As it was a short locum I jumped back into work straight away, it was a little slow going at first but just like getting back on a bike. For those of you who dont know, work back home I was doing tests for an ENT clinic :)

The people I worked with were really lovely they all had a great sense of humor and worked well together, so a big hello to everyone at Ninewell's audiology Charlene, Anne, David, Paul, Amanda and Ivan. I should have got a picture of you guys (maybe one of you can send me one!) Charlene let me know if you ever find your scottish dream boy.

All my patients were lovely too and it was hard to fit all the testing in in 20 mins as they always wanted to talk to me about their holiday in Australia.

That said some of the towns people were a little rough around the edges, homemade tats, missing teeth, a lot of teenage mums and kids spitting off buses. But that was a few and even then when you spoke to them they were pretty good people.

There is not a huge lot to do in town apart from shopping. So I spent some of my weekend checking out the nearest sights. Broughty ferry is a lovely seaside town with beautiful old buildings, a sandy beach and a castle.

















I also went to St. Andrews, home of brittish golf, it was very touristy but again very pretty full of lovely shops, pubs and golf shops galore. I went to the old cathedral, walked around town saw a Scottish wedding. I walked around some of the golf courses while the jets from the nearby RAF base roared overhead.

I do not have too many photos as I forgot my camera.