Holidays!

Well, I’ve just booked a short break… to somewhere I have always wanted to go to… ICELAND!  You’ll know I’m not a sun worshipper, and much prefer cooler climes!  Well I reckon it will be cool, in more senses of the word than one!  It’s just for three days that will be packed with sightseeing.  The nice thing about the journey there is that I fly from Glasgow which is not that far away.  Generally trips abroad/overseas tend to mean a flight from Edinburgh to London, or Amsterdam, or Paris, depending on where you are going.  Going from Scotland to London, only to fly north again seems to me to be a right waste of money and time, but that’s what often happens!  So, if I can’t fly to Iceland from Edinburgh, the next best place is Glasgow!  We’ll be seeing waterfalls, geo-thermal areas, geysers, and volcanoes too, I hope, as well as going on a whale spotting cruise, and a tour of Reykjavik, the capital, which is where we’ll be staying.  I say we, by which I mean me and my travelling companions, whoever they may be, as I am going on my own initially!

However before all that, I will be heading over to Ireland to a weekend of workshops in various aspects of Celtic culture – language, music, dance, story-telling, history…..  That all came about through the college where I attended Gaelic classes in the last couple of years.  A group from the college are going over and I’ve been invited too!  It should be great.  The Irish people are very friendly and the culture related to the Gaelic culture over here!

Every year I try to go on the lace-making week in Knoydart, the large piece of the Scottish mainland opposite the south end of the Isle of Skye, and more particularly in Doune, which I have blogged about for the last few years.  Usually it’s a summer visit but this year is a spring one, and I’ve now written to book my place!!  As we don’t make lace all the time, if the weather is good we should get out and about to enjoy the spring flora and fauna.  It will be interesting to note the differences – foxgloves perhaps, instead of fungi!   Hoping for good weather there – and it will be light well into the evenings too!!

Unfortunately I've had to put my visit to New Zealand on hold, due to this blinking shoulder – frozen shoulder?  cuff rotator syndrome? bursitis? tendonitis?  Who knows! The pain started last summer, and at times I felt like I could happily cut off my right arm!! Physio and also an injection into the muscle hasn’t really helped much, but I think it might be slightly better now than it has been.  At least I don’t feel like cutting the arm off so often!  Anyway, lugging baggage around airports, and driving a lot, just doesn’t appeal just now.  It wouldn’t give my shoulder a chance to recover, so reluctantly I am putting NZ off for a while.  On short trips I can travel light with just a small “cabin case”, and I won’t be doing any driving.

So three short breaks to look forward to, and of course I’ll be sharing them with you through the blog here and my photos!

Talk again soon.