Back in London again and feverishly searching the net this morning, HostelBloggers stumbled on something that tickled us. We’re absolute suckers for a good headline, and Naked Hippies on Bicycles is a cracker! (It may not be quite Ice cream man has assets frozen - what is? - but it still caught our beady magpie-like eye!)
Writer Ian Mackenzie has some very salient observations to make amidst all the jiggling body parts of the Vancouver Naked Bike Ride:
1. “naked people are bizarre for about 10 minutes, then it becomes so normal you barely notice”
2. “there’s something very beautiful about complete inhibition to social code”
3. “looking around it’s entirely obvious we’re utterly dependent on cars, and it’s interesting to think how we let it get this way”
To see the naked wheeled cavalry charge in all its unapologetic glory(!), just follow the Naked Hippies link above. (Not recommended for the prudish…)
The train pulled out of Waverly Station. We were on the road again: leaving the comfort of Edinburgh for an uncertain destination.
After a quick change at Glasgow, the landscape got steadily wilder - and more dramatic; green hills and waving pine forests eventually gave way, under a glowering sky, to barren moorland.
After a couple of hours, the train pulled into Corrour Station. We got off and, shivering slightly, surveyed the scene. (Incidentally, the famous “I don’t hate the English - they’re just wankers” scene from Trainspotting was shot to the right of the image below - chosen perhaps for its uniquely lonely qualities…)
Anyway, as the train pulled away, it became quite apparent that there was the station house, the railway tracks… and then, well, nothing. Hills and heather. And a lot of nothing. A gravel track ran away towards the loch, and following the signpost, we headed off down it, the driving horizontal rain in our faces.
After a brisk walk, we arrived at Loch Ossian Youth Hostel, wet and cold (this being June, remember!) Never before have HostelBloggers been so grateful to see four walls, a roof, and, we hoped, a bed for the night.
Fortunately, the scene that awaited us inside was perfect. A coal fire belched out heat while Nick the manager ran through the rules and regulations. As well as being one of the most isolated hostels in Scotland, Loch Ossian is an eco-hostel and it takes its environmentally-friendly/conservation role incredibly seriously.
Having warmed up a bit, we ventured outside again. The surrounding area of Loch Ossian and Rannoch Moor is a haven for walkers, and mountains surged upwards everywhere you looked.
While HostelBloggers like a good climb as much as anyone, it was late afternoon, so to get a good view of our surroundings we had to settle for a nearby hill instead.
After a fair bit of puffing and blowing we reached the top… and the views were absolutely spectacular…
…In every direction!
The way that shards of light pierced the heavy clouds and played upon the hills was just stunning. As we stood there surveying the scene, the sky darkened (even more!) on the horizon, and black clouds began to roll in. It was time to get back down again, out of the impending rain, and warm up a bit.
All in all we spent a couple of days on lonely Loch Ossian. We wandered about a bit during the day shooting some video footage; we read, listened to the other guests (all hard-core walkers) compare tales of derring do; played a few slightly boozy games of chess in the evening…
Without doing very much of anything in particular, we just had a great time. The weather was foul, but somehow it seemed fitting - more atmospheric even.
On our last evening, though, the sun finally saw fit to come out… And the scene was absolutely breathtaking.
It’s hard to sum up quite what sort of a place Loch Ossian is. Wild, certainly. And possessing a starkly beautiful, elemental quality, too. Spending time there, it’s impossible not to be struck by the sense of isolation and detachment.
And that, ultimately, is what makes it - and, more broadly, the Highlands of Scotland - so special.
One of the things that impressed HostelBloggers on our recent trip was the artistic qualities of a few of the hostels we visited.
These days, it seems that if you don’t have a rash of swanky design features, a flash mural or two, or a series of artfully composed shots of former guests, you’re just not trying hard enough…
Anyway, here’s a handful of the more arty hostels in Dublin and Edinburgh that inspired us:
Moving away from the horror of Edinburgh’s past to the fantastic Grassmarket. Curling down from the Cowgate, and lined with colorfully fronted shops, bars and restaurants, it’s one of the more unusual - and striking - streets to be found anywhere in the world.
What makes it so unusual is its combination of age and height.
Built over a series of hills, the scale of the city is one of the things that first strikes you.
And Grassmarket is perhaps the most impressive example of Edinburgh’s oddly high-rise architecture.
More gruesome tales of Edinburgh, this time from Greyfriars Kirkyard.
But before we get onto it, there’s the (infinitely less interesting) tale of ‘Greyfriars Bobby’ to mention.
Back in 1859 a man died and was buried in Greyfriars Kirkyard. Shortly after his death, his faithful-to-the-last Skye Terrier, Bobby, was found to be keeping a lonely vigil at his dead master’s tomb. Cue much cooing (the dog was fed until he, too, shuffled off 14 years later) and eventual Disneyfication.
Now his tomb…
And the cutesy statue outside…
…stand as an everlasting shrine to the sentimental.
But Greyfriars Kirkyard is also the scene of a much more gripping tale:
The lady was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. And she was laid out in all her ceremonial finery in her family crypt.
But her corpse hadn’t been there long before the crypt was broken into by body snatchers (this being the stomping ground of Burke and Hare, after all).
The ghoulish grave robbers started to strip the dead woman of all her valuables, only stopping when they reached one ring that proved particularly hard to remove.
Undeterred, they started to hack at the dead woman’s finger… only the woman wasn’t dead at all! And finding herself laid out in a crypt, having her finger sawn off by body snatchers, proceeded to scream blue murder.
So terrified were the pair at the woman’s Lazarus-like rising from the dead that they fainted, and were arrested shortly afterwards.
Or so the story goes…
And frankly, given a story like that one, old Bobby would’ve had to do a lot more than sit by a grave and brood for 14 years to get HostelBloggers’ full attention!
Edinburgh’s packed with parks and open spaces. Almost as much as it with gruesome tales, in fact. And a little to the south of the city, the broad swathe of green of the Meadows manages to rather conveniently combine both.
The land, now given over to joggers and enthusiastic ‘jumpers for goalposts’ football matches, was never built upon because it was used for plague pits (impromptu mass graves for victims of the plague) during the 17th century.
Something to think about when you’re having your picnic…
On the subject of plagues, and the horrible history of Edinburgh, generally, the city was the home of one of the world’s most famous plague doctors, John Paulitious. Paulitious was, in fact, the creator of the deeply sinister outfit of the plague doctor:
It caught on because it was thought that the bird-like beak (which can still be seen stalking the streets to such haunting effect at the Venice Carnival) was responsible for Paulitious’ mysteriously long life. Actually, it was as a result of the tough leather gown he wore preventing the plague-bearing fleas from biting him.
Veering wildly from the ridiculous to the sublime, we spent the morning clambering up two of Edinburgh’s hills: Calton Hill and Arthur’s Seat. Jumping on the opportunity to get some Edinburgh video footage, we got the cameras out and did a couple of sweeping pans of the glorious panoramas laid out at our feet.
Rising up just a little to the east of the New Town, Calton Hill is crowned by a curious landmark (visible on the footage at 0:16): the unfinished National Monument. There’s something about its utterly out of place Grecian grandeur that’s actually really rather endearing…
There’s a shot of the spectacular Arthur’s Seat, too, (of which more below) at 0:50 on the video.
But, its folly aside, Calton Hill is dwarved in every way by the magnificent Arthur’s Seat. Its appeal lies in the genuinely wild slice of the Highlands it brings to the heart of Edinburgh. As you climb up through the stunning Holyrood Park, you can check out Salisbury Crags, the evocative ruins of Holyrood Abbey, and ponder the unlikely possibility of the Arthurian myth that hangs over it.
The footage draws to a dramatic close with a gradual zoom back down onto Calton Hill. And so, rather neatly, does this post.
We’re not sure if it’s the same in ladies toilets (HostelBloggers haven’t spent too much time hanging around them…) but the walls of your average gents can frequently be daubed in wit, wisdom and, let’s face it, a fair bit of weirdness. Toilet philosophy, in short, is rife.
Anyway, the above can be found in one of the bathrooms of Caledonian Backpackers in Edinburgh. Trying to decipher the spidery scrawl was a little tricky at first, but it did seem to have a point (of sorts) to get across.
It could be suggesting that there’s no sense in traveling according to a strict agenda - always sticking to what you planned (or ‘pictured’). Far better to go with the flow, put yourself at the whim of the ‘unimaginable universe’, and see what happens…
Or it might be saying that the insistence on endlessly snapping photographs on your travels removes you from the moment and prevents you from reaching any greater understanding of what’s in front of you.
Or is it just the disorientated ramblings of someone who’s been on the road too long? We’ll let you decide.
Feeling suitably revived after a vege-mighty breakfast, we pulled our professional socks up and took to the streets.
The thing about Edinburgh is that it’s got a proper skyline. Not a tangled mess of glittering steel and concrete, but a wonderful, ancient city view that not many other places can match.
Now we come to think about it, there’s nothing that quite brings a city to life like a looming great hill topped with a grand historical monument. Athens is obviously right up there - Granada, Jodhpur, Budapest, Bratislava and a handful of others, too. Another one for a future post, I suppose…
Anyway, these sightseeing snaps of some of the best views of Edinburgh Castle were taken from down in St Cuthbert’s Kirkyard (alongside Princes Street Gardens). Framed by the crumbling tombstones, it makes an even more spectacular sight than usual.
The next morning, we spent an inordinately long time staring blearily at the above over breakfast. And as we did so, it struck us that there was no better symbol of the roaming Australian backpacker than the little jar of yeast extract that tends to follow them around wherever they go.
HostelBloggers’ favorite Vegemite-related story (and believe us when we say we’ve got a list as long as your arm) is of the European backpacker who, unfamiliar with the stuff, thinks it’s chocolate spread and ladles inch-thick quantities of it onto their toast… with fairly predictable results!
