That’s
right, Edinburgh, Friday 29 June! Nearly
three weeks ago now – all we can say is it has been a crazy few weeks. So we will try to summarise everything that
has happened. And I apologise in advance that photos are very simply inserted this time - no attempts at style or funky set-out. Today I am a woman on a mission - to get this blog up-to-date!
The weekend
in Edinburgh was lovely. On Saturday
morning we went walking with Nicola to see some of her local favourites. We started with Fettes College – the boys’
school that was JK Rowling’s inspiration for the look of Hogwarts. It is certainly an amazing building, and we
were allowed to wander the grounds at the front. Further back was off-limits as the
end-of-year prize-giving was taking place in a big marquee. We then progressed to the Royal Botanical
Gardens which were absolutely lovely.
Our appreciation was aided by the fact that it was a warm, sunny morning
and we hadn’t had one of those for a while.
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| Fettes College |
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| The waterfall in the Botanical Gardens (and us) |
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| The (working) floral clock in New Town |
The
afternoon was set aside for a BBQ at the home of one of Nicola’s friends, so we
stopped at the supermarket for meat and drink before driving up to the
suburbs. Of course “BBQ” is a dirty word
so by the time we got there, the rain clouds were rolling in. We still had a lovely afternoon meeting
Nicola’s friends, and playing giant outdoor Jenga whenever the rain eased up. The evening was again spent watching the
tennis – it has been great fun to watch whole games and be awake for them, even
though we didn’t get tickets for any sessions live.
Sunday was
another big day. I had managed to get
last-minute film festival tickets for a 10am session of “Brave”, which is not
released in theatres in the UK until 17 August even though it has been on in NZ
for some weeks now. So we took Nicola to
an animated film, which she ended up really enjoying. And of course we loved it, even though it’s
the first time ever that we have been to an animated movie without our
babies. After this, we went to The
Elephant House café for lunch. This is
now an Edinburgh icon, as it is where JK Rowling sat and wrote the first Harry
Potter book. The ladies toilets are particularly
interesting, as hundreds of Potter fans have scrawled messages to JK Rowling on
the walls. I don’t think anyone has told
them she doesn’t hang out there anymore.
We then
wandered the Old Town part of Edinburgh, seeing some of the lovely university
buildings, the Greyfriars Kirkyard (including the statue of Greyfriars Bobby, a
very loyal little dog), Grassmarket Lane (which is full of interesting boutique
shops) and the Royal Mile which runs from the Castle to Holyrood Palace. The intention was to visit Holyrood, and
particularly it’s teashop after such a lot of walking. Sadly for us, her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II
had arrived the evening before and the palace was out of bounds. We were most put out that she did not realise
we were in Edinburgh too! We eased our
disappointment by walking up Carlton Hill to see the monuments and the grand
view of the Firth estuary.
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| "Greyfriars Bobby" |
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| One of the beautiful churches on Royal Mile |
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| The view from Carlton Hill |
Still in
search of a cup of tea (or liquid sustenance of some sort), we followed Nicola
to The Dome Bar & Café. This is a
seriously beautiful building, and very grand.
We felt somewhat under-dressed, but realised most of the patrons were
casually dressed. Grant did note that
no-one else was in shorts and t-shirt, but the staff didn’t seem to mind. They served us drinks quite willingly anyway. Nicola’s friend Sarah met us here for a
drink, and we were soon joined by another friend, Garth. A very pleasant hour or so was spent just
relaxing and chatting.
On Monday
Nicola returned to work, and we made our way to Edinburgh Castle. Sadly it was a truly dismal day and we could
hardly see the city from the Castle. As
for Carlton Hill which we had walked up the previous day, it might as well not
have existed. The Castle itself was
quite interesting, but we would have liked to have seen more of the building
itself; it has becomes Scotland’s war museum and so a lot of it was dedicated
to aspects of Scottish war history rather than the history of the Castle itself.
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| The cannonballs for "Mons Meg" |
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| Jamie Fraser's claymore perhaps? |
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| The rather damp view from the Castle battlements |
On leaving
the Castle, we meandered down the Royal Mile once more, checking out all of the
souvenir shops in search of a good present for Jared. We had already found a gift for Kate (while
still in Bristol) but did not want to send it until we had something for Jared
too. We finally settled on clothes
(although not another t-shirt in accordance with the instructions we have been
given!).
By this time
we had walked miles and were ready to sit down and let the tennis players do
all the work (sounding familiar?) until it was time to meet Nicola and her
mother for dinner back at The Bailie. We
had another lovely evening out; Nicola and her mum were great company and the
food was delicious.
We had
decided that Tuesday would be our last day in Scotland for now – we really
needed to get back to Addlestone and find a flat of our own. Doing this before Grant started work on 10
July would be pushing it, but we wanted to try.
So we planned to visit Rosslyn Chapel as our last sight-seeing event. Yes, the Rosslyn Chapel at the end of “The Da
Vinci Code”.
This is a
truly amazing building, even though I reckon that Dan Brown probably only read
about it rather than visiting it himself (I couldn’t find most of the stuff he
wrote about), and the carving (both religious and secular) is incredible. So detailed and beautiful even after all these
centuries – its foundations were laid in 1446.
We spent well over an hour looking at as much detail as we could take
in, and it’s only a small chapel.
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| Grant at the entrance to Rosslyn Chapel |
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| An exquisitely detailed flying buttress at the Chapel |
As part of
our last-day tiki tour, we also drove over the Forth Bridge (and straight back
again, as we didn’t actually need to be on the other side of it) which is
another very beautiful suspension bridge.
Another highlight of it is the great views you get of the Forth Rail
bridge that runs alongside, a fantastic piece of engineering.
Our last
evening was just a quiet one with Nicola as we planned an early start and a
seven hour drive back to Addlestone the next day. The drive was long but uneventful and we got
back to Mark and Paula’s place before the commuter traffic started to build on
the M25. The early start was worth it!
We spent
Thursday viewing flats in Woking (I had called a few local estate agents from
Edinburgh to arrange viewings) as this is where one of the stations that has
fast trains to Waterloo for Grant, and is only a 25 minute drive to Camberley
for me in September. We have ended up
spending a little more than we planned, for a lovely flat in an apartment block
that was available “immediately” due to a tenant pulling out at the last
minute. Immediate was of course a
relative term, as they needed to carry out credit checks and confirm our
employment before they would let us have the flat.
While we
were in Woking trying to sort out such basic things as living space, I got a
call from the London teaching agency I had signed with, asking if I could do a
day of supply on Friday, at a primary school in Chelsea. As moving house was going to be costly, I
jumped at the chance to earn some money.
The school was in Chelsea, and took over an hour and a half to get to by
train, and the relief turned out to be helping in a nursery class – three to
four year olds. Nearly 30 of them. I made it through the day, and salute anyone
who chooses on purpose to be an early childhood teacher. It’s certainly not my cup of tea, but the
money comes in handy!
We took
Saturday very quietly; I needed to recover from my day with pre-schoolers! And the women’s Wimbledon final was on, so we
went to the pub to watch it on a big screen.
On Sunday we headed up to London to watch the men’s final with Nick and
Fleur, who were optimistic enough to have a BBQ at their place. We had a lovely afternoon watching a
stressful game of tennis and eating delicious food. Everyone there was a Federer fan (sorry Andy)
so we were all very pleased by the result.
I don’t mind admitting to a touch of sympathy for Andy Murray though; he
came so close!
We decided
to spend Monday exploring Woking; we were determined to be optimistic about
getting the flat which meant this would be our new home patch. We were lucky enough to get a fine (i.e., not
raining) morning for this and had a long walk around. We discovered that the leisure centre and the
swimming pool are very close to our building, and we will be only a ten minute
stroll from the railway station. I
checked my emails when we stopped for a coffee to find positive messages from
the realtors. Instead of starting a game
of email tag, we made the most of the fact that we were right there and went to
their office. It was a very fortuitous
visit, and culminated in an appointment for me to pick up keys and move in at
midday on Wednesday – such exciting news!
Tuesday was
Grant’s first day at his new job. I
decided it would be fun to spend the day exploring in London, and meet Grant
for lunch on his first day, so we caught the train together and had breakfast
in London before work. We found Le Pain
Quotidien just before the Jubilee Bridge; this had been our favourite café in
Manhattan Beach so it seemed a good omen.
It was certainly a very nice breakfast but the “discretionary” charge of
12.5% that was automatically added on made us feel we had been transported back
to Los Angeles without the benefit of the lovely weather!
After
breakfast we parted ways, with Grant going to his new work while I headed for
Oxford Street. My morning was a pretty
quiet one. After catching a busy tube to Oxford Circus, I slowly browsed the
stores from one end to the other, occasionally buying some funky household
items and gradually making my way to where Oxford Street met Charing Cross Road
(which I already knew led back towards Grant’s work). Wandering down Charing Cross Road meant
stopping at Foyles bookstore and even a short visit to the National Portrait
Gallery. I have decided that as artwork
goes, portraits are not really my thing (although there were some lovely
photographs of ice-skaters from the ‘30s and’40s).
We met up
for lunch at about 1, after which Grant returned to work (more on that later)
while I went looking for Covent Garden Market.
This was not actually very far, so after a wee browse (it’s quite
small), I explored the area (doing a bit more shopping), finding the Aldwych
and the theatre that the Lion King is playing at before reaching Fleet
Street. An attempt to visit the Temple
Church failed (not open to visitors at that time) so the walk went on. I reached St. Pauls Cathedral once more, but
didn’t go in. We’d like to visit that
together. It was getting on in the
afternoon by now, so I headed back towards Westminster along the
Embankment. This turned out to be
perfect timing, and we reunited by the Jubilee Bridge to go and hunt a train
back to Weybridge.
Note from
Grant about his work:
My first day at the Co-operation &
Competition Panel (www.ccpanel.org.uk)
went well. They seem like a good bunch
of people to work with. There will be a
lot for me to learn – the CCP’s role is determining issues of competition law
in the health sector. Neither of these
topics form part of my specialist knowledge and coming from NZ, joining these
concepts together seems very counterintuitive.
But I’m sure that I will get on top of it quickly and be able to
usefully contribute.
