Loch Ness - 23/10//04 - 11.45

Just got back from 5 days in Scotland.

I've never really travelled around the UK.

I went to Cornwall for the first time only two years ago. Unfortunately I had flu and was trying my hardest to keep up with the 13 close friends I went with for New Year. A New Years Eve trip to the Eden Project was particularly traumatic, the differing climatic zones completely disoriented my body, hot sweats in the tropics, cold sweats in Northern European climes.

Still it was great trip and made me realise exactly how beautiful this country can be. Plus the town names are fantastic, each place named long ago in the dialect of the region, so different to towns just 100 miles away.

The Scotland trip was something that I had been looking forward to for a while. I asked my Dad if he fancied going a few months back, since then I had been counting the days.

In my usual way I decided to soundtrack the trip by making some compilations. Most of the time these take careful planning and in my head I had been mentally noting certain tracks and running orders. However the actual compiling and burning took place in the hours leading up to departure and was made more fraught by a series of computer failures. At one stage it looked like it would be a return to the pre-historic times, before the dawn of the MP3 player, of stuffing as many CD's a possible into a CD wallet (my PB is taking over 100 CD's to Greece two years ago). However the computer came through and the compilations were duly made.

Top 5 Tracks from the Trip

1. Atmosphere - Joy Division
2. Boy With The Arab Strap - Belle & Sebastian
3. Bermuda Highway - My Morning Jacket
4. You're Lovely To Me - Lucky Jim
5. Pepita - Calexico

I will post the full tracklistings some time in the future.