Catriona and I went to a conference in St. Andrews last weekend. It was hosted by St. Andrews University, Committe for Dark Age studies & EMERGE (I have no idea what that is). The title of the conference was 'Anglo-Saxon Scotland' and some questioned the validity or the apropriateness of this title.
The party started on Friday so Catriona and I made our way to Queen Street station early morning to catch the train to Edinburgh. I always like going on trains. We made it into Edinburgh shortly before 11, and I just managed to grab a sandwich, bottle of coke and a bag of crisps before we jumped aboard the train to Luchers. We had enormous amount of fun on the trainride to Luchers all thanks to Walkers Vote for Me crips. I had grabbed a bag of a new trial crips 'Builders Breakfast' and they truly were magical. I recommend them to anyone who want's a bit of Harry Potter feeling. It was like eating Berti Botts Every Flavour Beans, except crisps. 'Builder's Breakfast' was supposed to have, eggs, toast, beans and bacon, and the weird thing was, you picked up a crips and bit into it and maybe you got eggs, or eggs and bacon, bacon and beans, beans and toast! The point is you never knew and it could be any flavour, which made this incredibly fun. We are so easily entertained.
We made it into Luchers around noon and hurried to the bus station where a moment later a bus came to take us to St. Andrews. What a journey. We had no idea where we were or where we were going but alighted at the first viable spot, and landed basically in the heart of St. Andrews not bad. This was the start of a long day of walking ... and walking ... and walking. We went to the St. Andrews Cathedral, which is probably one of my favorite ruins of all time. Looking at it just makes you wonder what used to be there and makes you want to weep, it is beautiful. Next to the Cathedral is St. Rules tower and Catriona can tell you all about it. I only know a bit, that it is one of the oldest square tower in Scotland! We went up, but oh boy, it was difficult. The stairs were circular and tiny, these really were tiny monks, but I made it up and Catriona too. I took a few photos to prove it and then we descended the stairs again. I still don't know how I managed this and both my knees get nightmares thinking about this trip up and down. (My knees are magical and can think for themselves.)
Next on the list was finding the Bed and Brekfast, and after what felt like wandering around the desert for twenty minutes we found it. It was a lovely place in the middle of the suburb of St. Andrews (which is not big). The welcome was wonderful and the room was amazing, felt just like a hotel only smaller. After stopping for a short while where I was able to allow my feet to breath for a bit, we were at it again ... walking ... and walking. We went back to the city centre where we sat down at Costa Cafe to find out where we were going next, but in the end we mostly just wandered around town aimlessly looking for a place to eat. We basically ended up at the same place where we had lunch, at Victorias Bar. We knew we would get good food there so we weren't to disappointed of not getting to sample more of the local cusine. Also most of the places in St. Andrews are rather expensive.
We left the diner when it was still roughly more than half an hour before the seminar started. The seminar tonight was sort of the opening act to the weekends conference, The Anderson Memorial Lecture. It took us for ages to find the place, and its basically because I screwed up! I was so caught up with the street names there that I didn't really pay much attention to the map or address. So we turned down a road we shouldn't have, if we had basically moved half a meter more and into a courtyard we would have been there, but I wanted to go down Butts Wynd (which I renamed Farts Alley) and from there it went all down hill. We made it back but it was quite frustrating that we could have avoided all this walking, on the other hand there were people about now so we felt more assured that we were at the right place. And so we were, we found the lecture theatre and sat down, which was a relief for my feet.
The speaker of the evening was a Professor Nick Higham and his talk was titled 'Anglo-Saxon Scotland?' (very imaginative title as you can see). I had heard that not everyone was pleased with having him as opening speaker for the night, and I must say I can understand why (although I didn't until Catriona explained it to me). I didn't take the same history courses as Catriona did so she was much more up on things than I was, but basically this guy was spouting nonsence which no 'sane person thinks anymore', and that it had felt like stepping thirty years back into the past in scholarship. He was an entertaining speaker though, it must be said. There are probably not many that can actually get the sentence: 'Not that I am insinuating that Bede was a Dalek' into a lecture.
After the talk we were invited over to a reception given by the University and sponsored by Glenmorangie! They offered us whiskey, red wine, white wine and some other beverages that I wasn't exploring to much of. They even had snacks. I had a glass of whiskey but because I had been walking so much and had an early start to tomorrow I didn't imbibe too much, although Catriona got a bit mellow with a glass of red wine. We mingled, although just barely, we met a guy from Cambridge, named Paul (I thought his name was Bob, but found that odd for a Cambridge boy), all dressed up in tweed! He knew Geraldine our teacher so we had something in common to talk about. Then we spent a few minutes talking to Dauvit and Thomas before splitting. It's a good thing I am good at finding my way around places because I would not have trusted Catriona in her mellow state to get us where we were going, we walked back to the B&B and were very happy when we were finally in bed exhausted after an eventful day.
The party started on Friday so Catriona and I made our way to Queen Street station early morning to catch the train to Edinburgh. I always like going on trains. We made it into Edinburgh shortly before 11, and I just managed to grab a sandwich, bottle of coke and a bag of crisps before we jumped aboard the train to Luchers. We had enormous amount of fun on the trainride to Luchers all thanks to Walkers Vote for Me crips. I had grabbed a bag of a new trial crips 'Builders Breakfast' and they truly were magical. I recommend them to anyone who want's a bit of Harry Potter feeling. It was like eating Berti Botts Every Flavour Beans, except crisps. 'Builder's Breakfast' was supposed to have, eggs, toast, beans and bacon, and the weird thing was, you picked up a crips and bit into it and maybe you got eggs, or eggs and bacon, bacon and beans, beans and toast! The point is you never knew and it could be any flavour, which made this incredibly fun. We are so easily entertained.
We made it into Luchers around noon and hurried to the bus station where a moment later a bus came to take us to St. Andrews. What a journey. We had no idea where we were or where we were going but alighted at the first viable spot, and landed basically in the heart of St. Andrews not bad. This was the start of a long day of walking ... and walking ... and walking. We went to the St. Andrews Cathedral, which is probably one of my favorite ruins of all time. Looking at it just makes you wonder what used to be there and makes you want to weep, it is beautiful. Next to the Cathedral is St. Rules tower and Catriona can tell you all about it. I only know a bit, that it is one of the oldest square tower in Scotland! We went up, but oh boy, it was difficult. The stairs were circular and tiny, these really were tiny monks, but I made it up and Catriona too. I took a few photos to prove it and then we descended the stairs again. I still don't know how I managed this and both my knees get nightmares thinking about this trip up and down. (My knees are magical and can think for themselves.)
Next on the list was finding the Bed and Brekfast, and after what felt like wandering around the desert for twenty minutes we found it. It was a lovely place in the middle of the suburb of St. Andrews (which is not big). The welcome was wonderful and the room was amazing, felt just like a hotel only smaller. After stopping for a short while where I was able to allow my feet to breath for a bit, we were at it again ... walking ... and walking. We went back to the city centre where we sat down at Costa Cafe to find out where we were going next, but in the end we mostly just wandered around town aimlessly looking for a place to eat. We basically ended up at the same place where we had lunch, at Victorias Bar. We knew we would get good food there so we weren't to disappointed of not getting to sample more of the local cusine. Also most of the places in St. Andrews are rather expensive.
We left the diner when it was still roughly more than half an hour before the seminar started. The seminar tonight was sort of the opening act to the weekends conference, The Anderson Memorial Lecture. It took us for ages to find the place, and its basically because I screwed up! I was so caught up with the street names there that I didn't really pay much attention to the map or address. So we turned down a road we shouldn't have, if we had basically moved half a meter more and into a courtyard we would have been there, but I wanted to go down Butts Wynd (which I renamed Farts Alley) and from there it went all down hill. We made it back but it was quite frustrating that we could have avoided all this walking, on the other hand there were people about now so we felt more assured that we were at the right place. And so we were, we found the lecture theatre and sat down, which was a relief for my feet.
The speaker of the evening was a Professor Nick Higham and his talk was titled 'Anglo-Saxon Scotland?' (very imaginative title as you can see). I had heard that not everyone was pleased with having him as opening speaker for the night, and I must say I can understand why (although I didn't until Catriona explained it to me). I didn't take the same history courses as Catriona did so she was much more up on things than I was, but basically this guy was spouting nonsence which no 'sane person thinks anymore', and that it had felt like stepping thirty years back into the past in scholarship. He was an entertaining speaker though, it must be said. There are probably not many that can actually get the sentence: 'Not that I am insinuating that Bede was a Dalek' into a lecture.
After the talk we were invited over to a reception given by the University and sponsored by Glenmorangie! They offered us whiskey, red wine, white wine and some other beverages that I wasn't exploring to much of. They even had snacks. I had a glass of whiskey but because I had been walking so much and had an early start to tomorrow I didn't imbibe too much, although Catriona got a bit mellow with a glass of red wine. We mingled, although just barely, we met a guy from Cambridge, named Paul (I thought his name was Bob, but found that odd for a Cambridge boy), all dressed up in tweed! He knew Geraldine our teacher so we had something in common to talk about. Then we spent a few minutes talking to Dauvit and Thomas before splitting. It's a good thing I am good at finding my way around places because I would not have trusted Catriona in her mellow state to get us where we were going, we walked back to the B&B and were very happy when we were finally in bed exhausted after an eventful day.
To be continued ...
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