Scottish adventures

Adventures is a loose term, designed to hide the fact that I'm still in Fort William. Am leaving for Edinburgh tomorrow for a couple of nights, meaning that Scotland has been limited to one night in Glasgow, 2 in Edinburgh and 7 here. There is a lot more that I wanted to see, the Isle of Skye for instance, but this has been a most excellent week. Have made some very good friends at the hostel, and have even been upgraded to sleeping in the staff dormitory. I can't remember being this relaxed in a long time, and the prospect of starting work in a week is not a happy one.

Fort William is set amongst a mountain range and a Loch. There is so much to see and do, it seemed a shame to leave without having a proper look around. The highlight was probably canyoning, which basically involves jumping, sliding and swimming from ledge to ledge down a rather large waterfall after signing a pretty flimsy disclaimer. The grand finale was a blind 30 foot jump over a waterfall and into a freezing cold rockpool below. Something you should all try once.

Climbed Ben Nevis yesterday, the tallest mountain in Britain. Was very lucky, the visitor centre claims that the peak is covered in cloud for 355 days of the year. I picked a day where there were no clouds, the view from the top was incredible. It made the 9 hour trek worthwile. The Ben Nevis Inn is quite possibly the best located pub in the world, its at the bottom of the mountain at the finish of the walk. It was a relatively hot day, just about everyone who climbed the mountain stopped for a beer at the end of it.

Of all of the sights I've seen so far, none has been quite as strange as the whiskey flavoured condoms sold at vending machines in the pub toilets here. I've often thought that the concept of flavoured condoms is a strange one, for reasons which I won't write about here because my mother reads this regularly. Yet, my confusion was nothing compared to a friend of mine named Maz, who admitted to a table full of people that when he first encountered flavoured condoms, his first thought was 'wow, do women have taste buds down there?'. This is a man with 2 degrees, obviously anatomy wasn't one of the subjects covered. My own embarresment was to come later, when I returned to the hostel armed with the condoms. A spanish girl in the living room asked me to try and put one over my head and blow it up. I tried, it tore, so I put the tip over my nose to amuse everyone. I then blew out heavily with my nose, which sprayed the spermicide hiding in the tip of the condom all over my face. Many things could be said at this point, but again, mum reads this...

Anyways, hope you are all well. My phone number here is +44 7789 055 716. I'm going to switch off my Australian account pretty soon, but feel free to send texts to that number. It won't cost you more than if I was in Australia stil.

Ciao.