In the next days I will try to write a few pieces about my journey through Scotland. It’s a guided tour and for me it’s actually the first time I’ll be visiting Scotland. I was in Ireland before and also in a few places in England, but never made a trip through Scotland.
In case you may be asking why I suddenly write in English (since normally I only blog in Dutch): it’s all to please my international Twitter audience ;-) I’ll do my very best not to make too many mistakes against English spelling or grammar.
For me it’s also the first time I will be blogging about travel experiences, although I did a kind of travel diary with my co-students when we visited Dublin with our library science class in the year 2000. This was in the preblog era and of course eight years later technical conditions have improved considerable.
I will try to update this blog every day to share my impressions with you. Since Internet access may not be available freely in every hotel we’re staying, updates may come bundled every few days or so. But if possible, you’ll get a daily review, maybe even with some pictures that I’ll gather in my Flickr account (first time I will use it in a senseful way to post my own public pics, actually). If everything goes wrong with the Internet connection, I still will send little updates via Twitter with my mobile phone. If you don’t want to take the trouble to look at my Twitter page, you can read my tweets here.
So, on Monday 1st September (that’s Labor Day in the United States and Canada), my friends L. and P. and I will be leaving Turnhout (near Antwerp, in the north of Belgium) by bus with the rest of our travel companions in the afternoon and heading for Rotterdam. In Rotterdam we will cross the North Sea by ferry on Monday evening and Tuesday morning we will be in Kingston upon Hull (or just Hull, for short) in Great Britain (in fact Hull is still England).
I have chosen two books to take with me on the journey. The first one I wanted to read when it first came out in 2006. But I just forgot about it until recently I read some very nice books that are to be considered as strong critiques to the ideas that are expressed in the original. The other book is one I bought haphazard but deals with my all-time favourite, language.
- The God delusion / Richard Dawkins [WorldCat] [Wikipedia]
- Biting the wax tadpole : misadventures of an armchair linguist / Elizabeth Little [OpenLibrary] [Amazon.co.uk]
And of course I’m also taking music with me on my mp3 player. I chose a few examples of fine Scottish traditional music.
- Scottish country dances / Jim MacLeod & his band [Muziek.Bibliotheek.be]
[audio:scotland_01_scottish_country_dances.mp3] - Tatties & herrin’ : the land / Isla St. Clair [WorldCat]
[audio:scotland_02_tatties_and_herrin.mp3] - World library of folk & primitive music : Scotland / Alan Lomax [Muziek.Bibliotheek.be]
[audio:scotland_03_scotland_alan_lomax.mp3] - Scotland : the real music from contemporary Caledonia [Muziek.Bibliotheek.be]
[audio:scotland_04_scotland_caledonia.mp3] - Singing in the streets : Scottish children’s songs / Alan Lomax [WorldCat]
[audio:scotland_05_scottish_childrens_songs.mp3]
I hope you enjoy my writings as much as I hopefully will enjoy the journey. Here’s a scheme of the places we will be passing by or visiting.
Day 1:
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Day 2:
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Day 3:
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Day 4:
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Day 5:
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Day 6:
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Day 7:
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Day 8:
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