Like my friend, Lee Edward Fodi, I have a fascination with doors and doorways. Here are a few from my recent perambulations that caught my eye…

Door within a door from a home in Ipswich, circa 1500.

 

 

Castle Argyll as seen through the doorway of the tower Dun Corr Bhile near Inveraray, Scotland.

 

The Devil’s Door in a small church in York

 

Doors within doors at Slains Castle, Scotland.

 

 

Valbjofsstadur door, c 1200 AD Iceland, the only one left of its kind.

 

Dunnottar Castle doorways [with bonus well…] outside Aberdeen, Scotland.

 

Portal peephole at Hampton Court Palace.

Do you have a favourite doorway? Tell me about it!

 

More soon…

 

 

~kc

I spent a little time on the east coast of Scotland this year — my first visit to Aberdeen. It is a bustling city with the original structures all carved out of shimmering granite, but the new bits reminded me more of Calgary than anything else — filled with new construction and a booming oil economy. Many helicopters overhead, ferrying folks out to the rigs on the North Sea.

However the bits that held the most appeal for me, of course, were the places out of time. I stayed at the Aberdeen University student residence, which had this noble entranceway from the lane:

And my most serendipidous discovery came on the uni campus, too, when I got lost after a run and ended up going into the Zoology building to ask directions. I was greeted by the bones of a baleen whale, an enormous spider crab crawling up one wall and this fellow, who saw me well on my way…

Them crazy elephant bones…

Turns out the building houses a zoology exhibit that is free to all who care to peruse it, and as you can see it is well worth the visit.

My two favourite days were spent outside the city, however. The first was to the south, near a little village called Stonehaven.

Dunnottar in the distance via memorial poppies

I walked from the village to Dunnottar Castle, a lovely storied old place where William Wallace chased an English regiment into a church and then burnt the place to the ground. [They did get their own back, sadly for the Braveheart, whose head was the first to adorn the parapets of another castle — the Tower of London — just a few years later…].

Dunnottar, perched precariously on the sea cliffs, was a delight from its portcullis to its mammoth kitchens.

Dunnottar defile

I wandered the stone ruin for a couple of hours, hanging out in the Thief’s Hole and the room where 167 Covenanters were held captive and tortured for not being keen on Episcopalianism, and then on to the poshly refurbished Marischal’s Suite where many a monarch — including Mary Queen of Scots — was entertained. With its blood-thirsty history, Dunnottar was a huge highlight for me.

Dunnottar garderobe and sink

Speaking of bloodthirsty histories …

I spent another day away from Aberdeen — my last day in Scotland, as a matter of fact, at a castle whose imagined history is a great deal more bloodthirsty than is its actual. Slains Castle lies a kilometre or so away from the tiny seaside village of Cruden Bay. Cruden Bay is most famous for being the site of the first successful crossing of the English Channel by plane, when Norwegian Tryggve Gran, after three attempts, made it into the air and across to his homeland, a distance of 465 km. I do love a good aviation story, but I was there to see the castle, in particular because it has captured the heart of a writer you may have heard of.

What’s that climbing out the window…?

In the 19th century, a young Irish writer was captivated by the sight of the castle, and pictured it with a black-caped creature crawling down one outer parapet. Bram Stoker so loved the place that he moved his family to Cruden Bay for part of the year so he could write DRACULA there in the shadow of Slains Castle.

The castle is a ruin, and is [technically] closed to public view, but — hey — the gate was open, so I might have wandered around a little, to the sound of the calling seabirds from the cliffs below.

Slains stairway to nowhereJust a little fodder for the imagination, wouldn’t you say?

Windows within windows

More soon…

 

~kc

As promised, a post on the Inveraray Highland Games.

I had a most extraordinary time in Inveraray, mostly due to this lady here:

Her name is Mae Wilcock, and she’s standing beside the little cottage she lets from the Duke of Argyll. She told me all about her life in Inveraray and gave me directions to climb the nearby hill [Dun Cor Bhile] and find the lookout tower on top. She told me about her adventures absailing down the castle wall for charity 30 years ago or so when she was 67. [The current Duke’s grandfather was Duke in those days].

Mae is 93 and FULL of the old boot, as my grandpa would say.

She taught me what ‘wedding furniture’ means. [As in, “I saw the Duke’s wedding furniture when I changed his nappies as a babby…”]

Every single bus that drove by slowed down and waved to Mae. She was wonderful.

Mae doesn’t bother to go see the Games [“Ye seen one, ye’ve seen ’em all, aye?”] that are held on the Duke and Duchess’s property, but she pointed me in the right direction, so in I went.

[I’d also like to point out that I was standing beside the Duchess and her little girl as the parade went by, but didn’t know it until afterwards, when I saw her picture in the program.]

 

 

 

The games, as you might expect, were action-packed.

There were, quite literally, piping competitions the entire day.

The wee dancers danced.

Many hearty people ran footraces. Bicycle races were held [on a grass track!] People wrestled. Locals took off their shoes and socks and raced for bottles of whisky. But really? We all know why I was there.

Men in kilts.

Specifically — the heavies.

It was a fantastic sunny day. Large men threw weights over poles, swung weights around their heads, and of course tossed giant pieces of lumber. It was perfect. Here’s a wee taste…

So, the heavies putted a 16 lb stone AND a 27 pound stone. No namby-bamby shot-puts for these guys. The stones come straight from the River Aray.

27 lb stone flies through the air…That’s it in the upper left hand corner.

I’ve been to Highland Games before [in Nairn, actually], but I somehow missed that the boys have to anchor themselves down with giant spikes in the toes of their boots in order to stay in place while whirling the hammers around.

That’s it, flying off in the upper right. The hammer’s only 16 pounds. Unless it’s the 22 lb one. [They warm up with the 16’s].

I have to show you this guy. He was AWEsome. He was from Iceland and he wore Icelandic flag socks and had elastics in his beard. His name was Heidi.[It’s possible I am misspelling this, but I do NOT care to look it up].

He wasn’t very tall, but he could fling heavy things with the best of ’em!

Okay, I know what you are waiting for. It was, after all, the World Caber Tossing Championship.

[I _know_! Total accident that I picked the right games to go to. Kilted serendipity, man.]

All the heavies had to toss a warm-up caber three times just to get in to the qualifying round.

To toss a caber correctly, you’ve got to pick it up vertically, cup your hands beneath it, run like hell and fling it, end over end. It must land in the 12 o’clock position, or it doesn’t count.

Everybody made it past the first round.

Check out the air this guy got in the first round:

That pink shirt was the BOMB!

Then they had to toss a longer caber in the qualifying round. Three times each. A few didn’t make it through. [Heidi did!]

And then it came down to it. The mondo caber. More than 20 feet tall. Weighing more than 140 lbs. All remaining heavies took part in the first throw of the final round. About half of them succeeded. Then half-way through the second throw…the caber broke! They had to bring in a new caber.

It was decided there would be two more throws in the final round.

And nobody succeeded in tossing it.

Not one. The whole group went through, and no one was successful. It came down to the last toss. Last year’s champion, Scott Rider, had left his team back in Glasgow [where he is competing in the Commonwealth Games in shot put] to defend his title. Let’s have a look at his last toss, shall we?

Picked it up, off running…The [highland] fling…Success!Can you see the height that thing went to?

So Scott successfully defended his title. [One of the other guys also managed a good toss in the final round, but Scott got it on overall points].

So exciting!

I ran into Mae a little bit later, at the end of a very hot afternoon. She was castigating a woman for bringing her dog in a coat to the Games on such a hot day. The woman tried [in vain] to make Mae understand that the coat was soaked in water, and was intended to keep the dog cool.

“Some people should just not be allowed to own a dug,” Mae said to me, as the woman slunk away. “And some treat their dugs just like babbys, aye?” She shook her head. “They’d be better off with a good man between their legs!”

My theory is that Mae WAS watching that caber toss, after all…

Unforgettable.

 

 

More soon…

 

~kc

 

As I’ve confessed to everyone who will listen, in my head York is a small, sort of industrial city — Glasgow or Manchester-esque.

Wrong. And I should have known better.

York is a magnificent medieval town, not untouched by tourism, of course, but still lovely. I had such fun there, and walked my feet to the bone seeing as many corners of it as I could in my short visit.

Here are a few glimpses to share with you…

Clifford’s Tower is a motte & bailey castle, and not even the first on this site. The Original Killer Bill [William the Conqueror, of course] didn’t like the one that the locals had built, so had it knocked down and replaced by this one.

I walked the walls, the remains of which still circle much of the old city including the crowded and cool alleys of The Shambles.

[The term ‘Shambles’ actually stems from the time of William the Conquerer and refers to the benches or shamels on which the meat was displayed in this butchers’ area of town.]

I was lucky enough to be walking through the streets on the last day of the Mystery Plays, street plays depicting the death of Christ and other religiously significant events; traditionally — and still — put on by locals. The casts, all ages as you can see, parade through the streets with their sets and actors and then set up and perform in the city’s squares.

The background to these plays was the magnificent Minster. It was here that I missed my broken camera most sorely, as the gargoyles were just sumptous in their Mastery Of The Ugly.

 

The windows, on the other hand…

I think my favourite part, though, were the many [and I mean MANY] crypts in which the various clergy take their eternal rest. No stiff formality for these guys…

Just chillin’ with the cherubs, man.

Also had a GREAT visit with a young Canadian friend who is currently in residence, a few Yorkian ghosts and a number of old dead Vikings. It was a fantastic visit — I can’t wait to go back.

Next up — a peek at a Highland Games, including some great shots of the heavies doing what they do best at the World Caber Tossing championships.

 

More soon….!

 

~kc

 

A second quick peek at this City of Cities.

There is no other, really.

I’ve talked about the food at the Borough Market before. Have you ever seen pakoras the size of these?

The smells of this place are AMAZING!

Another day, after exploring the Nightingale Museum, I think, I took a stroll through the Leake Street tunnel, which is also known as the ‘Banksy Tunnel’ after an event he sponsored there in 2008. I couldn’t pick out any of his work [which I have found in random places around the world before], but it was truly a thing of graffiti beauty.

In my day at the British Museum, I found this remarkable creation in the Clocks and Clockwork room:

It is a mechanical galleon, an automaton from the 16thC. It was built to announce the beginning of a banquet, and once set in motion would trundle down the length of the table. Reaching the end, it would stop and the main gun would fire, igniting the fuses for the guns along the sides, which would then fire in turn.

Who wouldn’t want their meal announced by an exploding robot sailing ship?

Speaking of Excess, one hot afternoon, I took a trip to Hampton Court. I’ve never been, and considering Henry VIII featured as a character in SHADES OF RED, I thought it high time. The palace was breathtaking, and filled with details like this dragon guarding the palace:

It also had the most amazing truffula tree protecting the front gate:

I feel the need for thneed…

Another night, after working at Southbank, I noticed that LIMBO was playing, so on a whim, I bought a ticket. How to describe the show…

Well, imagine a circus that takes place pretty much in your lap, with fire eaters, comedy, contortionists, aerial mayhem, dance and magic, all set to the inimitable beautiful musical catastrophe that comes from the genius who is Sxip Shirey. 

[This is a shot of Sxip, brandishing his trademark megaphone, taken in the seconds before the show began JUST as they announced a ban on picture-taking].

It was a Most Excellent evening, SO not to be missed if you are in London.

 

My final night in the City was a special one. My daughter, her boyfriend and I made the trip to Canary Wharf [via Docklands Rail, which I’d never travelled on before] and had a lovely dinner under the Reuters tickertape.

And then we went to watch the Pythons.

Yeah, you heard me. Monty Python — or at least the remaining members, in their penultimate performance ever. There was even a bonus bit of Eddie Izzard, which was wonderful.

A little piece of history come to life. Unforgettable, once-in-a-lifetime — all cliches apply. I watched from my seat and was 11 years old again. It was brilliant. And of course, after all the applause was done, it was clear how much the Pythons appreciated the adulation…

A perfect ending.

Other adventures remain in the offing, however, so there will be

 

More soon…!

 

~kc

 

I’ve never spent a full week in London before. Too expensive, mostly. But this year, I planned to meet my girl here a week after I arrived, so… well, instead of the research day trips I had planned, I ended up staying here. Every day I went for a little run around Battlesea Park and then into Chelsea for tea. And after that? I found a cool place to work. It was supposed to be a place I hadn’t been to before, so I could see the bits of London I’ve not seen on previous trips. In the end, it worked out perfectly! Here’s where I washed up…

The British Library

It was Sunday, so not much was fully open, but I found a quiet place upstairs, worked and people-watched. I’m sorry to have missed the comic book display they had on, but it was closed. Next time! And hey, check out these standing desks!

 

The Florence Nightengale Museum

I didn’t know much more of the ‘Lady of the Lamp’ than regular common knowledge before I waltzed through this museum, housed in the Thomas & Guy Hospitals on the south bank. Learned a whole lot in this tiny museum, though, and found a good place to work nearby afterwards. Got any nursing questions? Now that I’ve been, I’ve totally got you covered if you’re suffering from dysentary or perhaps need a quick amputation. Call me!

 

 

The Southbank Centre

This is a shot taken pretty much right outside the Southbank Centre. Not a bad view! The place itself is an Arts Hub — a huge facility for holding big events. [The London School of Fine Arts was graduating its latest class there when I was in residence], and the focus of their attention this summer appears to be LOVE. A celebration of all kinds of love, using images and text from ancient Greece — the place was humming, and it was great fun to work there.

The Victoria & Albert Museum

So I originally set out to visit the V&A children’s museum, which is on a different site, but I got lost. I have been to the V&A before, but only briefly, so I had a lovely wander through before I settled down to work. SO MANY PICTURES, but will settle on these to give you a tiny taste.

I held lustful thoughts for this beautiful writing box, with lots of drawers and compartments for secreting away pens and ink and Important Documents of Questionable Nature. I have all my ink stashed in an ordinary desk drawer at home [though I do have a beautiful hand-made pen case for all my writing implements, courtesy of the talented Kathy Kenzie].

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And to finish today, here’s a shot of a man who has run afoul of someone he should just not have messed with…

I didn’t get her name, but I know I REALLY want her on my side when things get tough!

Well, I thought I could do this all in one post, but clearly I just love London all too much, so

 

More soon…!

 

~kc

What a wonderful few days in a magic land.

Today on the train I was drawing pictures and making lists of everything I could remember…the Blue Lagoon, Gull Foss, Geysir, volcanoes old and new, the [ahem] unique Phallological Museum, tooling around Reykjavik by bike and evidence of Vikings everywhere! All I can say is that if life ever hands you the opportunity to visit this marvellous place, go. You will be made most welcome.

A tiny glimpse:

This is Gull Foss — the Golden Falls that rush beside and through Iceland’s great rift. This country is entirely volcanic, being in the unique position right at the confluence of the North American and European tectonic plates. Iceland is slowly being pulled apart — at a rate of about 2 cm every year — and the great rift is where it happens.

Gull Foss — the Golden Falls

Nearby to Gull Foss is Thingvillr, an important place in the history of Iceland. It was here the world’s first parliament met, where decisions were made and covenants kept. Miscreants were drowned for their crimes in these translucent waters, and marriages were made and celebrated.

Right in the heart of the rift valley, Thingvillr fills your eyes with the most amazing landscape. The current President has his summer house here, where the land has cracks that have never been explored. Apparently the cave diving is incredible. I don’t think I’d have the courage to try.

Thingvillr drowning waters

Speaking of the waters, these are the waters of the Blue Lagoon. This is a volcanic hot spring, enormous in size, a small part of which has been walled off for human use. The waters are rich in sulphur and silica and have traditionally been used to bring relaxation and health back to those who bathe in them. This is a hot springs culture — every neighbourhood and small village has a pool, and every pool has a ‘hot pot’, but the Blue Lagoon is really something special.

The colours of this water are so vivid they can be seen by satellite.Back in the city, the sky darkened enough one night for me to get this shot of moon rise:

Reykjavik moon

Reykjavik was rife with adventure. I will spare you the photos I took from the Phallological Museum, but suffice to say I believe the Icelandic National Handball team are … well-represented there. It was QUITE the interesting experience, and an hysterical way to spend a rainy hour.

Instead I offer you a shot of the home of some of the Hidden Ones, the elven people who can only be seen by very few believers. This particular rock had been the source of many construction woes at the site where it was uncovered. When an expert was brought in, it was decided that the hidden ones who lived inside needed relocating to a place of their own choosing. Once the rock was moved to the centre of town among several houses and by a children’s park, the construction proceeded unimpeded. Such is the power of the Hidden People.

The Hidden Ones live here.

I’ll finish with the moment, long after midnight one night, when I watched the sun dip –briefly! — into the North Atlantic:

Icelandic sunsetDidn’t stay down there for long, however. Sun rose again before 3.

Takk, Iceland. I will never forget you!

 

 

More soon…

 

 

If you follow my twitter feed, you’ll know by the ‘where am I?’ post I put up today that I am not in Iceland any more.

I flew all night and washed up on the shores of London, England this morning. More on that later, as I am not done with Iceland yet. I am already dreaming of returning…

Iceland is a fishing nation, and though I didn’t meet any Icelanders who admitted to enjoying eating shark and whale meat … it was there.

oh, it was there…

A little more startling for me was the casual display of this famous dish:

Apparently sheep’s head is a regular go-to. I took this [admittedly hasty and therefore sadly hazy] photo in the bus station cafeteria.

If it’s on the bus station menu, you know it’s gotta be easy to find.

But the thing that shocked me most was how Puffin seemed to be on menus everywhere. I don’t know why I was shocked. I mean, apparently it is little more than a colourful chicken.

And yet… I’ve been angling to see a Puffin in the feathers since my adventure in Orkney a couple of years ago. They are adorable!

Is he not adorable…?

Apparently, he is also very tasty. I will spare you [and my own soft heart] a picture of Puffin Pie.

I’ve decided the trolls must be behind this. They want the cute puffins out of the way so they can control the tourist market.

 

Yeah…that’s gotta be it.

Okay, that’s it for me. I am typing this with my eyelashes on the keyboard, I swear. Will do an Iceland wrap-up next time.

 

More soon…!

 

~kc

So, in the most volcanic nation on earth, what’s a good way to spend your time?

How about watching water explode out of the earth at regular intervals?

This geysir, whose name is Strokkur [they all have names, of course] is supposed to go off every five minutes or so, but I got lucky and got to watch 3 events in under a minute. Strokkur is little brother to the Great Geysir, but he’s been taking a rest lately [maybe calmed by the recent volcanic activity?], and the two are among 30 or so geysers and hotpots in the immediate vicinity.

After watching a film today at Volcano House on Eyjafjallajökull [the volcano whose plume of ash stranded 100,000 air passengers in 2010, one of them my son], I feel all the more grateful for the wee bits of gas relief that these geysirs provide this explosive country.

Here’s how this one blows…

Everything looks calm. The water is 100 degrees C, though, so a little warm for a dip.

Something’s happening…

Suddenly, the water does a quick retreat.

Okay, then…!

Up…up…

…and it’s time to run for cover!

Thirty metres of boiling sulphur water. It was amazing!

Tomorrow’s my last day here, but I’ve other glimpses into this magical land planned for you in the coming days.

More soon!

 

~kc

 

My, this is a beautiful place.

I’ve landed here almost by accident — more or less on a whim. En route to visit my girl and do more book-ish research in the UK, I found that a stop in Reykjavik would only cost me a further $100 or so [and about 11 extra hours of flying time…].

How could I resist?

So I am here in the land of the Hidden People, geysirs, golden waterfalls, hotpots and magic. It is a brilliant place and I feel so honoured and lucky to have washed up here, even for just a few days.

Hope to give you a wee visual sampling here on the blog. Have any questions? Just ask! Bias declared up front: I’d recommend you come without hesitation.

With the inspiration this place offers, I’d be back in a heartbeat if I could. 

More research needed, don’t you think?

The shot to the right was taken just before midnight, as the sun shone through this beautiful glass sculpture near the Keflavik airport.

I did watch the sun dip itself briefly in the North Atlantic, but it didn’t stay down long enough to get anything like dark before dawn came again. In fact, I’m pretty sure that around here at this time of year, dusk and dawn are identical twins with a separation complex.

The world is waking up to this mystical island — Game of Thrones shoots many of the ‘North of the Wall’ scenes here, and the even Ben Stiller’s execrable desecration of the Walter Mitty story was made beautiful by setting it here.

The lake in the bottom of this dormant volcano was too gigantic to be captured by my lens from where I stood. That teeny white dot on the left is a person, to give you a sense of scale.

Everything here seems larger than life — the mountains, the waterfalls, the glaciers. [Tho’ the glaciers are shrinking, sadly…].

Next time I’ll try to capture a bit of what it’s like to stand beside the world’s oldest geysir. Stay tuned!

 

More soon…

 

~kc