It already seems quite a long time ago, but last weekend we travelled to Aberdeen because our children had qualified for the North Scotland school’s chess final. Quick and direct travel to Aberdeen would have been quite expensive, so we decided to make a road trip of it. It was the first time we set foot on mainland Scotland for over 4 months. We visited some of the sights we had already visited three years ago when we travelled Scotland. Among them were the Whaligoe steps, castle Sinclair and Girnigoe and the mall in Inverness (if you can call that a sight). I have to say though, the closer we got to Inverness, the more we were overwhelmed with the masses of cars. And in those couple hours in the mall in Inverness we probably saw more people than we have seen in our whole past four months in Orkney. It’s amazing and somewhat frightening how fast you adapt to countryside life and everything that comes with it.

We had booked a very nice B&B in Portsoy with huge rooms. Unfortunately, the bathroom was not en-suite, but we had it all to ourselves. It was, however, so big that it more than made up for its un-en-suitedness. There was a huge portrait of a lady in there and a comfortable armchair you could sit on while brushing your teeth or for just enjoying the view of the toilet or shower ...



There was another 1.5h to travel to Aberdeen. We didn’t really see much of it though because we spent all of our time in the cafeteria of the school where the chess tournament took place. We were not allowed in the actual chess hall, so all we could do was wait for our children to come down with either a smile on their face or a face showing disappointment. Maleah’s face of disappointment was never on display. Nanouk had to play some strong opponents after winning the first two games and ended up winning and losing three each. We were all very proud about Maleah’s undefeated day. She qualified for the North UK final in Manchester, but unfortunately we can’t go because it’s just before we return to Switzerland.

On the way back to Orkney we stopped at the remains of Elgin cathedral which was very impressive. Especially the weather was almost too warm for us with sunshine, no wind and 16 degrees. The past week we’ve also had some very nice weather in Orkney. I spent quite a bit of time at the beach basking in the sun. Surprisingly even the water seemed quite warm because it is quite shallow at that beach and had been warmed up by the sun all day. So next time it might be swimming trunks ...

In other news I have joined the football team of the Deerness Parish cup. They were short of players and asked me to join them, so in a moment of madness I agreed to do it. It turned out that even with me they were still short of players so we ended up playing a friendly match instead of an official Parish cup game. It was still a lot of fun even though we lost quite high. Funnily enough I only realized when I looked at the photos Natalie took, that I was wearing the number 10 shirt ... So there will be another match in two weeks and then my temporary football comeback will come to an end and I will be able to concentrate on my running training again, providing I can get rid of my small aches and pains.



There was also another of our articles in the local newspaper. You can look at it here (only in German).

Fill out the form below to add your own comments.

Your Name:

Email:

URL:

Remember me:

Insert Special:
--[strong]xxx[/strong][b]xxx[/b][em]xxx[/em][i]xxx[/i]

Comment:


Anti-Spam: Enter