Category: Photos
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Strathisla Distillery and Huntly Castle
We had a really full day today with lots of walking and train-travel. We took the train to Keith which is a very small village about an hour north-west from Aberdeen. I thought Doug would like to visit a whisky distillery and Keith is home to the Strathisla distillery. Question: Does anyone know which whisky is…
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Proving theorems
It was school holidays last week while I was in Utah and Ben had to juggle looking after the kids with work. One day he took them into the department and took this photo of Elizabeth drawing on the blackboard. It’s so great. I love how she’s this tiny head at the bottom and she’s drawing…
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Thoughts from a Grand Meetup
I arrived back in Aberdeen this afternoon and must say it was nice flying in over the green patchwork landscape of Scotland and seeing the rugged cliffs along the coast. I think I even saw Dunnottar Castle. I felt like I was coming home. I was pretty shattered and promptly fell asleep for several hours. I had…
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Mountain views
I went for a morning walk up the hill this morning and managed to take some good photos despite my hopeless photography skills. The colours are just amazing and the views were splendid. These were all taken on my iPhone 4s and have not been edited. I never edit any of my photos.
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Park City
I am in Utah for work and have been so busy I haven’t had the chance to write any posts or read any blogs. It’s a good busy though as I’m getting to meet so many of the talented people I work with. Even going to the toilet can be a challenge because I see…
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Slains Castle
We took my sister to Slains Castle today. It’s a castle ruin about 25 miles north along the coast from Aberdeen. It was a scenic drive along the coast through undulating fields of farmland overlooking the vast expanse of the North Sea. Slains Castle’s claim to fame is that it supposedly inspired Bram Stoker to…
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Edinburgh – day 2
Today we went to the MC Escher exhibition at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art Two. It was brilliant. There was quite a long queue but they’ve installed a timber maze on the front lawn so I waited in line while the kids and Ben ran wild in the maze. It was well worth…
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Mediaeval battles at Drum Castle
We went to Drum Castle today. I have been itching to visit this castle again ever since our cycle ride from Banchory to Aberdeen via Drum Castle. It was so hot that day and we were so exhausted by the time we arrived at Drum Castle that I took one look at the tower with all its…
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Cycle ride to Torry Battery
On Sunday afternoon we cycled from Duthie Park to Torry Battery. The city side of the River Dee was almost entirely off-road cycle paths which is fantastic. After crossing the river at the Wellington Suspension Bridge – which is exclusively for pedestrians and cyclists – it’s all on-road unfortunately. The first part is also particularly…
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To Aberdeen by bicycle via Drum Castle
We cycled back from Banchory to Aberdeen yesterday and it was rather hellish. I thought I was going to die. We arrived home and I collapsed in a heap with a very sore butt and feeling sorry for myself. I’ve decided to give up cycling for good. Just kidding 🙂 We thoroughly enjoyed our stay at…
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Evolution and adventures
Explaining evolution to kids is harder than you think especially when you’re riding a bakfiets at the time and they’re firing questions at you from the box in front. It started on the cycle ride home today with, “How come some kids have brown skin?”. I tried to explain that humans have evolved to have…
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Baby photos
I started this blog because of the Christchurch earthquakes but many women start blogs as a way to record images of their children. My blog has certainly morphed into that over the years but there’s nothing of my children from before the earthquakes. I realised this yesterday when I went searching for a baby photo…
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Cairngorm Mountain, Aviemore
We awoke today to the loveliest day I’ve ever seen. It snowed overnight, so there was a fresh coating of the powdery stuff everywhere, and then the sun came out and the whole world seemed to sparkle. We managed to get up to Cairngorm Mountain but only just as they didn’t open the road until…
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Aviemore, Scotland
Snows transforms the outside into one giant playground. Every hill becomes a slippery slide, every twig a potential arm for a snowman, and every flake of snow a potential snowball for tossing at loved ones. Kids love it, I love it. My long suffering husband doesn’t love it quite so much. Walking around is like…
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“Daddy can’t do anything”
My family was pleased to see me when I arrived back home from Barcelona, but they weren’t ecstatic or anything and they seemed to have managed just fine without me. In fact, I was disappointed to see that Ben wasn’t looking more dishevelled and stressed out after almost a week as a single parent. And…
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Park Güell
I’ve had a headache for the past 24 hours which pain killers are not killing and so there was only one thing to do: go for a run. It sounds counter-intuitive but running often alleviates headache pain for me. So this afternoon I ran up to Park Güell, a lovely park with some architectural features…
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Linn O’ Dee
FossilCycle pointed out in the comments on my post yesterday that we were just down the road from the Linn O’ Dee when we visited Braemar. If you Google Linn O’ Dee you’ll see this is a place worth visiting. So we drove back to Braemar today, a drive I would happily repeat because the…
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Christmas in the Cairngorms
Christmas Day in the Scottish Cairngorms looks like this: Lots of people said to me before we moved here that we’d be shocked by the number of people and the amount of traffic. Maybe this is true for the rest of the UK but not here in the north-east corner where the roads are extraordinarily…
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