Monday saw yet another geocaching event at the campsite, this one the Bun and Brew to Recover from the Post Mega Blues (GC28DDX). I started the day with 494 finds and had thought it would be fun to find 5 caches to bring me to 499 and make the Bun and Brew my 500th cache.

Naturally, this didn’t happen. Instead, Rob and I returned our kilts to the kilt store and then headed back to the campsite to go to the event. I met some more UK cachers and said farewell to some that I’d gotten to know over the last couple of days.

Heading out from the event, we went to the Leisure Centre next door to the Mega Scotland 2010 event location in Perth. The facility was pretty impressive with two waterslides that had sections that went outside the building, a giant pool part of which extended outside and had a curved section that had high-power water jets that sped the water along at high speed. Lots of people and lots of fun!

After the pool, we headed out to do a few more geocaches and I got behind the wheel for the first time in the UK. It didn’t take too long to get sort of used to driving on the left side of the road. The biggest obstacle to overcome was not finding the rear-view mirror where it should have been.

We found three geocaches before deciding to head back to the campground in Kinross, bringing me to 498 finds. After stopping at the Sainsbury’s in Kinross, we stopped to find a microcache at a nearby church (GC1WVG1) that we’d driven by a number of times during the last few days.

Finding the cache wasn’t terribly difficult and we bumped into one of the cachers from the campsite. When he heard that I now had 499 finds, he recommended a couple of geocaches not too far from the Sainsbury’s, so off we went.

My 500th geocache was Barts Road (GC2AF63), a geocache similar to my First Deacon of Golden Lake (GCW5JH) except with the added challenges of thorns and nettles. Logging the cache, we decided to do one more geocache – Welcome to Kinross (GC2AF5Q) – before heading back to the campground.

On the Sunday following the Mega Scotland 2010 event, Rob and I headed in to Edinburgh for some sight seeing. Driving to Edinburgh involved crossing the Forth Road Bridge (also Wikipedia), which parallels the Forth Railway Bridge. I visited the little town of North Queensferry, which is at the north end of the rail bridge, on my first trip to the UK, so it was interesting to see the area from a different perspective.

Edinburgh is the capital city of Scotland and it’s steeped in history. The Edinburgh Castle dominates the skyline and some many of the buildings are hundreds of years old.

After finding somewhere to park, we headed up to The Grassmarket and stopped in at Mamma’s American Pizza Co. for a most-excellent pizza. We then continued on our way and eventually found ourselves on High Street.

Stopping in at a few shops on High Street, we came across Royal Mile Whiskies.

We spent a bit of time in this store. I was trying to find a special bottle of whiskey on behalf of my dragonboat team and Rob was trying to find something to put in his brand new Clan MacKenzie mini-flask.

One of the salesmen spent quite a bit of time helping me find the right bottle, which included sampling a very good whiskey or two along the way. (Hey, I didn’t want to be rude!)

Just as we were leaving, it started to rain.

We had been watching the rain approaching from the Firth of Forth, so we weren’t terribly surprised by this.

We continued up the street to the castle, stopping in to see how tartan cloth is actually woven, buy a few souvenirs and hide from the heavy rain.

Carrying on from there, we went to find the Crag & Tail (GCHXMH) geocache about halfway down the side of the hill the castle sits atop. Naturally, there were some nettles in the vicinity of the cache, but fortunately we avoided most of them.

We made our way back to the car and headed back towards our campsite in Kinross, just in time for yet another geocaching event, this time the Yorkshire Day, Away event cache (GC2B8N7), which was hosted by a number of geocachers from Yorkshire.

As with the other gatherings of geocachers at the campground, it was great getting to know some of the other UK cachers.

One of the reasons I decided to visit the UK this summer was to attend the Mega Scotland 2010 geocaching event (GC1XDQ0) in Perth, Scotland.

As I mentioned in my last post, we arrived at the campground much later than we had planned. After setting up our tent, we did manage to meet a few other geocachers attending the Mega and most of them were quite impressed with the fact that I had a) come all the way from Canada, and b) driven up from London.

On Saturday, we staggered out of bed and headed to the mega event location in Perth. It was in a large community centre that normally has a curling rink and indoor lawn bowling green in it. We checked in and picked up our swag and roamed around the venue checking things out.

The travel bug table was covered in weird and wonderful travel bugs and there were dozens of people madly writing down the TB numbers. Getting between them and the table was a bit like getting between a pack of hungry dogs and a rabbit – a serious undertaking.

We also checked out the various vendors who were selling everything from containers to geocoins and everything in between.

At some point we grabbed breakfast before heading out to pick up our kilts from the kilt store (more on this in a bit).

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So, my flight from Ottawa to England was uneventful (generally, the best type of flight) and I was even able to sleep a bit. and we arrived about half an hour ahead of schedule. Clearing immigration and customs was the least painless experience I’ve ever had and I was basically standing on the sidewalk within five to ten minutes of joining the queue. Even the baggage retrieval was fast.

I called Rob on my cellphone and he gave me a “talk-in” to where he was parked and we were on our way.

According to all the route planning thingies, the trip from Heathrow Airport to Perth, Scotland takes 7 hours and 10 minutes. The most charitable way we can describe their accuracy, based on our experience, is with the phrase “they lie”.

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…my UK 2010 trip, that is!

It’s been about five and half years since I was last in the UK. That was my “Gone to England for a Pint, Back on Sunday” trip that saw me take a long weekend to visit my friends Rob & Yuki. (You can see all the posts related to that trip in the UK Trip 2004 categ

I’ve been itching to get back to the UK for a couple of years now, so when I saw the Mega Scotland 2010 geocaching event in Perth on the geocaching.com website, I bit the bullet and signed up.

So now I’m sitting at Gate 14 at YOW waiting for the overnight flight to London. After clearing customs sometime tomorrow morning, I’m meeting up with Rob and we’re setting off on a 7-hour drive to Perth in Scotland. We’re planning on camping in Perthshire for a few days, doing some geocaching, and attending the mega event (of course!). After the event, we may walk a section of Hadrian’s Wall, or at least explore the some of the Roman forts along part of the Wall.

After that, who knows? Rob probably has to go back to work at some point, so I may spend a few days with them before heading off for parts unknown.

I’m sure you’ve seen it. In fact, you probably see it almost every day, though you may not even register it most of the time.

I’m talking about graffiti.

Graffiti has been around for thousands of years, with some of it persisting to this day. Then, like today, there were discussions and debates as to whether it is art or vandalism.

On my trip to Greece a couple of years ago, I was exploring Nafplio when I came across this slogan spayed on the wall of a building.

But even the graffiti artists couldn’t agree, it seemed, because across the alley was this war of paint between those with stencils and those without:

A little closer to home, I’ve seen tags and more elaborate works of art sprayed on street furniture and other things in the urban environment. Most of it, particularly the tags, gets removed or painted over shortly after it appears.

There have been studies that have shown that if you don’t remove a tag within 24 to 48 hours you’re much more likely to be re-visited by taggers.

One piece of graffiti that caught my eye years ago and has survived the anti-graffiti police, the elements and other graffiti artists, is a piece sprayed on a green utility box on Fisher Avenue near Shillington Avenue.

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People have been throwing their hats into the ring for the upcoming municipal election, including the incumbent – you can find a fairly comprehensive round up on the Ottawa Election News website. Choosing between candidates can be tricky. Usually, there are some candidates you can exclude immediately because they just aren’t an option. But, once you’ve excluded them you still have to choose someone to vote for. (If you don’t vote, you don’t get to complain.)

There are a number of things that a candidate in this election can mention while campaigning that will cause me to move them down my list (or off the list altogether).

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