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Still alive! Have left Aberdeenshire, am on my way to explore the highlands. Currently in the carpark of the Elgin town library - I stopped here because they have a tourist information office, so I could get all the booklets for Scotland, and am sitting in my car hunched sideways to use my laptop (resting on my gear lever and my backpack, in the passenger seat) to use the internet from MY OWN COMPUTER for the first time since last THURSDAY omg.
Mostly just collecting 55 e-mails and then I'll shut down and move on - except maybe not far. I was aiming to visit Culloden then spend the night in Inverness, but on my way out of the library, an older gent saw me taking photos of the (very cool) library building, and eagerly informed me that the camera club meets right here at 7:30 tonight. Come to visit! Have tea!
So I'm also deciding if I might. It could be interesting - you know, a chance to hang out with locals and meet people, or something. So I'm going to poke at the tourist guide for Moray and see if there's stuff nearer than Culloden to occupy my afternoon, then visit that.
A few days at my Ancestral Home has been powerfully good for my soul, but I appear to be losing the word "yes" from my vocabulary - my ex-South-African family had me back to saying "Ja:" instead (it's a longer vowel than the German word), and now I've picked up "aye".
According to my great-aunt Hilda, the more she gets to know me, the more like my grandmother I seem to her. This is, I assure you, one of the nicest things anyone has ever said to me.Current Location: Elgin, Moray, Scotland Current Mood:  cheerful
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So, this afternoon I went and toured the battlefield at Culloden Moor, then headed back towards the delightful city of Elgin, in Moray. Stopped at Tesco's and finally got phone credit.
I attended the evening session of the Moray Camera Club. A photo competition was being judged by a man from Dundee, and I really enjoyed the pictures, but my lord the man has terrible judgement, I found it rather irksome.
It finished at 9pm, and everyone was gathering for tea and socialisation, but I went back to my car, and by the combined powers of the Accommodation Guide I picked up at the tourist info office, mobile broadband on laptop, and actually having a phone with which to call places, poked around until I found a nice place to stay.
One place I called that had no rooms, the woman was trying to think of somewhere that would. She came up with the Premier Inn.
"That's my fallback option."
"Yes, it is a bit of a fallback place, isn't it?"
The Premier Inn is basically a motel chain. I stayed at one in Merseyside; it was nice enough, clean and pleasant and all that, but it's not at all interesting.
One night in the Premier Inn at Merseyside cost me fifty pounds.
Tonight, for fifty pounds, I'm staying at a guest house. For that fifty pounds, I'm staying in an utterly lovely room in an old Victorian mansion, with beautiful, beautiful furniture, including a king-sized wooden four-poster bed. Instead of scrabbling for power points, I've plugged my laptop into the powerboard - but there's four other free power points I can see from where I'm sitting. There are fixings for tea and coffee. There's a lovely gilt mirror.
Oh, and a full breakfast is included, and there's wifi internet access.
The sheet has some fun bits on the policy stuff. Like the Edinburgh Lodge, they have a towel system whereby you can indicate whether you want your towels replaced or are happy to reuse them; the Pines system is that you leave towels you want replaced on the floor.
They also recycle and use local or Fairtrade products where possible. And have a laundry service - clothes returned washed and dried.
This is why, seriously, finding a B&B is preferable to finding a motel. I have the nicest room in the house, apparently; it was the only room that was left.
I'm tired and I'm not sure of the limitations of this wifi - although it's the most reliable wifi I've ever seen - so you get only one picture just now. Taken at Culloden Moor:
 Current Location: Elgin, Moray, Scotland
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