A Little Late: Photos from Our Trip to London Scotland

So we’ve been home for over a month, and I keep forgetting to write a blog post with photos from our *amazing* trip to London and Scotland this summer.

Here are a few pics if you’d like to see:

londoneye

Riding the London Eye

airbnblondon

Ian in front of our Airbnb in Shoreditch, London

britishmuseum

At the British Museum

topofstpauls

Climbing to the top of St Paul’s Cathedral, in a heat wave

tigerlily

The Tigerlily Hotel in Edinburgh

brewdog

At the Brewdog Pub in Edinburgh

cabin

Our spectacular cabin rental in the Highlands

seafood

Fresh seafood

cottageviews

The Highlands around the cabin

cowscrossing

Highland cows

plockton

Touring Highland towns, like Plockton

views

Relaxing evenings in the cabin

hikes

Hiking on the Isle of Rona, with Skye in the distance

seals

Seals, seen from a boat tour

beach

Happy Anniversary to us!

I’m Mildly Obsessed With Watching This Bear Cam

bear cam

Okay, I know this is really random, but in the last few days I’ve been watching a bear cam. It’s a live webcam of Brooks Falls in Katmai National Park in Alaska, where brown bears feast on the largest Sockeye Salmon run in the world. If you turn on your speakers you can hear the sound of the waterfall, or just leave ’em off and watch the bears try to catch fish. There are often mama bears and cubs, and I find it strangely soothing. I’ll do a bit of work, and then check on the bear cam for a couple minutes, then back to work, and repeat.

Would You Have a Book Club With Your Spouse?

Noise-of-Time-Cover-crop

Ian used to be in a book club and really enjoyed it, but members moved away from the city and the club eventually disbanded. Since then he doesn’t read non-fiction much, and while I love novels, it can take me months to make my way through a book.

So when I recently saw a review in The Guardian calling The Noise of Time by Julian Barnes his masterpiece, I perked up. Ian and I had both previously read (and enjoyed) Sense of an Ending by Barnes, so I asked Ian if he’d read The Noise of Time with me and we could chat about it. You know… kind of like a book club.

He reluctantly agreed after I sent him The Guardian review, so I quickly downloaded the book to our Kobo e-readers. We’ll see how it goes. This could either be a royal mistake, or the beginning of a fun new activity to do together.

The Plan For Our Upcoming 10th Anniversary Trip

Avery and Ian in Scotland, 2007

Our 10th Anniversary Trip is now less than a month away, and I’m getting so excited. We’ve been planning our adventure since January, when I saw this cabin rental in remote Scotland and booked it on a whim. Here’s hour our plans are shaping up:

A *daytime* transatlantic flight
Most overseas flights departing from Toronto are at night. You get on the plane at 8 or 9pm, and fly for 7 hours. When you land, it’s morning in your arrival city, but only 3am in your gut. You’re tired, and you have to force yourself to stay awake. If you can sleep on the plane, this isn’t so bad… but Ian can never sleep on planes (even with the help of a mild sedative). So when he arrives, he’s not just jet-lagged, he’s also sleep deprived. Not a great way to start a holiday.

So for this trip, we’re flying on points and had the option of doing a daytime flight (normally more expensive, but points made it possible). We leave Toronto at 9am, and get to London at 9pm local time. It will feel like 4pm in our guts, so we’ll stay up a bit and then sleep in the next morning. Jet lag, yes. But sleep deprivation… here’s hoping not.

Four nights in London
We’ve travelled a fair bit and seen a lot of wonderful places, but never been to London (a layover at Heathrow doesn’t count). We booked an Airbnb in hip Shoreditch to use as our home base while we walk our feet off exploring the city. I learned a long time ago to pace myself while travelling, and not try to see too much – that results in exhaustion, overwhelm and frustration. Instead I’m looking forward to checking out a few sights (Westminster Abbey, the Churchill War Rooms, the British Museum and the Tate Modern are high on our list), doing some shopping, maybe seeing some theatre, and eating and drinking well.

A cheap-o flight to Edinburgh
We booked a ridiculously cheap flight from London to Edinburgh on Ryanair. Ian and I toured Scotland on our honeymoon, and spent two nights in Edinburgh then. It’s a gorgeous city and we’re looking forward to being back for a night. I’ve booked us in at the design-y Tigerlily Hotel for something fun and different.

(Hopefully scenic) train ride from Edinburgh to Inverness
We need to get to Inverness to rent a car and stock up on supplies before heading to our cabin, and figured it would be cool to take the train from Edinburgh to Inverness. The trip a little less than 4 hours, and goes right through the Cairngorns. I’m hoping for some gorgeous scenery.

The main event: a week in the remote Scottish Highlands
After we pick up our car rental in Inverness, we head a few hours west to the Applecross Peninsula and the tiny town of Ardheslaig to stay at this jaw-droppingly beautiful cabin for a week. We’re looking forward to relaxing, hiking, driving the Bealach na Bà and other insane mountain roads, visiting white sand beaches, eating well on the Isle of Skye, taking a boat tour of the lochs, and drinking all the single malts I can handle.

There’s a reason why filmmakers, artists, photographers, writers, and poets are captivated by the Highlands. It sounds beyond cornball, but there really is something mystic and magical about the ruggedness of the landscape, the fog hanging in the mountain valleys, the weather that blows in with no notice, the spectacular cliffs and deep lakes, and the wonderful people of Scotland. It’s one of my favourite places on the planet and I cannot wait to go back and soak it all in.

And then home again
After a week in Scotland, and almost two weeks since we will have left Canada, we’ll be returning to Inverness to drop off our car rental and fly from Inverness to London, and then London to Toronto. I’m sure I’ll be sad to head home, but happy to see Clara and Isabel the dog.

Photo above of us on our first visit to Scotland, almost 10 years ago. We look like babies! See the rest of the photos here.

Gather North Registration Opens Tomorrow

gathernorth-1

gathernorth-2

gathernorth-3

Registration opens tomorrow for Gather North, the conference I co-organize. Gather North is a professional getaway for women who make the web. You may remember the event we had last November at the Drake Devonshire Inn in Prince Edward County. We’re doing another event this fall (November 11-13, 2016 to be specific) at the Millcroft Inn and Spa. Learn more about Gather North and register your spot tomorrow. We sold out last time and are sure to sell out again.

My Latest Wanderlust Fix: Instagram

faroe

Cabin

iceland

stag

wester-ross

Are you on Instagram? I use it myself to post random things from my daily life, and to stay in touch with friends. I also love following travel and tourism accounts on Instagram, so I can see beautiful photos of places I want to visit.

In anticipation of our trip to England and Scotland this July, I recently started following the Visit Scotland account, plus The Highland Collective and Scottish photographer Ali Horne.  On Ali Horne’s account I found my way to GermanRoamers and Visit Faroe Islands, and now I’m following them all. Add in Great North Collective and Modern Outdoors, and my Instagram feed is full of gorgeous northern scenery of mountains, forests, waterfalls, cliff-tops, rugged shorelines and cozy cabins. Dreamy.

(images above from top to bottom: Faroe Islands photo by Ali Horne, cabin photo by Rob Strok on the Modern Outdoors account, Iceland countryside by Mike Seehagel on the Great North Collective account, stag photo by Patrick of GermanRoamers on the Modern Outdoors account, Wester Ross (Scotland) coastline photo by George Turner on the VisitScotland account)

We Booked the Most Spectacular Holiday Rental Property

TheNetStore

TheNetStore2

TheNetStore3

TheNetStore4

Ian and I will celebrate our 10th wedding anniversary in 2016, and we wanted to take a special trip to mark the occasion. We looked into a number of destinations, but kept coming back to Scotland, where we spent our honeymoon. It’s kind of romantic, right?

A few weeks ago I stumbled across this holiday rental property in a remote location in the Highlands of Scotland. It only took one look at that first photo above, with the fireplace and modern decor and the giant windows looking out over the loch, for me to immediately put down a deposit for a week’s stay in July. Can’t you just imagine sitting there after a day of hiking, savouring a fine single malt, curled up watching a storm come in? Dreamy. July can’t come fast enough.

 

Finally – An Affordable Standing Desk Option

levit8

levit8-2

I’ve read all the same articles as the rest of you, heralding the benefits of standing while you work (or at least mixing it up a bit). I’m totally in… except standing desks are expensive and really really ugly.

Enter Levit8, a simple folding (and super portable) laptop stand. There are 10 days left on the Kickstarter, and the product will ship in January. I backed it. Will you?