just fort william

August 13, 2023August 18, 20232 Comments

We arrived in Fort William, parked our rental car on a very steep slope, and checked into our hotel. I think I’d imagined it to be a bit nicer, like some cosy guest house, but it wasn’t, it seemed furnished like an old office building, and was spartan to say the least. There was a sizeable colony of mould on the ceiling. The shower in our tiny bathroom was also unbearably hot to the touch, and would not go any colder than the insides of a new McDonalds apple pie (which if you’ve ever had one of those, you’ll know why it says “caution: HOT” on the sleeve). We had the front desk staff come up to see if it could be fixed, and they fiddled about and turned it on, to the same temperature, and touching it momentarily with their finger they said they thought it was fine. It definitely wasn’t. So no showers on this two night stay, unless you want to be scalded. So I dubbed the hotel “Faulty Showers”, and now I can’t remember the actual name, so it’s just Faulty Showers. The view from the bedroom was nice, overlooking the hills and the church of St. Andrews. We were in Fort William because (a) we were going on a very special trip on the Jacobite Steam Train the next day, and (b) this is really the best place to stay to explore the Highlands, being the biggest town for quite a way. I didn’t really warm to Fort William as a town. Great connections, some good shops (it had a good Tesco Metro close to our hotel, for sandwiches and supplies – ie, Irn Bru and Tunnocks Teacakes, which we brought onto the Jacobite with us). Dinner options were a little limited, because this being the main hiking and Highlands hub it’s where everyone stays, so they all go out for dinner at the same time, and food is expensive. One place we saw it was eighteen quid for a burger. We had a decent Indian meal on our first evening there; I was surprised to see “Haggis Naan” on the menu; I don’t even know how that works. The pubs didn’t look as inviting as I’d have expected, the best one looked like the Ben Nevis, but on this evening it didn’t exactly exude the Highland pub atmosphere I’d imagined, mostly tired hikers and tables of empty glasses, while some of the other pubs on the main pedestrianized drag seemed a little bit, well, ‘English lager lad’, doorways spilling with middle-aged English men and women aggressively smoking and vaping and swearing, so I gave them a miss. Around the rest of the town centre, teenage youths ambled up and down with an air of boredom, and hikers tiredly made their way in small crowds to whatever expensively priced and cheaply run hotel they were pitstopping at. This is the end of the Great Highland Way, but also the start of the Great Glen Way which goes up by Loch Ness, and of course it’s right at the foot of Ben Nevis, Britain’s highest mountain, which was completely shrouded from view by Scottish mist. the sketch I did above, early in the morning, was the Memorial to Donald Cameron of Lochiel, with the Duncansburgh Church behind it. As I sketched, a man passed by walking back to his hotel and said to me (in a southern English accent), “It would be quicker to take a photograph you know,” and just walked on. Something in his tone was so dismissive, it irked me. I just glared nonplussed as he hiked off towards his hotel, but in my mind I thought, “ooh, you’re my enemy now.”

Still, what a view over Loch Linnhe at sunset. After our day on the Jacobite, and after dinner (which due to the lack of available options at the time we ate at the Wetherspoons, not exactly my first choice, but it tasted fine), I decided not to go back to Faulty Showers and stayed out sketching. Sunset here is even later than in Glasgow, and it wasn’t raining, so I sat by the Loch which was pretty peaceful and drew the lovely colours. We really were on the other side of the world now, it felt like. Even though I’m from Britain, for a Londoner this feels like a million miles from home, let alone for a Californian. The Highlands really are lovely, and there’s so much of it to explore, we were only seeing a little bit. Satisfied with my sketch, I turned around and drew the scene behind me, the Highland Hotel. Perhaps a tad nicer (and a wee bit more expensive) than Faulty Showers, this looks like the place to be. It was the sunset-kissed clouds that drew me in though. And I am sure Ben Nevis is around there somewhere, but he wasn’t showing his face. I went back to our hotel and went to be (after watching with my son a few sketches from the old mostly-Scottish sketch show from the early 90s, ‘Absolutely’, which I used to love, because the ‘Stonybridge’ sketches had popped into my head while we were driving north the day before).

There was a really nice bookshop in Fort William though that we spent a bit of time in, and got some lovely prints. I nearly got a book to teach myself how to speak Gaelic, but I know I’m probably not going to do that, unless I take a class. It’s a lovely language though, and you will see it on so many road signs up here. Fort William is called An Gearasdan in Gaelic, and about 7% or so of the population speak it. While this is the main town for this part of the Highlands, it was built to, you know, put the Highlands people down. Originally established by Oliver Cromwell to keep the local Clan Cameron in line, it was later named Fort William after King William III who built the fort to control the local Highlands clans, who over the next century would rise up in Jacobite rebellion several times. We heard a lot about the Jacobites during this part of the trip. There was also a really nice visitor centre in Fort William where I got some postcards, magnets, tea coasters, because I am a tourist and you can never have too many of those.

I did get up early on our last morning there and draw the church of St. Andrews, which was close to Faulty Showers. The gateway was so pretty and covered in moss, which I didn’t end up colouring in, and the kirkyard had a lot of character (and probably a lot of characters). I was up to get some nice pastries (and Tunnocks Teacakes) from the little Tesco. I was also, if I’m honest, kind of hoping to see that English guy who had made the irksome comment the morning before. I’m not saying I had spent a lot of the day thinking of what my comeback should have been, like George Costanza (like “yeah, well the jerk store called, and they said it would be quicker for you to just bugger off mate”, yeah not that good really) but I was perfecting my dirty look. He was probably already halfway up Ben Nevis by now. At which point I thought, ooh I should walk past him trying to climb Ben Nevis, all out of breath and red-faced, and say, “it would be quicker for you to take a photo!” or something similarly witty. However that wouldn’t be true, because Ben Nevis just would not show itself to us, hiding behind all that mist. Rather than wait for the mist to clear, I determined it would be quicker to look at a picture of Ben Nevis on Wikipedia, and we left Fort William and its faulty showers behind us.

raining champions

August 12, 2023August 12, 2023Leave a comment

It’s going to rain in Scotland. It’s Scotland, not Arizona. Of course, it didn’t have to rain quite so much on the very day we hired the car and drove north from Glasgow, past the mighty Loch Lomond and the Trossachs, over wild Rannoch Moor and through the awe-inspiring Glencoe, on to Fort William at the foot of Ben Nevis (which we never actually saw, it was so shrouded in cloud). We never saw most of these lovely scenes because the rain was very thick, but we did our best and still explored. We first stopped bu the shores of Loch Lomond at the pretty little village of Luss, and stood looking out at the greyness, unable to see the other side. I came to Loch Lomond once before, in 1999 with my friend Simon and his uncle who drove a Jaguar, and can vouch that it is beautiful here. So, we continued through the rain along the shores, going north up to the Falls of Falloch. I had warned my wife before our tip to Scotland that we had to be aware of Scotland’s biggest menace – the Midge. Being from the south of England, we don’t get them, but I remember camping in Cumbria when I was 17 and everyone was being constantly eaten alive by the things. Tiny little fly creatures that bite you to pieces. We watched videos of people walking around the Highlands dressed in nets, we bought loads of midge-repellant, we checked the Midge Forecast online. Yet in the whole trip, the only time we encountered the Midge was at the Falls of Falloch, and they didn’t really get us at all. We got lucky, maybe, or the Midges know not to mess with me. The Falls of Falloch are lovely, and it was raining, but I tried to grab a sketch of them. As you can see my Fabriano sketchbook is splotched with raindrops. If you look closely though, you can see the remains of one dead Midge. See you later, sucker.

After a brief stop for lunch at a pub in Crianlarich, just beating the rush of hikers making their way up the West Highland Way (some day! There’s a lot of hiking I want to do in Scotland, some day), we continued our drive north through the rain. We crossed the boggy Rannoch Moor, one of the largest wildernesses in Britain, which I’d been eager to see. We couldn’t see very far. It wasn’t too long before we arrived at the main attraction, Glencoe. Or Glen Coe, as it’s usually written, Gleann Comhann in Gaelic. Even in the gloomy rain it was breathtaking scenery. We stopped a few times for photos and to take in the sheer Scotland-ness of it all. I’ve heard so much about Glen Coe since I was a kid, and its tragic history with the Glencoe Massacre of 1692, and its geology, the work of ice age glaciers carving through ancient volcanic rock. Scotland looks very different from England, and this is because geologically they are not from the same place, but collided together millions of years ago, Scotland originally being part of the same landmass that is now North America. Of course I had to at least attempt a sketch. I had it in mind that I would come up here and do sketches like Richard Bell in that book of his that I love, but the weather had other ideas. I even tucked my umbrella into my jacket to attempt some shelter, to no avail, I couldn’t look upwards and the wind and rain just laughed in my face. I drew the panorama above, of the Three Sisters, and decided to just leave it like that, rain splotches making my watercolouring impossible. It was a brave effort. Sometimes what comes out in these moments says more about your time than trying to draw it later. I drew another quick pencil sketch a little way up the road, adding a quick grey wash afterwards, but otherwise enjoyed what scenery we could. We visited the Glen Coe visitor centre, saw their little film about Glen Coe, went into the reconstructed turf hut, and bought stuff in the gift shop. And then we drove on through more dramatic, wet countryside, to our next port of call, Fort William. We were going on the famous Jacobite Steam Train…

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“I belong to Glasgow”

August 10, 2023August 10, 20232 Comments

It rained hard on the train journey to Glasgow. I suppose you don’t come to Scotland for the sun. We passed by Falkirk, a place I’d like to have seen, mostly for the huge Kelpies. We arrived at Queen Street and the rain stopped for long enough to let us walk up hill to our hotel, further than it looked on the map. We sat in the hotel lounge watching the driving rain outside, eating those little Tunnocks marshmallow Teacakes I love so much, strumming on the ukulele. I could tell my family were maybe a little less wowed by Glasgow than by Edinburgh, but I’d been waiting most of my life to come and have a look around here, rain or not. I went for a little walk as the rain eased off a bit; we weren’t far from the Art School, but after the big fire they had a few years back, it’s still covered in this big white plastic while it’s being remodeled. Glasgow’s an artist’s town though, that is clear. Charles Rennie Mackintosh is the big name here, but he’s not the only one. Musically too, Glasgow is a creative city, and one of my favourite bands of all time are from here, Belle and Sebastian. I’ve always wanted to come here and explore.

I wandered about a little, and then I heard some music, it sounded like flutes and drums. Marching up the road were the men and women of the Orange Order, decked out in their suits and their orange sashes with their big orange and purple banners, lads in Rangers shirts flanking them, as well as police clearing the road for them. I was glad I wasn’t in my Celtic shirt, nor my Ireland shirt. I had heard about the Orange Marches since I was a kid of course, the ones in Northern Ireland at least, usually in the backdrop of some news story, and I had forgotten that Marching Season was starting. I knew from my mum that it was big in Glasgow (she spent some time in Glasgow as a kid, I think some of our Ulster family lived up here), and of course I’m well aware of Rangers and Celtic and the whole sectarian thing. Still, I was actually surprised to see them in person. I did see them marching the day before in Edinburgh actually, going up the Royal Mile in the morning with their flutes, playing “The Sash Me Father Wore” (I am sure they have other tunes, that’s the only one I know). It didn’t seem as big (though I saw coachloads of other men in orange sashes arrive a bit later), and was certainly dwarfed by the huge Pride marches that were happening on the same day in Edinburgh. The Glasgow march seemed to go on for a long way. I got a quick sketch done, and went and looked at something else.

When the rain had stopped and we were filled up on delicious fish and chips (washed down with more Irn Bru of course) we walked about the city centre. The pedestrianized Sauchiehall Lane looked like it had seen better days, and could have done with a little less of those food delivery bikes careening down them, a scourge in many cities now. But I liked the city centre, and while looking at our map a young lad came up and said “you look lost, can I help youse find something?” This it turns out was a feature of Glasgow – the people are just willing to give you a hand, this happened several times. We explored the George Square area and found that statue of the Duke of Wellington on his horse with the traffic cone on its head, outside the Gallery of Modern Art. I have seen this before on my one super brief stop in Glasgow, in 1999, and its the only thing I remember. It’s a Glaswegian tradition to put a cone on the head of the Iron Duke. Incredibly they have tried to stop people doing it, yet the cone is way more famous than the statue without the cone. We took a bus out towards Glasgow Cathedral, and on the way an elderly fellow had overheard us tell the driver where we were going, and was giving us directions in that thick Glaswegian accent that I love hearing so much. Honestly, it’s always been my favourite accent. My best friend when I was 12 was from Glasgow, Ralph, I think we became friends largely because I actually tried to understand him, but as a result of his influence at a formative age I do slip into a kind of Scottish pronunciation of certain words when I hear the accent again. I also watched maybe too much Rab C. Nesbitt as a kid as well. It was Ralph who got me interested in the guitar, and we were both big Beatles fans; I remember we talked about starting a band called The Flies, and eventually I got a cheap pretty crap acoustic for a fiver at a car boot sale, and learned my first chords (and also taught myself how to string a guitar). Anyway, we got off the bus and followed the old man’s helpful directions to the cathedral, known as St. Mungo’s Cathedral, and also the High Kirk of Glasgow (I’m not sure if it’s technically a cathedral, as we learned with St.Giles in Edinburgh, but it calls itself cathedral and it looks like one and that’s good enough for me). The cathedral was not actually where we wanted to go. We were looking for the Necropolis, which is a large cemetery at the top of a steep hill behind the cathedral with amazing views over the city. See my sketch at the top of the post, that was from there. The views were remarkable, you could see Celtic Park stadium, but we didn’t linger too long. In terms of location, I think it’s up there with my favourite cemeteries, and I was even more pleased to find the grave of William Miller, the guy who write Wee Willie Winkie. I took this photo of an ivy-covered memorial to a young lad named John Ronald Ker, who in 1867 had drowned while shooting wild fowl from his boat at the age of 21, and this monument was erected by his friends and family in his memory. It’s a beautiful celtic cross, and a sad story.

After the Necropolis, we bussed it back to the hotel and relaxed for the rest of the night, eating more Tunnocks Teacakes. More Glasgow sketches to come.

“Bloody MacKenzie, Turn the Key!”

August 8, 2023August 8, 20236 Comments

A must-see spot in Edinburgh for ghost hunters (or ghost hunted?) is Greyfriars Kirkyard. I went there twice. The second time was early on our final morning in the city, when I got up and walked across the old town until I reached the statue of Greyfriars Bobby, outside the Greyfriars Bobby pub. If I had heard of Greyfriars Bobby before, I don’t remember it, but I probably assumed he was some sort of policeman, maybe one that wandered the spooky graveyard in the foggy night looking out for graverobbers and ghouls. No, it turns out Greyfriars Bobby is a dog, a wee little pooch, and Disney even made a film about him. The story goes that the wee Bobby was the dog of a local policeman, a little Skye Terrier who was so loyal to his master that when the man died and was buried in the kirkyard around Greyfriars Kirk, Bobby would guard his grave every night for about fourteen years. Greyfriars Bobby, as he became known locally, eventually died in January of 1872 (thereby missing the first ever Scotland v England international football match by eleven months). Such was Bobby’s celebrity, a small fountain was commissioned by Lady Burdett-Coutts, president of the Ladies Committee of the RSPCA, topped with a little statue of Bobby sculpted by William Brodie. It was unveiled in November 1873 (almost exactly a year since that first Scotland v England international football match, which ended 0-0 by the way). I had to add Bobby to my sketchbook, and I added the eponymous pub in the background so that you know his name (the pub I think came later, and in those days they did not show international football on TVs in pubs, due to the lack of international football, plus the lack of TVs what with them not being invented, though a Scotsman would later fix that too). You will notice that Bobby has a very shiny nose. If you ever saw him you might even say it glows. This is because of a very silly tradition that tourists have, perhaps told by silly guides in years gone by, that if you touch Bobby’s nose you will have good luck, because (and you have to say this in a Scottish accent) obviously that makes loads of fuckin’ sense, doesn’t it. The problem has got so bad that the statue is in danger of being permanently damaged, so locals have taken to making up stories of bad luck that will befall people that rub Bobby’s nose, and those stories I might actually believe. One thing we do not want is for Bobby’s nose to come off, because the absolute last thing Edinburgh needs are endless jokes from its tour guides about how Edinburgh’s dog has no nose, “how does it smell?”, “reeky!”, etc and so on. So people please, leave wee Bobby’s nose alone.

Speaking of tours, the first visit we had to spooky Greyfriars was the very night before, when we took the ‘City of the Dead’ walking tour. This started outside St. Giles Cathedral on the Royal Mile, I sketched the little scene above while we awaited our tour group to assemble. We were met by our guide, a man dressed all in theatrical black with a spooky hat adorned with black flowers and crow’s wings,, round glasses, charcoal coloured paint around the eyes, and unnerving milky-white lenses in his eyes. He reminded me at first of the Crow Man from Worzel Gummidge, but with his white beard he also looked a bit like Terry Pratchett. He gave us an illustrative tour of the old town, full of ghosts yes but mostly full of bodies. Some of the stories were long, detailed and very gruesome, especially those concerning the infamous Old Tolbooth. We then moved through the city towards Greyfriars Kirkyard. It was not yet dark – it’s late June in Scotland, no chance – so we didn’t feel completely spooked out yet. Still the light was getting gloomy and the Kirkyard, packed with weatherworn graves, gnarly trees and mossy old monuments, was the perfect stage for this storytelling. It was also full of other guided tour groups, many from the Harry Potter realm. Greyfriars was a favourite thinking spot for JK Rowling as she came up with ideas for the Potter books, and she would write in a cafe just up the road from here. Many of the graves have names familiar to Potter fans, such as McGonagall (who was actually a poet, apparently a very bad one), James Potter, and the one everyone comes to see, Tom Riddle. It’s actually ‘Thomas Riddell’ but that’s close enough. On our tour, however, we were in for a very ‘real’ bit of spookiness. We were here for the infamous poltergeist, Bloody MacKenzie.

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George MacKenzie, aka ‘Bloody’ MacKenzie, was the enforcer of King Charles II’s punishment and persecution of the Covenanters in the late 1600s. He imprisoned about 1200 Covenanters – Presbyterians who supported the National Covenant in Scotland resisting Charles I’s changes to the Scottish Kirk – in a little field next to Greyfriars Kirkyard, in terrible cramped conditions, with so many either starving to death or being executed that George MacKenzie gained that ‘Bloody’ (or ‘Bluidy’ in Scots) nickname. MacKenzie died in 1691 in Westminster, but he was ultimately buried at a mausoleum right here in Greyfriars, mere feet away from where so many of his victims were imprisoned. Now here’s the thing. His ghost is not only said to haunt this place, but it’s been well documented in recent times. I won’t tell all the stories here, but a lot of people have encountered the dreaded MacKenzie Poltergeist. As our guide told us (after locking us into the ‘Covenanters Prison’ area; only official guides can access this part), many people have encountered this spirit, often feeling a strange presence or the sense of being attacked, or getting home the next day and discovering strange scratches on their body. It was getting gloomy when we entered one of the more sinister feeling tombs, where at the end of the 1990s a homeless man apparently encountered the restless spirit and started a new wave of hauntings. Our guide told us his tales. As he did, an American lady stood at the back of the tomb was becoming increasingly freaked out, interrupting him every minute or so to say that she felt something pressing down on her forehead, as if being pushed back. I thought she was going to faint. While I like the stories, I don’t really believe in ghosts being actually ‘real’ (though I will get shivers down my spine and feel very creeped out), but she certainly did and it was real enough for her. Our guide did a good job though not to freak her out more, but he performed a parlor trick to show us that Bloody MacKenzie can at least turn a huge iron key that was placed in the palm of his hand, making us all recite “Bloody MacKenzie! Turn the Key!” in the dim light while watching this key magically turn of its own accord. It was entertaining; as the guide said at the end, that’s just a wee bit of fun. Still, the American lady was sticking with this ghost tale. “Oh my God!” she exclaimed suddenly. “Does anyone have any AirPods on right now?” Um, no I don’t think so, people mumbled. “Some AirPods have just tried to connect to my iPhone! This has never happened before. That’s so weird. What’s causing that? Is anyone else having this happen?” We were in a literal tomb at night. “Well the poltergeist can sometimes have an effect on electronics,” our guide said reassuringly. The lady was utterly convinced, Bloody MacKenzie was trying to connect his Bloody AirPods to her iPhone. As I wondered what music he might make her listen to, the theme from Rentaghost just popped into my head, mysteriously. (There was a Scottish ghost in Rentaghost too wasn’t there, Hazel McWitch?) It was a fun evening of spooky stories, and it was dark when we walked back to our apartment, our last night in Edinburgh.

So I woke up next morning and came back to Greyfriars, drawing Bobby, and then coming in to explore in the damp morning light. Of course I had to draw MacKenzie’s mausoleum. I wasn’t too worried about being attacked by a poltergeist, or getting mysterious scratches on my arms, or even of having random bagpipe music commandeer my AirPods, though I was a bit nervous of getting eaten by midges, the biggest terror in Scotland as everyone knows. I drew the tomb safe from any supernatural danger, and went home for our final Edinburgh breakfast. We were off to Glasgow that day.

Edinburgh Old Town – a wee bit more

August 7, 2023August 7, 20233 Comments

I am glad we stayed in the Old Town of Edinburgh, among all those tall sandstone tenement buildings, just steps away from the Royal Mile. So this Royal Mile, what exactly is it? Well it is a long stretch of connected streets that slope downwards from Edinburgh Castle, sitting at the top of a 300 million year old volcano, all the way down towards Holyrood Palace (the official residence of the British monarch in Scotland), as well as the area where now the Scottish Parliament can be found. It was likely part of what was left over by a retreating ice sheet thousands of years ago. Along the way, if you can see past all the cashmere shops and whisky tasting shops and stores selling little Nessies with tartan hats on, are storybooks full of history both bloody and noble, pubs spilling out music and English stag parties, upon cobblestones haunted by the ghosts of so many dead Fringe plays that got bad reviews in The Scotsman. I walked one morning round to a building we really loved the look of, the Tolbooth Tavern. I never went into this tavern, but I knew I wanted to draw it. I got a can of Irn Bru (Tropical Irn Bru to be precise, it had a flamingo on the can), stood outside a shop selling tartan scarves or little wooden cows or something, and had to turn my landscape sketchbook very much into portrait mode to fit it all in. Edinburgh is tall and it’s worth getting the tops of these buildings. I didn’t feel like painting the whole thing, but added just enough that you can imagine the rest of the brickwork. This building was once the Canongate Tolbooth, originally dating from from 1591. It’s probably haunted, because why not, everywhere else is.

One of my absolutely favourite memories form our trip to Edinburgh was getting jacket potatoes from Tempting Tattie. This was about a block away from us on Jeffrey Street, and even thinking about it makes me feel hungry from some delicious buttery jacket spuds. Tempting Tatties had some fantastic toppings – I got a huge one with loads of cheese and baked beans on it, pure comfort food for not very much money. My wife got the one topped with Coronation Chicken, that was delicious. I got another next day topped with Chicken Tikka Masala, also very tasty. If I lived in Edinburgh I would need to be climbing up Arthurs Seat every day to burn of all the calories from the jacket potatoes I’d be eating (all washed down with Irn Bru naturally – though it was the Irn Bru Xtra, the zero-sugar one, that I drank mostly – the tropical version was nice, though I did try an Ice Cream flavour Irn Bru which went very much into the bin, yeuch). I must have visited this Tempting Tatties when we came here in 1999, what with it being close to the place where we put on those shows, but I don’t remember, I mostly ate greasy bags of chips.

One evening following a lot of touristing, my wife and son rested at the hotel while I went out to put some more sketches into my book while the light was good. The John Knox House, just a couple of minutes from our flat, was another of our favourite buildings from along the Royal Mile, and dating from the 1480s is one of the oldest surviving medieval buildings on John Knox was the founder of the Scottish Presbyterian Church, leading the Scottish Protestant Reformation back in the 16th century. The ground floor of this building is home to the Scottish Storytelling Centre, which we had a little look around – there were some interesting performances they were hosting that we unfortunately would miss. I’d definitely take a look there before any future trip to Auld Reekie. The little cafe in there also served haggis both meaty and vegetarian. I drew on this light evening (it was after 9pm, still so much daylight) but it started to rain a little, so I sheltered in the covered close directly opposite.

When I was all done, I popped into a pub on the corner – called “No. 1 High Street”, right opposite the busier World’s End where I couldn’t find a table to sit at (they were setting up for some live music in the corner, which I presumed would be one of those traditional Scottish folk nights that Rick Steves and all the guidebooks said I had to experience), and rested my very weary feet. I hadn’t filled in the details on many of those windows yet (repetitive actions like that are often a “do-later” job) so I got to work on that over a nice pint of something cold and Scottish, but of course I can’t stop and always need to draw something new, so I sketched the bar instead. It wasn’t very busy; there was an American couple in, sat next to a couple of young lads from Northern Ireland (with strong and amazing accents), who were there for some farmworkers conference. The young lady at the bar was from the north of England and very conversational with them, and even had a look through my sketchbook, being an artist herself. The Americans I think were from Texas, apparently they met on a TV show, and one of the young lads asked if they have cowboys in Texas. Nearby an older Scottish man chatted with the owner, it was a friendly little place. It didn’t get dark until about 11pm. I walked back to the flat as they were closing, pretty tired, but at least I finally got a Scottish bar sketch from the inside. Walking past the World’s End, the music being played wasn’t quite folk music, more of the generic singer-songwriter variety, so I’m glad I didn’t stand to wait for it, though it sounded nice enough. At least it wasn’t bagpipes. I know it’s an odd thing to admit when I’m touristing around Scotland, but I don’t really like the sound of bagpipes much…

Edinburgh New Town

August 6, 2023August 4, 2023Leave a comment

We took a walk through Princes Street Gardens, which are absolutely lovely. Possibly one of my favourite things about Edinburgh. It’s great being up high and seeing over everything, but it was really relaxing being down low, and looking up at it all from among trees and flowers. I did a couple of quick sketches in my small Fabriano Venezia book, to capture the mood. Edinburgh is a lovely city. These gardens are the sort of place to sit and read a novel. They love their writers in Edinburgh – Sir Walter Scott has that absolutely massive monument by this park, the biggest I’ve ever seen for a novelist anywhere, 200 ft high. Apparently it’s the second biggest in the world, because there’s one in Havana dedicated to Cuban nationalist hero José Martí that is bigger, and since he was also a writer, well it means the Scott Monument isn’t the biggest one for a writer. Just the second biggest, which is fine.

We walked through the parks and there was an old time band playing old time music, I think it was for a gathering of veterans as there were lots of elderly people in uniforms with kilts, it was a nice event underneath the shadow of the castle. We had a cold drink and went off for lunch, before exploring some more of New Town, following a walk from my guide book.

New Town is (obviously) a lot newer than Old Town (wow, this is epic level travel writing here Pete, you’ll be competing with Rick Steves at this rate) but still historic and actually a UNESCO heritage area. Many of the buildings are Georgian (I suppose) and laid out very mathematically (I guess). It was a different vibe to Old Town and seemed to have fewer cashmere shops per square metre. We found ourselves on Heriot Row, which is where Robert Louis Stevenson lived as a child. Edinburgh loves its writers, and he’s one of the most famous, writing Treasure Island, Strange Case of Dr.Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, A Child’s Garden of Verses (personal favourite of mine as a kid and as a parent), and loads of other stuff, I mean the guy was a literary legend. Does he have a monument as big as Walter Scott? He has little monuments all over the place. Maybe Robert Louis Stevenson’s true monument is his body of work. That said, he does have a massive state park named after him in California not too far from us. It is (checks Wikipedia) in fact the largest state park in California named after a writer, at 5,990 acres, so well done Robert. Jack London’s state park is only 1,611 acres and he’s a native Californian. We found Robert Louis Stevenson’s childhood home at 17 Heriot Row, and so I added that house into my sketchbook. I’ve loved his poems since I was a kid so this was really fun to see.

We wandered further on our guidebook walk, finding ourselves on George Street, popping our heads into the very fancy restaurant The Dome which has a spectacular marble-columned interior underneath a huge (surprise!) dome. We rested on the steps and I did a quick sketch of the 18th century church spire across the street, called “St. Andrew’s and St. George’s West”, the two patron saints of Scotland and England. We moved along to St. Andrew’s Square, which surrounds a very tall column with a statue on top called the Melville Monument. Named after Herman Melville, the writer of Moby Dick, Edinburgh really loves big monuments to its writers doesn’t it. It’s 150 ft high so not as big as the Scott Monument but bigger than Stevenson’s, though neither of them have massive state parks in California’s wine country. Further inspection of Wikipedia and my guidebook informed me that Herman Melville is from New York, has nothing to do with Edinburgh, and that the Melville on this big column is some old Viscount called Dundas from the problematic days of the British Empire who famously opposed efforts to end the transatlantic slave trade. So, not a novelist who wrote about whales. I think I prefer the monuments to the great writers. With none of this really on our minds, our tired legs needed a rest and wouldn’t you know it, there was a big screen set up and they were playing The Wizard of Oz. So we sat on the grass (well, I stood and sketched for a bit) and watched the second half of that great ancient film. I know all the words, my sister used to watch it about eight times a day when she was little. When we were done, we all went our separate ways for the afternoon, my wife looked about the shops, my son went home to read the new novel he’d bought at Blackwells (he loves a good book, so fits in well with Edinburgh) but I needed to do a bit more climbing so I walked up Calton Hill and drew this.

Edinburgh Old Town

August 5, 2023August 4, 2023Leave a comment

“Auld Reekie”, that is Edinburgh’s nickname. Back about four or five hundred years ago, the old walled city had little room to grow, so the buildings got very very tall – many still are. All these homes and all these chimneys gave out a lot of smoke, blanketing Edinburgh in thick smog, so locals would call it Auld Reekie – that’s ‘Old Smokey’ in the Scots tongue. A bit like the way London was referred to as The Smoke (I don’t know if people still call it that; perhaps it’s The Vape these days). I always thought Auld Reekie referred to the smell, like when something reeks, and it seems it was a smelly place, but no more than many cities. People would throw their toilet water out of those tall windows into the narrow streets shouting the phrase “Gardyloo!” which came from the French “garde à l’eau”, ‘watch out for the water’. By water we mean of course wee. I mean, listen I’d love to time travel, but I’d die of some vile disease within half an hour of time travelling back then, it sounds disgusting. I had all this history in mind (and in my ears thanks to the podcast I was listening to) when I got up early and went out to sketch this part of Old Town. I hadn’t slept that well, the apartment was nice but very warm, and the fan that was on had given me a dry mouth, and irritated my allergies so my nose was starting to run again. It was raining lightly. I walked up to the cathedral of St. Giles, which is the High Kirk of Edinburgh, to get my cathedral drawing in. I love to draw a cathedral, and this one has a very crown-like spire. Technically it is not a cathedral, not any more, not since 1689, when the Church of Scotland, which is Presbyterian, gave up having bishops, and therefore cathedrals. It’s still allowed to be called one though, because, what you gonnae do about it pal. It does date back to about 1184, long before they started calling it cathedral, and much later this was the church of John Knox, the big figure in the Scottish Reformation – I also drew his house, which will be in a later post (plus I think his brother Hard ran a school?) It started to rain while I was drawing this, so I stood a bit closer to the wall in an attempt to stay dry. That worked for a while, until it didn’t. I did most of it, then scarpered into one of the many alleys that branch off of the Royal Mile.

If you’ve been to Edinburgh you’ll know the sort of alley I mean. Through archways in many of the terraced buildings, you suddenly find yourself in a long passage that doesn’t just go through to another street, but down (or up) steps into a whole new level. Edinburgh’s old town is very hilly, many of the streets have to curve around to get over the steepness (“stepth?” That should be a word, I’m inventing it). These narrow portals cut through the town providing short cuts to those fit enough to brave the steep staircases, and they can also provide sudden photogenic vistas across the city. One such alley with a magnificent view is Advocates Close. We went through there on our first evening in Edinburgh and waited in line (I mean, not a long line) to take a photo looking down at the Sir Walter Scott Monument. On this morning when it started raining, I ducked into this now empty alley – save for the odd passer by with an umbrella – to draw the view myself. It was still before breakfast, and this sketch illustrated an aspect of Edinburgh any visitor would get to know. I listened to more Stories of Scotland, telling me about Greyfriars Kirkyard, which we would visit on a ghost hunting tour the next evening. When I was done here, I picked up some delicious cannoli from a little bakery on Jeffrey Street and headed back to wake everyone up, for a day of touristing.

This above is another thing found on the Royal Mile, which I only outlined while passing in the rain, but drew later on at the flat. The Heart of Midlothian is a mosaic made of cobblestones that marks where the Old Tolbooth once stood, outside St. Giles Cathedral. The Old Tolbooth was a big medieval building whose jail was a dreadful place by all accounts, and many executions took place there. Heart of Midlothian football club – Hearts – is named after this landmark. Sir Walter Scott (he of the aforementioned big monument) wrote a book called The Heart of Midlothian, referring to the Old Tolbooth. Apparently there is a tradition of spitting on the heart, either for good luck or to show disgust at all the executions that this place hosted. I decided against gobbing on the street, though I’m sure worse happens during the Fringe Festival.

Later that day, we were able to get tickets to go into Edinburgh Castle. Tip for tourists – if you ever go to Edinburgh and want to go to the castle, get those pre-booked tickets in advance because they will sell out fast. The castle was a hike uphill, past all the cashmere shops and whisky shops and shops where you can buy little cuddly Highland Coo or Nessie toys, but the view was great. We got the self-guided audio-tour, which in respect wasn’t as interesting as I’d have hoped (they rarely are, I never like standing there listening to those little plastic radios, when I could read a small sign much more quickly – in fact the small signs they did have often included QR codes to hear someone talking in Gaelic for example, on your phone). We explored the castle in depth, it was enjoyable, and interesting to see the room where James the Sixth / First was born. He was the Stuart King that was on the Scottish throne when Elizabeth I died and he was invited to also be the King of England, uniting the monarchies but not the countries, we were still a century away from the United Kingdom. So he was James VI in Scotland, and James I in England. There was a big queue to get inside this building to see the Crown Jewels, so my wife and son decided to do that while I decided to stay outside and sketch, having seen enough Crown Jewels at King Charlie’s Coronation. I did notice on the shiny plate above the door dating from 1993, two swords and the official royal cypher of Queen Elizabeth II, that is “ER”. Er… where’s the “II”? It should be “EIIR”. You all know this if you spent any time in Britain during the Queen’s funeral, or any time at all in the past seventy years. Except this is Scotland, and they didn’t have an Elizabeth I, so she can’t be Elizabeth II here, right? That’s apparently the case, I hadn’t even considered it. I noticed that a lot of postboxes don’t have the royal cypher on them either, just the crown of Scotland – except older pillar boxes did have a royal cypher, such as those of George V for example. From what I can tell it was down to what has been called the “Pillar Box War”, which was a dispute in Scotland as to whether Elizabeth II could style herself II in Scotland or not. There was a legal challenge, and in the end they decided it was Royal Prerogative for the Queen to bally-well call herself she bally-well liked. Still after a bunch of pillar boxes were vandalized, tarred, hammered, even blown up, Royal Mail decided in Scotland that new post boxes would just have the crown of Scotland on them and not any EIIR. I don’t know what will happen for King Charles III, but as all Kings Charles came after the union of the crowns (it was James VI/I who named his son something completely new, that being Charles I, ingeniously getting around the confusing numbering system). I don’t know what happened during the reigns of William III and William IV, since Scotland didn’t have a William I or II, but perhaps in those days they were too worried about people throwing piss out of their windows to care much. I bet King William V won’t get his initials on the postboxes though.

Pete does a Brucie in front of the statue of Robert The Bruce

My tribute to The Bruce. A Brucie next to Robert The Bruce.

The Athens of the North

August 4, 2023August 3, 20233 Comments

I often (by which I mean never) wonder, do Greeks call their capital the ‘Edinburgh of the South’? Climbing up Calton Hill though, you can see why ~~Edinburghers~~ ~~Edinburgians~~ ~~Edinbr~~ people from Edinburgh call their city the ‘Athens of the North’. There aren’t Greek restaurants everywhere. It does feel like Edinburgh’s forefathers did try to build a city on those hills that represented lofty ideals and thoughts, and if you go up this big hill you can see the city from a grander perspective. The castle hill is in the background there, built atop a practically impenetrable ancient volcano, you can see the grand sweep of Princes Street with the tall clocktower of the Balmoral Hotel and the gothic spire of the Walter Scott Monument, and in the foreground is that structure with the columns, the Dugald Stewart Monument, named for a philosopher who was one of the leading figures of the ‘Scottish Enlightenment’. Behind me there is an Observatory, as well as the very Parthenon-like National Monument of Scotland (sir-not-appearing-in-this-sketchbook). This is the Acropolis of Edinburgh (unless you consider that to be Castle Hill, I don’t know). It also overlooks the city as it spans down towards the Firth of Forth, and you can see among other things the Forth Rail Bridge, and Hibernian FC’s stadium Easter Road. I would come up here most days while I was in Edinburgh in 1999 to look out over the city, often at sunset. I was excited to come up here to attempt a drawing or two. The first time we came up, I sketched very quickly in paint, but the next day after we had explored New Town and then gone to do our own things for the afternoon, I climbed back up, and drew the scene above. I had time on my hands, so I just looked out and drew as many details as I could. It took over an hour and a half, and while I did consider painting the whole thing too, in the end I just caught the sky and those distant hills, and left the rest be. It took a while (I was either standing or leaning on a big rock the whole time) and many people came by to take photos as the view got more ‘golden’ – I didn’t want to stay until sunset (June in Scotland? Sunset is very late there) but as the afternoon moved into early evening the light was glowing. When I was done with this, I got a sketch of Arthurs’ Seat, below.

Arthur’s Seat is a huge rocky volcanic outcrop that dominates the Edinburgh landscape. People climb up it, though it wasn’t on my agenda for the trip, my feet were tired enough. I wanted to draw it in this amazing light though. In the foreground, the Nelson Monument on Calton Hill, put up to commemorate Nelson’s victory at Trafalgar, and yes it does look like a naval telescope. Arthurs Seat conjurs up stories of King Arthur and the ancient Britons, and Merlin going mad in the Caledonian Forest. Also of Tim the Conjuror and deadly rabbit that could only be defeated by the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch.

By the way, I have learned that people from Edinburgh are called ‘Dunediners’, though it’s not a patronym that you hear very often in Britain (unlike ‘Glaswegian’, ‘Liverpudlian’ or ‘Mancunian’ for example). It derives from Dun-Edin, the Gaelic name for the city, and also where the city in New Zealand, Dunedin, gets its name from. It does sound a bit like the ‘Dúnedain’ which were Aragorn’s people in the Lord of the Rings. Still you live and you learn. I didn’t really get to meet that many Dunediners, so I didn’t get a chance to embarrass myself with figuring out the pronunciation, since most people I met in Edinburgh were either English or from somewhere else like Spain or Italy. I would like to go back some day and explore a bit more of the city (maybe what Stewart Lee calls “the 90% of Edinburgh that they hide behind that big rock”) and speak to more Dunediners, because growing up most of the Scots I knew were Glaswegians, and they didn’t generally say nice things about Edinburgh. I very much enjoyed our few days here though, and got quite a few sketches in while I was there, and that top one in this post is definitely my favourite.

the train to scotland

August 3, 2023Leave a comment

I love a train journey, especially a long one in a comfy seat with a table and a nice view over the countryside. It’s exciting, more exciting than a car trip, less annoying than flying, and don’t get me started on coach travel (which isn’t so bad actually, I’ve not done it in a while, but historically I’ve had mixed bags there). Anyway, one journey I was really looking forward to was Kings Cross to Edinburgh. The last time I took this journey was in 1999 with my friend Simon on our way up to Scotland, where we’d join our university’s theatre company at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival after spending a couple of days with his uncle outside Glasgow. This time it was me, my wife and my son on an eight-day adventure around Scotland, this being the first time back since that trip at the end of the 20th century. That was a really long time ago now. Well the countryside hasn’t changed that much, it’s still a lovely view over rolling English countryside, gradually getting lovelier the further north you go, passing by Durham which looks wonderful from the train (though my son and I were playing MarioKart at the time), going right through Newcastle and its bridges over the Tyne, past Lindisfarne off the coast, imagining the Viking raids all those centuries ago, circling around the lovely Berwick upon Tweed, which could be thought of as a little bit of Scotland in England (the football team does play in the Scottish league), and up that dramatic coastline towards Edinburgh itself. I think it’s one of the great train journeys of Britain. The train we were on was terminating at Inverness; that was our final destination as well, but after a week of seeing as much of Scotland as we could fit in. First though, three nights in Edinburgh. Our train journey was pretty pleasant, there was an older guy sat in one of the seats next to me who saw my Spurs top and he was a Tottenham fan, and told me a lot of stories about watching Spurs in the 70s and 80s and watching Ossie Ardiles, of course Ossie was my hero and I loved watching him as a kid myself, down at the Lane. A little later there was an American family with several kids and they were debating over whether the little light above the seat was red or orange, spending quite a long time on the topic, getting other passengers opinions (yeah we really don’t do that in the UK; I was going to say it looked yellow), but I did notice the dad really looking at my Spurs shirt, though he didn’t say anything. A few days later, we actually saw the same family up on Calton Hill, they recognized us, and he did say to me “I remember you were in the Tatt’num jersey!” I considered asking if they settled their argument on whether the small light was orange or red yet. And so, we arrived in Edinburgh, and walked to our apartment where we would spend the next three nights. We were right off the Royal Mile, and it was a walk uphill from the station. On the way, we passed the Old St.Paul’s church on Jeffrey Street, which was (I had almost forgotten) the location of our plays with the QMW theatre company in 1999. A number of barely-remembered memories came dribbling back. Many people whose names I’ve largely forgotten. It was 24 years ago after all, literally more than half my lifetime ago. I did the lighting and sound for three shows, I think it was three, along with Simon. Midsummer Nights Dream was the main one, plus a shorter piece I think was called Fat, by our friend Cuan (good bloke), and then another one which I have completely forgotten, except they used part of this song by Air over and over, and my job there was to turn on the music, and turn it off again, I think about four times in total. It was the only time I did Edinburgh with my uni, it was fun albeit quite drunken at times, there was another theatre company at the same venue who were performing a bizarre version of Ubu Roi, already a bizarre play, which I really loved and consequently got really into the original French version. I remember going out with the cast from that play on a fairly crazy evening. I do have some good memories from that trip, even if so many of them are distant and foggy now. 1999…

It is nice not being in Edinburgh during the Fringe though. The Royal Mile then was a cacophony of people, jugglers, students dressed in silly costumes handing out flyers to their low-budget plays (I was one of them, though I wasn’t acting or performing), and tourists. It was still busy this time, but a lot more mellow than that. The Royal Mile is mostly tartan souvenir shops, whisky shops, and cashmere shops. But there’s a lot of history here, and we really enjoyed being around those tall old stone Edinburgh buildings. Now that I am for all sense and purposes an American, I did wonder if I had to start calling it “Edin-borrow”, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I did however insist that we had to eat haggis. Now I don’t eat it myself because it’s meaty, but they have a vegetarian version now. At the restaurant where we ate dinner, down on the curving Victoria Street, we tried it, my wife getting the original style. I think she liked it, though it was very rich and she couldn’t finish it. I liked mine, though I preferred the Neeps and Tatties that went with it. Oh I do love my Neeps and Tatties. Neeps I supposed were Turnips, though actually what they call turnips in Scotland are more like what they call Rutubaga in America, and Swede in England; English turnips are actually something as bit different. I actually learned this from a podcast I started listening to called “Stories of Scotland”, hosted by Annie and Jenny, and I probably listened to about forty of their episodes while on this trip, and many more since. It’s all Scottish folklore, history, geography, geology and traditions. So, we had our haggis, that’s done now. I brought out my little sketchbook on that first evening’s walkabout, just doing a couple of quick sketches as we stopped. The one below is at Parliament Square, which is on the Royal Mile very close to St. Giles Cathedral, and I recognized this area as the part where The Vision and Wanda Maximoff battled against Corvus Glaive and Proxima Midnight in Avengers Infinity War (I love that film), before crashing down into Waverley St Station, and getting rescued by Captain America, Falcon and Black Widow. So, a bit like the Royal Mile during the Fringe, then.

watling centre

July 30, 2023July 30, 2023Leave a comment

As with most of my trips back to the UK, there’s usually a sketch from Burnt Oak at the start of it. I wake up early and get out for morning walk with my sketchbook, eager to draw something that isn’t the UC Davis Bike Barn or something. I didn’t walk very far on this one morning, just up to the corner of Orange Hill and Deansbrook, a couple of minutes form my mum’s house. I’m getting very conscious that I won’t be doing this forever. There will be a day when I don’t come back to Burnt Oak much, like everyone else who left, and maybe I won’t even come back to London as much; I’m always torn with the idea of letting London go, but I just can’t, can I. It’s still my favourite city, annoy me though it does. It is definitely feeling too crowded, and while that may be just because I’m coming from less-crowded Davis in a state designed for bigger cars and wider roads (I don’t even drive, I ride a bike), there seems to be so many more cars parked along all these narrow roads, crammed three or four fold onto small driveways built for one or two. I’m not a fan of this new ‘ULEZ’ (Ultra Low Emissions Zone) expansion that is happening – although London evidently needs to improve its air quality – it forces a lot of people who do need their car to buy a newer car they can’t really afford. Mostly though I just think it’s a rubbish name, they really could have come up with something better, I mean if it didn’t sound like a 2nd-person-plural French verb ending it might catch on more with the crowd who don’t like the sound of that sort of thing. But as I see all the cars squeezing themselves around the streets in these old neighbourhoods, I think to myself something needs to be done to reduce or discourage the number of cars. This street in particular, Orange Hill Road, it seems there is usually traffic backed all the way up from Watling Avenue almost to Deansbrook, but when there isn’t, cars will sometimes bomb down here like it’s 200cc MarioKart. I was up early, but even at this hour there was a lot of traffic. This is the Watling Centre. I stood next to the bus stop across the street to draw; as this is Britain, people started queuing up behind me in a polite line, I had to gesture for them to go ahead of me. I’m still disappointed that TFL removed the very useful 305 bus route that came up here, joining our part of Burnt Oak with Edgware. So, the Watling Centre, this is where my mum and dad had their wedding party back in 1991. They obviously met a long time before that, otherwise I’d be a lot younger. I remember that party, we had a lot of family and friends there, friends we loved, family we liked, and also family we didn’t like, that’s how it goes, but it was a good party. There was a lot of dancing to Irish songs, small kids running around. My schoolfriend Terry came, I still have a photo of him in his blue cardigan. I remember eating an entire chocolate mousse cake, because when I was 15 I could eat everything in London and still be like a gangly skinny rake with unbrushable red hair. My uncle Eddie wheeled a shopping trolley with all the remaining booze in it back to our house, and then told me stories all night about my dad in the old days. Fun times. It’s funny, I know I have been to many other events here but I don’t remember them all now. I think this is where I briefly went to karate class, which despite being taught by a family friend, I only went to twice, with my neighbour across the street. There was another kid from my form class at school who showed up, and he was the sort of kid to take the piss the entire time and then continue at school next day, so I stopped going. In earlier years, I would go to the field next to this building with other local kids and look for conkers, because we all knew this was the best place in Burnt Oak to get good conkers. Anyway that’s enough “I ‘member when…” mawkish memories and city-planning moans. I have a few more London sketches to post, then it’s Scotland all the way. We had a great time up there, but I may have drunk too much Irn Bru.