We're off to Sunny Spain!

It's 2016!!

2015 was a bit crap for various reasons, with some good highlights, so this year is going to be really awesome.

I've decided to do some more travelling this year, as I feel like I need to see more of the world. You see loads of things across the media about this country and that country and this and that... I sit and wonder is it really like that? Are people really like that? With that in mind I thought now is probably the best time to get up and find out! I figured that, although I'm earning ok, I am never realistically going to be able to move out on my own unless its in rented accommodation, and even that will have to be some hideous house share, and I can't do that again! So might as well put my earnings towards some fantastic trips, only thing to do was to get a new passport, which The Old Lady and The old man kindly brought for me for my birthday!

By the way... I have nothing against Australia,
and do plan to visit...
but it looks like my pin fell out!

Over the next few years (or until life takes another massive change) I plan to travel the world, go to as many different countries and experience as many different cultures as I can. I'm hoping to be able to take photos of different places and get some new perspective. I realise everyone says that but you never know. anything will be new to me and that's what's important!

M booking our trip,
while I watched the ice hockey!
COME ON ANAHEIM!!

With that in mind: first stop is Spain! I know its not a particularly adventurous destination for you seasoned travellers out there, but I'm going with one of my very dear friends, M, and his passport runs out in a few months so we're stuck with the EU and I was told "I have a drawer of Euros, so pick somewhere in the Eurozone". After spending a few hours scouring Google, Trip Advisor, TravelSupermarket and eventually booking with Expedia (never do that by the way, they are liars...) we've booked or trip to Madrid.

I've got half term off ( 13th-21st Feb) off so we're visiting Madrid between 16th-19th, flying home on the 19th and going to visit the Sausages (they know who they are!) at the weekend. Sorted. :)
 Naturally, being me, I've packed and repacked about 5 times so far, and we have no check-in baggage allowance with Ryanair, but I think I'm sticking with this list:

1. Clothes
- undies
- 2 string vests
- 1 pair leggings
- 1 pair skinny jeans
- 1 pair PJ trousers
- 1 t-shirt
- 4 Tops (2 double as nice going out tops)
- 1 pair of flat shoes
- 1 long cardigan
- 4x socks
wearing: skinny jeans, comfy top, hoodie, scarf, & jacket


2. Liquids
(never quite sure how far their "liquids" policy goes, do balms count s liquid? What about solid perfume?)
- hand sanitiser
- face wash
- shampoo
- eye drops (contact lenses, these are essential!)
- lip balm
- solid perfume
- foundation (in a mini pot!)
- solid deodorant (home-made, in a mini pot)
- benefit travel mascara (amazing..)
- first aid balm (home-made, goes everywhere with me!)
- all-purpose soap (Lifeventure, in a smaller bottle)
- blush (Maybelline the mousse one, really nice!)
- sleepy time balm
- toothpaste (in the contact lenses pot!)
- moisturiser (home-made, in a mini pot)


3. Flight Essentials
(its only 2.5hr flight, but I'm not planning to sleep beforehand, so might as well try to sleep on the plane!)
- passport & tickets etc in their own under-clothes-carrier thing
- neck pillow
- eye mask
- earplugs (also in case M snores in the hotel!)
- mini eggs
- Green and Blacks milk chocolate (delicious!) 


4. Makeup & Toiletries
- Gelert giant travel towel (never quite trust hotel towels...)
- make-up bag (from Primark, isn't it cute!)
- MUA face palette (enough for bronzer, highlighter and a few different neutral and dark eye shadows)
- mini brushes (both eco tools and Primark, eco tools are the best)
- bronzer and powder (in contact lens case which isn't shown)
- mirror compact
- make-up remover pads (from Primark, so small..)
- 4 hair bands
- tweezers
- fold down toothbrush
- antibacterial wipes (for the plane...)
- toiletry bag to hold it all, in cammo obviously!


5. Travel Book & Organiser
- Travel book (I've been slowly filling this in over the past few weeks and will continue to as I travel the world)
- Organiser (this is great, has space for notes and a few zip up compartments, data is still expensive in EU so I might have to actually remember to write things down rather than rely On Google...)
- Pink satchel to hold books and pen!


6. Backpack & Bags
- borrowing Teapot's 40ltr backpack as mine was too tall for Ryanair...
- big blue handbag (JUST in Ryanair's "plus" bag size...)
- Tripod (technically too tall for Ryanair... we'll see if they complain...)
- Selfie stick and remote! Had to be done....
- 3 pack down shopping bags (one is a backpack style... this is a hang over from Scotland where bags were 5p, this rule also came into the UK in October... and I'm cheap)
- Water To Go bottle in the pocket (or at least it will be when I can find it...)


7. TECH
(here's where I packed too much I'm sure...I can't help being a gadget fan who hates being bored...)
- Nexus 6P phone
- spare phone (hopefully my Nexus 5, with a sim card from 3 so I can have data connection... hotel has free Wifi and we have the BT wifi password too!)
- 10" netbook
- Nexus 7 tablet
- DS lite & M3 card
- 3.5" Chinese mini tablet (its cute! It also plays video and takes a 32GB card)
- mp3 player (arrived in the post today!)
- 3 portable batteries (2 of which are solar)
- 3 EU travel adaptors
- 2 USB plugs
- 1 USB Type-C plug (for my phone... thanks Google for being such a great innovator that no-one has caught up yet)
- bluetooth speaker
- Headphones
- Moto 360 charger
- a shitload of leads and adaptors for various devices


8. Camera
- Pentax K-50
- 18-55mm kit lens
- another lens (I think its 70-300mm but can't remember. Really lovely vintage manual lens!)
- a few filters
- 2SD cards (32GB)
- remote shutter release control
- battery charger


I am clearly over packed for 4 days... but at least it fits into two bags for the flight!! I've read loads of those "round the world trip in a carry on" crap articles and every time I'm like WHERE IS YOUR TECH?!?

As usual, feel free to comment... and wish us luck!!!

Day 10 - Fuelled Entirely by Irn Bru

Wow it has taken ages to sort this out! Google Photos has stopped accepting DNG files (the raw format my camera shoots in) and of course I didn't realise this at first so I'm like "upload my 176 photos", Google skipps them all so I tired again... three times,then again on another PC then eventually had to convert them all to PNG files and they finally finished uploading and being edited earlier.... yes I ahve SERIOUSLY slow internet so 176 photos took about 10 hours to upload :(

Anyways... onto Day 10!!

Skye Landscape

Dunvegan Castle

The aim of today was to get out and experience as much of the tourist crap that Skye had to offer as possible! Being big fans of Peatbog Faeries we were really hoping to visit Dunvegan as they have two songs about it (Welcome To Dun Vegas and the Veganites) as well as Angus MacAskill's house (they also do a song called Angus MacAskill). We saw on Google that Dunvegan had a caslte, and who are we to pass up a trip to a caslte?!
So off we went, the landscape of Skye is odd, The Old Man and The Old Lady really like Skye, but I've got to say it looked a bit bleak and depressing. I'm sure it's different in the sunshine, but by this point in the holiday I'd forgotten what sunshine and being warm and dry were!
Dunvegan Castle was nice. It's home to the seat of the MacLeod of MacLeod, chief of the Clan MacLeod. It was really cool to see so many artifacts from the castle's history in the rooms, some of which dated back to the 15th Century. I really liked the maid's room as there was quite a bit of chipped and decayed looking stuff there... I love a good bit of rust!!

Doggies lording it up at Dunvegan Castle

Only one of us could go in at a time, though, and we couldn't take any pictures so you'll have to suffice seeing pictures of the outside and of my handsome doggy and his best mate Princess! :)


We got to wander around the gardens with the doggies though and they loved it! The castle had the round garden, the water garden and the walled garden. It also backed onto the beach but the weather wasn't really good enough to go paddling!

Garden Waterfall

The walled garden was nice and had a vegetable patch that looked like it was doing better than ours, as well as loads of other plants. The water garden was lovely and had one of Skye's many MANY pretty waterfalls, still not convinced a waterfall can be ugly?

Getting to try out that slow shutter camera technique is good fun. I can honestly say I think I've just about got the hang of this whole small f/stop means more light, slower speed means more light and blurry. Still not sure what ISO is though, even though I've read about it and Wiki'd it... think I need it explaining in simple person's language.

Off we go to the next thing on our list: Angus Macaskill's House. Angus was a 7ft 9in gentle giant born in Scotland who moved to Canada. I'm not entirely sure why there is a museum dedicated to him on Skye, other than one of his distant relatives, Danny MacAskill, is form Skye and is a famous cyclist.

Angus Macaskill's House

 The museum was really nice though and is in one of the traditional black houses, so if anything it was really interesting to see inside one of the traditional dwellings. There were also lots of artefacts from the Victorian era that were out for display. It's great when a museum lets you get up close to things in such a way and doesn't hide them behind cabinets, this is my favourite type of museum, an immersive experience!

A Gentle Giant

 We moved on from the Angus MacAskill museum to find the Skye Museum of Island Life. This looked interesting on Trip Advisor and was again set in a traditonal 'blackhouse'. We had learnt about Blackhouses from our strip around the museum at Bettyhill in the highlands, so it was cool to be able to go in and have a look around

This museum was really small, and the main thing that annoyed me was there was stuff on the walls that were reprints of newspaper clippings, but the edges had faded so badly you couldn't read them, bugged me a lot that did!

Skye Black House

I really found being inside one of the blackhouses quite depressing if I'm honest. Not because it was a rubbish exhibit, far from it, but because it was quite shocking to be up and close to the sights and smells of traditional island life. The house was black on the outside, as well as the inside, from the soot from burning peat. This was evident because the smell was still lingering! Apparently the thatch is redone every year in the traditional way with rushes being hand cut. All in all a very interesting half an hour!

Museum of Island Life

Our busy action-packed day wasn't about to end there and we moved onto the next place on my list to visit: Neist Point.

The End Of Skye

Neist Point is a viewpoint and is located on the most Westernly part of Skye. This was also the most Westernly coast we would get on this trip! The viewpoint was amazing, really rather amazing!! As usual for this trip it was way too windy and rainy to get HARVe up again, so sadly I don't have any really cool aerial shots, but I got plenty of pictures of the rocks and cliffs.

Thistle! When in Scotland...

Ears Flapping In The Wind

There was even a couple getting married near the point (which we didn't climb, Teapot couldn't be bothered!) which was lovely. Good on them... poor sods must have been freezing!!! I did hold Prince up for a show of love and affection, his little ears were flapping in the wind... I still don't think he's forgiven me completely yet!!

Someone is unimpressed with Neist Point

Next stop: The Fairy Pools. Now I'll admit my little post card addiction had lead me here because I picked up a Fairy Pools post card and it looked stunning!! It looked like a set of pools with almost coloured water in them making them appear magical, so we were hopeful for this one!!

The Fairy Pools

Sadly, what we got was much less "enchanting and magical" and more "encouraging pneumonia".

The Fairy Pools are located along the road to Glen Brittle and is apparently a 30-odd mile walk into the Glen. Along the way there are hundreds of little waterfalls and pools that ahve been created naturally that I'm sure the less cynical of you readers will think is really cute and magical.

"I'll fill up our water-to-go bottles" she said
"It's good fresh water" she said
"It will taste NICE" she said.
Horrible.

Please don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the walk and it WAS very pretty... but this is Scotland. Moreover, this is The Isle of Skye, to say a waterfall is a rare thing is to tell a big fat lie. There's loads of them ll over the island and I'm sure they're all jsut as pretty.

Actually, if I'm honest, I probably would have enjoyed the Fairy Pools a lot more if it wasn't RAINING YET AGAIN!! Really bored of rain and being cold and being damp right now. Oh and did I mention that "headache" I was suffering from a few days ago has turned into a huge lovely cold. Chesty phlegmy cough mixed with the shivers and snotty nose. Just what you want when you're camping in SCOTLAND which is COLD and DAMP!!! Also didn't help that the water we filled up our water-to-go bottles with from the Fairy Pools tasted disgusting. Wouldn't recommend it.

Hundreds of Waterfalls

Dinner time looms and we've got a few choices, wither go into Portree again and try to find a cafe with a seating area outside, get something to cook from the Co-Op in Portree, or forget Portree all together and drive a stupid amount of time in the wrong direction away from our campsite in search of something that resembles Scottish seafood. Guess what one we picked?

We stopped off in a place called Cafesia, hoping for atleast a vaguely filling dinner. So far I've not managed to sample much famous Scottish seafood and have been disappointed with bloody Bookers Basics scampi from the "famous" Portree fish & chips shop, so something filling was all I was hoping for.

Wow did I underestimate this place!! I'm pleased too, this was one of the highlights of my trip!! I went into the little coffee shop to order while Teapot was outside with Prince and Princess, it was really packed (AND WARM!!!!) but the staff were SO nice and friendly. I ordered the sides (Sweet Potato Chips, Haggis Balls with Spicy Mango Dip & Doughballs) and our pizza (local Scottish Seafood Pizza!) and she said it would be a 45 minute wait for the pizza so they would send our sides out as starters.

Sweet Potato chips, Doughballs,
Haggis Balls with Spicey Mango Dip

Am I glad they did, the sides were literally to die for and the pizza was well worth the wait. Honestly, it was the best damn dinner i had for the whole journey and I'd go back to Skye just for that cafe, despite the fact that it was about 15 miles away from our campsite in the wrong direction!!!

As much as I'm moaning a bit today, and that's mainly down to the fact that I felt like shit all day and was really REALLY fed up with being cold and damp, I did enjoy the whistle stop tour of The Island, I just felt that it seemed like Blackpool end of season. Kind of like it needed a good lick of paint and some maintenance, everything looked a bit tired and half arsed. I know it was raining and cold, but  even Portree and Dunvegan looked like they were about to fall down.

Delicious Seafood Pizza

I guess I'm not not a natural lover of The Isle of Skye to be honest and I probably wont bother coming back in a hurry. There were nice bits, just not enough to make me fall in love with it.

Tomorrow's plan: Leave Skye (can't say I'm overly upset about that) and travel down to Loch Lomond via Glencoe,

Day 9 - Loading, Loading, Loading

Seriously getting fed up with this lack of connectivity. I pay for unlimited data... so far I've had unlimited sod all for the past 3 days. I am irritated and annoyed. That and I've managed to pick up a cold so I feel like shit too, just to add insult to injury.


Anyway... on a more positive note we have taken today as a pure rest day so Prince and I are hanging out in our tent drinking Irn Bru and eating chocolate.

The view from our campsite is lovely, a valley between two mountains/hills (we've been having the hill vs. mountain debate all journey), but sadly it keeps raining :(

There was a break in the rain long enough for me to go and grab a shower (lovely, warm shower!) and do some washing, strung the washing line up between the two tents and happily hung it all out... for about fifteen minutes before it started raining again. I'm really over rain now!

We decided to actually do SOMETHING with our day so headed into Portree again for fish and chips by the seafront. One thing that has seriously pissed me off so far is so many places near the coast (and, lets be honest, we've been near the coast quite a bit) that don't sell fresh fish? Just crap from bookers out of a bag?! The fish and chip shop we went into has been frequented by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, who featured it and cooked in it for River Cottage: Gone Fishing where he did beer-battered pollock as an eco-friendly alternative to haddock.

Sad to say that Hugh Fluffy-Lovelystall must not have had that much of an impact and pollock wasn't on the menu, just normal fish and chip shop stuff, and my scampi was out of a bookers bag yet again. The chips were a bit crap too. Doggies enjoyed it as we took their food and bows with us so we could all have dinner together!

I'm not impressed with Skye so far, perhaps it's the weather I don't know... it just hasn't grown on me yet?

Tomorrow's plan: all the tourist crap around Skye!

Day 8 - Over the Sea to Skye

Today has been mostly driving... we had some bits planned (like Strome Castle, which we couldn't find) but mostly just spent our day driving through some more lovely scenery on our way to Skye.

We left Gairloch/Strath and travelled West towards the Kyle of Lochalsh, through Kinlochewe, Stromeferry, Torridon, Shieldaig, Lochcarron (Which was lovely). We stopped in Ben Eigh for a spot of breakfast, we thought the large mountain looking thing might be Ben Nevis but apparently it wasn't. We were trying to check Google to find out, but as usual no bloody phone signal... (yes I have tweeted EE!).

The Whistle Stop Cafe in Ben Eigh is quite nice and worth a visit. They were kind enough to let us have breakfast outside with the kids (dogs) and provided tables etc. I would say, however, that the price you paid was definitely a captive market price! Nearly £8 for very small smoked salmon with creamy scrambled eggs & toast and £8 for a tiny "Full English" with no toast. The smoked salmon was good and the black pudding was nice though and tasted vaguely haggisy?!

Onwards and upwards, we were really looking forward to going to Skye as The Old Man and The Old Lady have holidayed there a few times and say it's beautiful. We shall see!

I have to share the pictures from the "petrol station" though as this is becoming amusing. Where I am from, when you think of 'petrol station' you think of Esso or Texaco or a supermarket like Tesco or Morrissons. Here it's just a tiny pump from the 1950s and a few days ago I actually had a serviced pump... I didn't even know they existed any more?! Anyway....

We arrived at the Kyle of Lochalsh and crossed the bridge into Skye just before it began to tip it down with rain. As promised The Peatbog Faeries were bellowing out nice and loud with The Folk Police as we crossed over and prepated for the hour's journey to our campsite in Torvaig. We had e-mailed them and had no reply for a booking so we really were working on luck!

We drove through civilisation then back out through more mountains and hills and rocks. Skye has some beautiful waterfalls, but then again I can't say I've ever seen an ugly waterfall! They all seem to have a mysterious look to them that makes them magical.

We arrived at Torvaig fairly early, having still not got a reply from their email. Pulling into the carpark it was still raining and I was desperate for a pee. We noticed that, yet again, there was no phone signal and the campsite was charging £3 PER HOUR for WiFi. Seriously. £3 PER HOUR. After using the facilities (and finding them seriously lacking in cleanliness) we decided that actually, Torvaig campsite is a bit of a dump... That it it seemed that none of the tents had electric hook up, and by this point my phone and tablets were running out of charge (my phone drains VERY quickly when searching for data unfortunatly).

We left Torvaig and went back through Portree (the main port, apparently) to Sligachan where we noticed a campsite on the way past. This was great! £20 per night is a bit steep, but it seems normal for Skye (welcome to tourist heaven...) but we have electric hook up and phone signal, albeit slow phone signal. The Toilets and showers are kept pretty clean too so no complaints. The chap who runs it seems a bit standoffish but I am sure he's cool (UPDATE: he's actually really nice!).

Got the tents up in daylight again (thankfully...) and headed into Portree with the doggies to pick up supplies for dinner (chicken tortellini with a pesto sauce! mm!). I reserve judgement on Portree, but it seems very touristy. Quite pretty but very touristy...

Into bed and the pub across the road were having some live music we could hear, I love the fact that they finished with "I will walk 500 miles..." I suppose it's like us finishing with something proper British like BohRap!

Tomorrow's plan: Nothing, quite literally!

Day 7 - Karma hates me

47 Minutes. Within 47 minutes of starting off today I had managed to jackknife the trailer (resulting in a new dent in my car), rip something off of the underneath of my car, get lost, nearly have a head on collision, and almost run out of petrol. Teapot tells me that Karma treats everyone equally, I tell her that's shit.

So let me explain.

We left Clachtoll Beach (the place with zero phone signal and WiFi that was ridiculous) and headed towards Achmelvich, as there is apparently a gorgeous beach down there that is well worth a visit. This is crap by the way.

Can't fault the scenery

A beach there may be beautiful, but it's probably at the end of the road where the campsite/youth hostel is so we decided to turn around and go somewhere else instead (as I have no intention of paying for a campsite I'm not staying at just to go and see a pretty beach?!).

Turning around, that's fine. There was room where I was if I went up onto the slight hill to swing round. I did that and guess what? The hill was actually rocks, rather sharp ones actually. They caught something under my car and ripped it off, in the confusion I hit reverse to get off of the rock and the trailer went corner first into my bumper. Safe to say I was not happy. Unhitched the trailer and assessed the damage, dent isn't too bad but a couple of nasty scratches that will probably cost me a fortune to fix, now the trailer was free it was easier to move the car off the rocks, this produced the realisation that something had been pulled off underneath. I know sod all about cars in all honesty but I had a quick look under and nothing "serious" seemed to be dangling off, the two pieces in my hands were made of plastic and rubber and one was the rubber bit that goes along the bottom of the front bumper, so I knew that wasn't serious, but I had no idea what the other bit was.

We finally turned car round and re-hitched the trailer in order to go back out to civilisation. I only had about 40 miles left in my tank and knew petrol was of the uppermost importance. While 40 miles seems like a lot, it was 36 miles to Ullapool! Luckily Lochinver was only 1 mile away and had a, rather expensive, petrol station!

On the way down the single track road I went round a blind turn only to lock headlights with a Mini Cooper traveeling WAY too fast... luckily we both had very good breaks and didn't swerve down into the sheer drop on the side of the cliff. Teapot and the dogs learnt some new words in that moment and also learnt that I'm an equal opportunities abusee; I don't care if you're a local, if you're from the UK or foreign, I will give you exactly the same amount of road rage!! Dickhead.

Highland Coos!!

I did find out what he was rushing away for though when I had to wait for five minutes down the road due to a couple of escaped Highland Cows! Magnificent animals, really pretty but I think the 3 farmers (not shepherds?) getting them back would beg to differ!!

Quick check under the car on the forecourt and I saw a suspicious looking drip. As I mentioned before I know sod all about cars so had no idea if this drip was supposed to be there or not, asked in the petrol station where the nearest mechanic was and got "there's one down the road but he's on holiday, next one is in Ullapool". Great. I mentioned before that Ullapool was 36 miles away, that was in the opposite direction....

Ullapool

40 odd miles later and we arrive at the Bosch garage in Ullapool, I have to say that was the scariest 40 miles ever as I spent the whole journey listening to every stone hit the car thinking "shit, what fell off? How much is that going to cost me?". Luckily, after a quick check over from a very friendly mechanic, I was told that the bits that were pulled off were just plastic or rubber covers that come off all the time and the drip is actually condensation from the aircon and totally normal! Phew. I will be sending the Bosch garage a thank you card and maybe even a cake as they didn't charge me at all for looking at the car!

Ullapool dock

We decided to stay in Ullapool for a bit and have a look around, free parking in Ullapool!! The town it's self is quite nice, much busier than other towns or villages we've been through so far, which isn't hard really as most of the "villages" consist of about 3 houses and the "towns" stretched to about 10 houses and maybe a church!

Tasty dinner and the only time Duchers IPA
has ever tasted nice!

Lucky for us the sun came out too, which made an crappy start to the day feel much better! Lunch was a lovely crab meat sandwhich at a little pub on the seafront. I really love seafood so getting fresh was well worth it!

Prince and Teapot
cuddle time

After Ullapool we headed off again towards our next campsite in Gairloch. As usual, the scenery on the way was beautiful but the phone signal has been utterly shit. This is a massive shame because we wanted to check out places to visit en route, especially those that allow doggies in, but this has been near impossible due to the shitty connection (yes I have complained to EE) so I'm kinda worried we may have missed out on some things.

Photobombed

Arrived in Gairloch (actually Strath..?!) fairly early in comparison to every other day and pitched the tents in the daylight! Days seem to last longer up here and it's light until almost 2300. We decided to nip to the local gardening and outdoors shop to get some bait to do some sea fishing, found the shop easily as it was described ad "that modern looking building". Modern, bits of Gairloch/Strath may be, but phone signal and decent WiFi they seriously lack.

Pretty

Love the light
on her ears!

We're still really crap at fishing. I had to cut my line after about the third cast when it got stuck in seaweed a few metres out to sea. Teapot carried on and I went for a little picture taking expedition.

Soon to be a starter

We both saw Mussles growing and figured, if we can't catch fish we may as well collect dinner! What a starter!

Tasty starter!

Back to the tent and another early night as my head was throbbing by this point after a pretty stressful day.

Prince loves my cloak!

Day 8's plans: The Isle of Skye!