The McKenzie's Blog…

It was only a short time spent in Bonnie Scotland, but each time I go there I find the draw to return stronger and stronger.  It’s always been part of my life long plan to return to my patriarchal ancestral home of Scotland.  While the big cities aren’t dissimilar to the big cities anywhere else in the world, it’s the smaller towns and villages out in the county side that are the real draw for me.

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Mega Scotland 2010 was very good to say the least. We’d got ourselves checked in about 11am or so I suppose.  We had a bit of a lazy morning on Saturday, but who can blame us after the 10hr marathon drive from Heathrow to Kinross.

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The trip to Mega Scotland (GC1XDQ0) for Gord started with a flight from Canada on Thursday July 29th. I started at 8am with a drive to Heathrow to meet him. then it was what turned out to be a 10hr drive to travel just 400 or so miles from Heathrow to the camp site in Kinross, Scotland. Even I, a Veteran of 8 yrs of UK driving, was amazed at how painfully slow the drive was.

We arrived at the camp site about 9pm and had everything set up by about half 9 or so. A quick trip around the camp site to see is about and scope out the facilities, then it was back to meet the neighbours and chill out by their fire.

The sleep was great, I used my new down sleeping bag, it was very warm and comfy. Only problem, on a clear morning the Sun in Scotland shows its face about 4am… Needed my siesta glasses but could be arsed to get out of my bag to get them. Won’t make that mistake tonight thought haha

Saturday: first on the list besides getting showered will be to find food. Then its off to the kilt makers for Gord and I. Then to the actual Mega Scotland event.

I will post more later including some pics I hope.

Cheerio from Scotland

Posted by Wordmobi

We’ve now been in Fredericton, NB for nearly a week now.  Only one more day before we pull out and head back to Ontario again.  It’s been a good week here and Nana Shirley has had a great time with the kids.  The kids have been staying with her in her condo while Yuki and I stayed in the guest suite they have in the building.  It’s been so nice for us not to have to wake up to the kids each morning hahah not sure Nana Shirley can say the same thing though   Mind you, she does have “Minnie” her little dog that needs to get up every morning about 5 for a walk outside.

I must get some more pics of the girls with Minnie as well.. but she’s pretty skittish of the kids (and adults too really).

Continue reading to see about the trip to St Andrews…. (photos from the day are in Canada – 2010 – Group 3.

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Well here we are, just about one week on in our holiday back in Canada.  It’s the first time in 6 years that I’ve been back home, and the first time ever for Emma to get over here.  We’ve had a pretty good first week.  Done a lot of shopping and a lot of driving.   We arrived on Saturday May 29th and were met at the airport by my father, from there we went back to his place just outside of Kingston. 

On the Sunday we went for a 90 min boat cruise around Kingston and Wolfe Island.  Here’s a couple of photos from the boat with Emma and Lisa taking turns at the helm (before leaving port haha)

We’d stayed until Monday morning when we packed up the van and headed out for Burlington VT.  We planned to stop here and shop, but clearly we made some wrong shopping choices as we didn’t find much in the way of bargains or much of any thing really.   Here we are crossing the bridges at Cornwall Ontario heading for the US.

Here we are taking the ferry across Lake Champlain that separates New York state and Vermont.

After a good nights sleep, but a stupid early wake up for some reason (still a bit jet lagged I guess), we got an early start on the second leg of the journey to New Brunswick to see Nana Shirley and the family in that part of the country.  We’re pretty well shopped out now I think   The girls have been spending money getting all kitted out for the wedding back in Kingston on the 14th of June.  I still need a shirt and tie but other then that we’re all set haha

When we arrived in New Brunswick it was starting to rain, and it rained for the next couple days.  Today we’ve had dry weather but it’s threatening to rain again for the next couple of days.   Saturday (June 5th, our wedding anniversary) we’re hoping to get an early start to the day and get down to St Andrews for sights and seafood, Yuki is a seafood-a-holic if ever there was one.  However, the weather forecast isn’t looking good for Saturday, so that might get pushed off until Monday.

Tonight we took the kids around to my cousin Gregg’s house to play with their 3 kids (Chanse, Dakota and Kendall), they were great and our girls had an awesome time playing with them.  That Kendall is a real cutie.  The kids had a great time running around and playing games.  I hope their kids sleep as well as I hope ours sleep haha.

Like usual, all the photos from our trip will be on Flickr.  They’ll all be in the Canada 2010 collection.

I’ll try to blog more as the trip goes, I’ve been time sharing the computer with Yuki so I don’t get to use it as much as I’d like

It’s been a nice long weekend with some of it spent in Newcastle Upon Tyne, Gateshead. We drove up on Sunday and returned Wed. It’s a long old drive up there and back, but stupid easy, A14 then A1 and you’re there haha

It was a decent enough few days.. the weather could have been better but at least it didn’t rain the entire time. I did manage to get 3 Geocaches in while i was up there too.  Nice easy ones.

We went to the Metrocentre Shopping Centre in Gateshead, besides just walking around looking at the huge number of shops we also enjoyed the entertainment area there .. they had loads of those “grabber” games where you have get a prize out of the machine plus a number of other games of luck/skill/chance where you get tickets if you win and you can exchange them for crap.. and I use that term in the most loving way possible  

The other thing they had were dodgems (bumper cars) .. Lisa was bugging us to let her go.. being too small to go alone I went with Lisa.. man I tell you, I’ve never seen a kid laugh so much and so hard for so long.. I was dead certain I’d have to be yelling “clean up in dodgem #10′” haha she had a great time.. I had to operate the “gas peddle” as it was out of her reach, but she did most of the steering and the ramming of others out in on the rink or whatever you call it.  Yuki took Emma out as well in another car.. Emma had an OK time but she is just a little too small and got chucked around too much.  Lets just say it’s a good thing the cars are well padded including a 6-8 inch thick patch on the steering wheel haha she hit that a lot.. but she survived.  I think Lisa and I ended up having 3 goes on them.

On Tuesday we’d gone for a walk around the town centre, one of the places we visited was Castle Keep,  Pretty slick place and quite well preserved but it’s not had an easy go in it’s life that’s for sure.   Here are a couple of photos from the place .. check out the rest by clicking on any of the photos..

We also visited The Cathedral Church of St. Nicolas just up the road from Castle Keep.

Check out more photos by clicking on any of the above.

I have decided that this will be the year I finally get out and do some things I’ve been wanting to do.  Mostly that’s walking in the hills and some wild camping.  The walking I’m thinking about are doing some Wainwrights. There are heaps to choose from, no idea which ones I’ll do, but I’d like to plan to do a couple of days perhaps 2-3 with a couple of nights wild camping.  I’ve recently watched the video below and it’s inspired me to do it this year.  I have most of the gear and having lost some 48KG over the last 18 months I’m feeling a hell of a lot better.  I still need to get more fit, so must get back to gym

Check out blog postings over at Dean Read dot net. Here is the video of their Ennerdale Wainwrights video.

I don’t have a plan as to when I’ll do it, but I’m thinking mid-late summer.  Need to plan to do some day walks first and get an idea on what I’m in for.  The other “problem” is also finding someone to do these with.  It would be pretty foolish to attempt this sort of thing alone with the lack of experience.  So, I need for another nutter up for some fun too   If that’s you, lets chat, drop me a comment.