G’day folk’s, We have made it as far as Scotland now since our last newsletter and are truly knackered at the present, mostly due to a huge pub crawl of Glasgow last night and one just as big of Edinburgh two nights previous!
After Glastonbury, the rest of the tour went smoothly, good gigs at Southhampton, Buckingham and then a nice little trip to Bremen, Germany where we performed on Radio Bremen, a little radio station which puts on a gig in a beautiful old studio/theatre to about 250 people and broadcast live all over Europe. All went well (besides getting out of Heathrow, the worst airport in the universe, who decided to not deliver my bass and jeffrey’s lap guitar on the flight with us! Although it was delivered the next day in time for the gig.) The people at Radio Bremen couldn’t have been nicer and put us up in a lovely hotel and catering for our every need. However the morning after the gig while we where waiting for a lift back to Hamburg airport (the loveliest airport I’ve ever come across) a knock on our hotel door revealed an ashen faced, sick looking Jeffrey who, unbeknownst to Myf and myself, had picked up a nasty little bug somewhere along the way giving him a sleepless night of what is better known as the “Double Enders”! After a shot in the bum from a German Quack and a very uncomfortable drive and flight back to Heathrow, we left a very sorry looking Jeffrey at the end of yet another mammoth security check-in line where he had to wait 7 or more hours for his flight back to Aus and his beloved Alson!
Anyway for me and my little sidekick, this is where our holiday really begins. We hired a car from Heathrow and drove down to Totnes, Devon to meet our friend Jo and stayed for four nights with her and her mum Val in their beautiful house in Staverton, a little village just outside of Totnes. It was very relaxing couple of days, we ate well, visited a beach (can’t remember the name and way too cold to swim but we flew a kite) And also went to ‘The Eden Project’ in Cornwall. TEP is a number of huge ‘bio-domes’ built in an old clay quarry and inside they simulate different climates from Tropical to Mediterranean and grow the various different plants within as sort of a conservation project, crazy stuff!
From Totnes we headed north and en-route to my great aunty Barbara and Uncle Alan’s house in Lancashire we encountered probably the worst traffic jam ever! I think it was the M42 had a fuel tanker overturn on it so they closed the whole bloody freeway turning a leisurely drive of about 2.5 hrs into a grueling 7 hour marathon! Anyway the stress was well and truly alleviated when upon arrival at Lancashire we were met with a traditional English cottage pie and some fine hospitality from two saints, Uncle Alan and Aunty Barbara! We proceeded to spend the next 4 days get chauffeured around on Hayton tours, checking out such sights as The Lakes district, Lancaster castle, Blackpool (this is where Ryan and Leanne met up with us and we rode the fastest, highest roller coaster in Europe!) Also we got to meet two more great aunty’s and 2nd and 3rd cousins and ate lots o’food, drank lots o’cups o’tea (they love tea over here) with a good measure of local ale to boot!
The next part of the journey brings us to where we are now, Scotland. We jumped in Ryan and Leanne’s van and did the drive stopping along the way at Hadrian’s wall and an even more impressive ‘Electric Brae’. This is some kind of weird phenomenon where for a quarter of a mile the stretch of road can appear to be sloping down but if you stop and release your handbrake you roll backwards! And vice versa! More Crazy stuff!
Now in Edinburgh we are staying at Ryan’s Aunty Shirley Ann’s house enjoying some more fine hospitality, we’ve had a good look around Edinburgh at the Castle where they hold the Tattoo and The Real Mary Kings Close which is a whole network of old lanes underground. Scotland is so beautiful, apart from the fact that the sun is shining, Edinburgh in particular is lovely, the people are really friendly and the landscape is stunning, we’ve seen some Highland Cows which Myf thinks are the cutest cows ever with their funky hairstyles. We also headed off to Glasgow with Raz n Laz for the weekend which was pretty uneventful to be honest, there’s not much to see in Glasgow although it looks as though they’re doing a lot of redevelopment and the museums and galleries are supposed to be great but they were shut for the weekend. We stayed in The Blue Sky Hostel which was an experience in itself, (I think the carpet was alive) had a bit of a wander around town visiting a few bars until they closed at 11pm. We thought the night was all over until we met some girls from Glen Waverley (of all places) and they knew of a place that opened until 2am, so we ended up in the ‘The Woodie’ a smelly old pool hall in the West End of Glasgow until that closed and we headed back to the The Blue Sky to share a room with two blokes who were chronic snorers. Back in Edinburgh tonight we are borrowing Ryan and Leanne's van tomorrow and heading to Loch Lomond tomorrow for a couple of days and then flying out from Glasgow to Ireland to see what adventures our Guinness drinking, leprechaun loving friends have to offer.
x
Grant & Myf
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