Over the Sea.

We went sailing- some of the best gentlemen i know and i.

I like boats, and i love the ocean- something about fathomless bodies of water, and not being able to touch the bottom alive. So when Tim asked if I'd be interesting in sailing and being part of his new venture (Quetzal Shipping and Trading) of course jumped at the chance.

We went sailing off the west coast of Scotland, up The sound of Mull to Tobermory and back again. Sailing is brilliant, hard work, but brilliant. It was an interesting week for myself. It was the first week of my travels this year and so challenges arose: I like being alone, sometimes i actually need to be alone, and thus sharing 33ft of space with 5 other bodies (no matter how wonderful and lovely those bodies are) was always going to be interesting for me. However, i don't think i done too bad. Everyone else was, of course, too lovely for me to have any complaints about their presence.

 I was also the only female, which is not something that bothers hugely. However, when i am the only girl i feel as if i have to prove myself. At the very least i must match the weakest male emotionally and physically. With this i failed. I cried twice. Once just because the shower i was trying to have ran cold... I am ashamed to admit this isn't the first time a cold shower has reduced me to tears, but there you go my Achilles heal. Everyone was, of course, very nice about my feminine behavior, and that was a huge relief. The whole thing just got me over myself a little bit more, which is always a good thing.

 These aren't complaints, well the lack of decent showering facilities at Oban bay are, but otherwise these are just some of my unfavorable attributes highlighted to me on this trip, that over the last 6 months i've been attempting to adjust. I've found myself observing unfavorable characteristics in myself and at least for now i've recognized them. I'm getting round to fixing them.

Here are some of the beautiful sights we saw on our adventure:

 

 Driving north- less breathtaking thank you'd expect from the west coast of Scotland Due to the heavy fog the whole way- but enjoyable none the less.

 The Skipper. He has the right idea about life.
We liked him instantly. After we all got on the boat for the first time, having introduced ourselves to Paul, our skipper, and having a brief on land introduction to some safety things. We get on the boat, already a little damp and cold from the Scottish weather, and settle down to have a little chat about the upcoming adventure. Our skipper duly produces a long rectangular box and asked us what we thought it contained- baring in mind it was essential for all sailing ventures. After we had all guessed (incorrectly) things like maps, charts and compass. He opened the box and reviled six whiskey tumblers. 

There was just something insanely attractive about boats to me, and the reflections in the water were amazing.

Another first: Rory, Isaac and i climbed the mast!
The view was stunning. The climb was difficult.   

 We Anchored in this bay one night (i've forgotten its name) and went and explored the island while the sun set. Scotland is beautiful.

 Mid week we reached Tobermory,on the isle of Mull. We ate fish and chips- or rather the boys ate fish and chips, while i hid from seagulls.And in the evening we all went to The Mishnish Pub, drank merrily, enjoyed music and played darts. The pub recorded Rory and Isaac playing a little:
Music in the pub.

Our Skipper played us some old island songs, and told some excellent stories.
The pub recorded him also, and the link be Here.

Mr Timothy Dennis- Day Skipper.

Pirating.

Playing.


Beautiful, beautiful.

The last night was splendid. As the sun set over by Ben Nevis, we poured ourselves a well deserved whiskey and danced up and down the boat, swinging each-other by the arm and cheering, to some Scottish folk music. And when the sun set and the music stopped we lay out on deck and watched the stars for a while.

 

So was the first venture for Quetzal. 

 It was an adventure indeed, and the sea has stolen my heart.






A beutiful song for the occasion.
A song for the Sea
By a beautiful friend of mine.

Anxiety.

Anxiety- By Charlotte H. Knox.

Holland and the Quetzal.

I've been slacking on this, as usual... But i'm going to make up for it now. 

We went to Holland!

Some friends of mine had this idea to set up a company.
This company: Quetzal Shipping and Trading
Its sail powered shipping, with a whole load of things like philanthropy, sustainable living and investing in community too. And its a wonderful idea that i am very pleased to be part of.

Currently there is only one ship in the world that does this for of cargo transport. Their website can be found here. This company is based in Holland, and so is our friend who is helping with the project, so naturally we went to visit. Our visit let us meet wonderful people who have the knowledge and experience we need to start this company, and also gave us ideas and connections that will help take the company forward.

Naturally we had to take a boat over to the Netherlands. And this was our welcome- a hugely industrialized shore, which was magnificent in its own type of beautiful.

Mr Timothy Dennis- The man with the ideas.

 

And Holland is a most beautiful place.

We met the guys from the Tres Hombres. They were lovely, and inspirational.

 

This trip was my first taster of Quetzal Shipping and Trading. It allowed me to properly understand what the aims were, and meet the people involved. The project is steadily moving forward and i am enjoying every part i get to play in it.

The good comany, or i should say CREW!

I don't hate her.

I dont hate Mrs Thatcher, and i shall not celebrate her death, or be pleased she is dead. 

Still, here is a topical and enjoyable song. 

New Places For Old People. 2. Hitching with father

The father and i watched "Into The Wild" together for the first time, in May, last year. At the end of which, as usual, i was enthused and inspired and hastily exclaimed that i was going away the following week on a mini adventure. This remark was met with "Where are you going? How are you getting there? Where will you stay? How long for?" ect. ect. ect. His reaction is of course understandable, he is my dad after all.

 To all of his questions i simply replied "I dunno." and shrugged. As i gave it thought i decided to hitch- a thought that wasn't so foreign in my head since i had been hitching for about two years previous to this trip- I had forgotten, however, my parents weren't fully aware of my more 'reckless' activities... So then that discussion happened. My father still not being totally satisfied that i would be okay- or just looking for an excuse to spend some time in my spectacular company- decided to accompany me.

It wasn't a long trip together.

We hitched to the east coast. Despite my fathers skepticism, and warnings, that hitching may be a long and difficult task, it took us no longer than 20 minutes to get a lift each time.

We made it to Arbroath where my father gave me a tour of his childhood holiday scenes, and also showed me the spot where he and his father had sung old hymns to the fishermen.

We then walked the coastal walk to Auchmithie.

After which i was beat.

So we set up camp, without tents, Right next to the old pier. 

That evening we cheated a little, and ate like kings. 

Before retuning to camp and falling asleep to the sound of the ocean waves.

So day and night number one went rather well. A few blisters but no more injuries. We even had a good nights sleep. Day two started off well, with the most stunning sunrise i have ever seen. We hitched back into Arbroath and wandered the town for a while. But having no plan and feeling like we had to accommodate each-other the day started to drag out. We did find a fascination lighthouse museum, where we hung out and watched full length documentaries on building lighthouses to avoid the rain, before it closed.

Night number two was a tad more miserable, but at the same time gave better experience. So it wasn't all bad. Our attitudes to each-other warmed as we both had to sleep on a slope getting cold and damp and intermittently removing slugs and snails from our area.




All in all it went well. My father knows his stuff, and has passed on enough that i can cope on my own. Perhaps one day he will believe that 100%. 

New tastes for old buds. 1. Small changes.

Perhaps this is an irrelevant teenage angst blog.

I have tried to avoid it. I don't want to moan about life. And i don't want to vomit fleeting emotions and cliched changes all over the place. However, i do want to record my story in a small form here. And since cliched changes and "cliche" because, well because they happen to most people in some form. I don't think i can (or should- sometimes i fail to appreciate people) dismiss others situations and feelings because they are important to them- and no matter how many times i hear about a girl dating the wrong boy and still crying over the brake up, that was not so unexpected. I shouldn't roll my eyes in exasperation because i know I've cried over a dumb boy in a scene very similar.

Anyway this part Isn't about boys, promise. This is perhaps going to be the first in a small series of changes posts. Its been a weird year. Good, bad and ugly. A lot has been good. A lot has been simple change.

Small changes:
I have never been a fussy eater, but as far as i can remember i have disliked 6 things that the majority of people in the western world very much enjoy. In one year i have got over most of them, and enjoy them often.

  

Vietnamese coffee sort of started the snowball for me to try things I've never liked. I'm still working on tomato's, but I've given up on peanut butter.

Tonight is too much to go any further than food I'm afraid. I'll do better next time.

Some Seriously Smokin' Music.

Tom Waits- Alice.

An evening in an 80's film.

 I went to her house. We got angry at boys together. We disagreed over politics. Got drunk. Smoked Drugs. And shaved our heads.

  Okay so most of that previous spiel is preposterous. Although at the end of the evening we did feel as if we had lived a little bit of our own 80's teenage angst movie. To be more accurate:

  I went to her house. We did, of course, chat about boys. I'm sure social politics will have been discussed at some point in the evening. We drank tea and water from jars. Listened to some seriously smokin' music. And yes, we did cut all my hair off.

  For all the time I spend trying not to enjoy repeating teenage history, I cant help myself. It wasn't for a boy. It was a cliche excuse. But in some ways it worked, I got what i asked for.

 





 

                                 

 

Before.                                                           After.   

I lost half a pound in cutting my hair off.

That City Barcelona

I want to travel. Have done since I was 12 years old. Its the goal I try to orientate all of my activities around to accommodate.

As I've grown up, however, my idea of traveling has been changed. Molded and shaped by my experiences. The time scale on which I want to travel has changed, why I want to travel has changed, how I plan on traveling has changed, where I want to travel has changed, and how much money I need to travel the way I want to has changed.

In the last year especially (since around May 2012) traveling has become more of a foreign thought- although still my goal in life currently. I left school, completing only 5 years of high school, and not achieving my level best grades because academic achievements, by that point, weren't what I wanted. Leaving school and getting a job came in rather close succession and I thought that was it. I was making money, and thus well on my way to traveling the world. Again I proved to myself I was still ignorant to the world.

Money, or at least the amount of money I am trying to attain takes a bloody long time to acquire. Especially in a minimum pay, part time job. But more than that was causing my enthusiasm for traveling to dull. My job is lonely, I have less contact with old friends, even less contact with school friends, I wasn't of age to go to places I would find easiest to meet friends close to home. Then winter came. Making hitching harder because there is less day light, traveling around Scotland is harder because if I get stuck I cant just weather the night as its far too cold. So I felt stuck. I felt like I should be closer to my goal and yet I was getting further away.

However, in January 2013 my parents, along with my grandparents and an aunt, decided to spend some of their money on a trip to the 2nd best restaurant in the world, which is in Barcelona. It turns out January is not the most desirable time to travel to Barcelona, so accommodation is cheap and flights cheaper. And so I got an invite. Not to the restaurant, but to Barcelona.

My photos aren't similar. They are edited differently (and badly- one day i'll invest in a proper editing system) because the city was so diverse I couldn't create a single visual link the whole way through...

The city demands you to look up. 

To witness architecture so beautiful every building could be from a painting. 

A city of culture.

A food culture that far succeeds any i have ever seen.

Even in the park you could pick your own oranges from the tress. 

 Filled with all sorts of artists.

All corners are filled. Alleyways my mere arm span wide, with Narnian like entrances and buildings that look to be falling in on each other. Filled with drugs, good food, book shops and people- both suspicious and superbly friendly

I remembered I want to see the people who live in all these places. I want to understand their happiness and accumulate all their ideas to create my own. I remembered why I want to travel.

I didnt document the trip as much as i had planned to. I was too busy seeing it. But i was happy with a few images to capture the memories of a city that gave me back my traveling bug. 

To a future valentine.

This song shall be played at my wedding. 

P.S.
I am not a fan of Valentines day. Apparently I am not a fan of many celebrated occasions. It makes it near impossible to find a nice place to eat dinner without reservations on the 14th of February.

I'm not very good at New Years.

Don't get me wrong I love the event. Ceilidhs are a, not so secret, love of mine. A tradition I have participated in every year (save one particularly odd new year) since I was a child. This year I attended two!

 I also enjoy New Year's reputation of being a "new start". I read in a book once, that every cell in the human body is renewed every 6 months, meaning you basically have a new body every 6 months, meaning we have the opportunity to "recreate" or change ourselves every 6 months. Now i'm not sure this fact is accurate, but as I have previously stated: if I enjoy believing a 'lie' and it impacts positively on my mindset I have no problem letting myself believe it. I digress... So I appreciate improving my life and making positive changes, and i understand as weird human animals we enjoy the encouragement of events and dates and designated times to change. However, i struggle with the deadline. I suck at deadlines. I also suck at change. Thus I try and achieve change by making myself accountable to people- cue blog. Also i encourage myself with change by taking it slowly and giving myself props to make it easier and more enjoyable- cue calendar and map.

This is my poster calendar. Its the calendar i have wished to own for 3 years. It is also incredibly difficult to find if, like me, you can't keep up with how quickly new year comes and goes thus you find yourself in February when every shop has sold out of calendars. I finally acquired this one online and am now hoping it helps me to stop double booking myself.

On my search for my poster calendar i came across this world map for £2.50!! Its bigger than me! I like maps. This is another item i have been in search of, since i was 12 years old, in fact. My current goal in life is to travel the world. This 'prop' shall help encourage and focus me... i hope.

So here is to starting my year, perhaps a little late, aiming to be a more organised and reliable person and focused on achieving my dream.

Tonight I went to a book signing of sorts.

We were greeted with a signed copy of "The Fault in Our Stars", entertained by a writer and his brother who played some songs, and then charmed when two american brothers who, mildly, resemble the Reid brothers singing 500 miles. Most enjoyable. 

I wrote John Green a thank you note as i figure we are both better at reading than talking. 

And how else can you tell a stranger you are grateful for their work and respect them in less than 13 seconds of face time?

Although i hope to do proper posts, with purpose and points of interest, i do also hope to use this as a place to record the things i do. 
Forgive me.