West Highlands and my first night out in Aberdeen

I guess this is going to turn out more like place to put my photos occasionally, rather than a blog. Unless I overcome a very well-established inability to maintain a diary that is. Anyway, since my last posting, I have spent another week in the field, this time based in Fort William, in the Western Highlands of Scotland.

I saw some spectacular scenery on my first trip two weeks before that, but this was in another league again, and I'm told that there's better to come if I make it out to Wester Ross in a few weeks' time. This time around we visited three woods: Cona Glen, Glen Loy and the Black Mount. I'd love to include all their Gaelic names too, but their spelllings (not to mention pronunciations) remain a bit too challenging for the moment. The weather remained mild but consistently pretty wet and grey this time, which is evidently typical West Highlands weather. I'll continue to praise Gore-tex, though, as I remained dry throughout, even after sinking calf-deep into peat and bog countless times. We had a tough time of it at one site where there were almost no pine cones to be found, but the next day compensated as the trees were hoaching and we came away with great muckle bags of cones.

While travelling between sites, we saw plenty of famous tourist spots like Glencoe, Rannoch Moor, Glenfinnan, and Ben Nevis. And Mum, you'll be glad to know I saw the place where they film Monarch of the Glen. These spots account for most of the photos on this posting.

There are Bens, Craigs and Glens everywhere in Scotland. I've also learnt that to go through to the back of a house in Scotland is to go "ben the house". I've even got myself trained to say burn instead of creek, glen or strath instead of valley, lorry instead of truck and haggis instead of offal. Actually I had some very good haggis and neeps this week.

I finally made it into town at night for the first time since moving to Aberdeen. I went with a very large group, mostly of overseas students and postdocs, for a movie (The Science of Sleep) sandwiched between two pub visits. I ended up out pretty late with some sleep-averse Spaniards towards the end of the night. We stopped for kebabs, and I'm guessing that it's a Scottish thing, rather than a Turkish thing, to offer kebabs served on a choice of pita bread or a tray of greasy chips. We ended up walking home to the Macaulay, because a 40 min walk in the rain is quicker and preferable to queuing for a taxi in Aberdeen. Anyway, I can report that Aberdeen is certainly lively at night, although there are parts that have an atmosphere disconcertingly reminiscent of Townsville's Flinders Street East. There are plenty of venues including numerous converted churches, old pubs, new bars, nightclubs and the last place we visited, which was... I dunno. A man playing a grand piano and singing on stage in a dark room to a small audience.

Enjoy the photos.

First Post - from Aberdeen

Well this is my first blog entry, and I'm afraid it's going to be pretty pathetic. For now it will have to consist mostly of a few pictures posted on my homepage. But in brief...Jane and I left Townsville in mid-December, after two years of sweating it out studying possums and gums trees in North Queensland. The departure was disorganised and frantic, even by my standards, but we made it to my parents' place in Melbourne where we spent Christmas and most of January.

I left Melbourne, without Jane for the next few months, on January 24, arriving in London the next day, where I spent a few days with my sister Kate and her Andy before flying to Aberdeen just over two weeks ago. Since arriving here in the UK things have gone perfectly. Emma gave (that's right, gave) me her old car in London, so I'm off to London this weekend to drive my '94 Renault 19 back up here.

The weather when I arrived in Aberdeen was warmer than it was when I visited in May last year, and persisted in its unseasonably mild and sunny ways for most of my first two weeks here. I've packed a bit into those two weeks and it seems like I've been here longer. My head was spinning after the first few days of inductions and introductions at work at the Macaulay Institute, but everyone was remarkably friendly and my new boss, Glenn, has done an admirable job of helping me get settled in. Accommodation is sorted for now, which makes things easy, and Glenn even gave me his old bike.

The most obvious highlight had been the week I've spent in the field already, collecting pine cones and needles from several natural pine woodlands in the central highlands of Scotland. More fieldwork to come next week. Anyway, for now I'll post a few photos from last week's trip with Joan and Dave. Apart from being extremely valuable from a conservation perspective (there are only 86 remnants of this vegetation type which once covered much of Scotland), these woodlands are pretty nice places to spend some time, as you'll see. Fieldwork in the snow was new for me though...