Dec 06

Rain, wind and more wind! We caught the train from Leeds up to Edinburgh on the 30th to go to Hogmanay, a huge New Years Eve party with an expected crowd of 25,000. We looked through the city which in essence is made up of two main streets, Royal Mile at the base of the castle and Princess Street on the other side of the river, parallel to Royal Mile. A very condensed city, all the shopping is pretty much in Princess Street.

We headed to the castle the afternoon of the 31st. Weather by this stage was already pretty horrible, and after only being there for 30mins everybody was asked to leave. They have to close the castle down when it gets too windy and people get blown over due to the fact the castles on a high peak.

The weather got progressively worse and it started to bucket down, so Steve and I took cover in a local bar for a few ales. In fact we took cover in another 2 bars on the way home. After the last down pours the sky’s turned blue again and the weather seemed to get better – lets just say that was the calm before the storm.
At around 8.30pm Hogmanay was cancelled due to 70mph winds and heavy rain. Organisers tried to hold of canceling as long as they could, but as the winds picked up and starting rocking scaffolding etc they felt it was too dangerous. We were gutted it was cancelled, as it would have been a great atmosphere to be part of, but you can’t argue with mother nature and it would have been wet and cold out there!. So off course we headed to another well located bar down the road from where we were staying to welcome in 2007.

Not many pics of Edinburgh this trip due to such wet dark days, but it’s a beautiful city to visit. Very clean and tidy with rows of houses 3 -4 stories high all built in stone side by side each other. We did manage to go back to the Castle on the 1st for a look around. Lots of history there, that castle sure did see many battles. Got to see the crown jewels of Scotland, nice to see people were into bling centuries ago!

Happy News Years everyone – we hope 2007 is a great year for you all.

Well we held out for a white Christmas – but alas winter so far has been quite mild and our hopes of seeing any snow were dashed. We spent Christmas day and night at Helen Maytums, someone I used to work with at BNZ. I can honestly say this is the first year that I can remember that I didn’t over eat with all the xmas goodies on offer. In fact it was the opposite, we drunk more than we ate throughout the day. These brits sure know how to put it away!! However, we did have a yummy traditional hot dinner – no pavlova and strawberries though!!

We hired a car over xmas weekend as trains weren’t running over that time and Helen lives a good hour out of Leeds. We too the opportunity drive up to Whitby which is a cute little seaside fishing village on the east coast. In fact some history for you – it’s where Captain Cook left on his journey when he discovered little old NZ. We came back via Scarborough which is a popular seaside holiday location. The beach it’s self is about 700metres long, so not a patch on anything at home! It’s quite strange, the main roads in all the little seaside towns throughout Wales and England are just covered in amusement arcades, all rowed up along side each other. Being winter of course Scarborough’s all seemed empty so not sure how they all seem to stay open when they are all in direct competition with other and all have no customers!

Even though it was quite cold standing up on the cliff looking down over the beach and waves it was really nice too see and hear the sea again. Makes you realise just how good we have it at home, particularly in Auckland with a handful of nice beaches within an hours drive.