UK09: The conferences (AKA the reason for it all...)

The next morning I made my way the two miles from the hostel into Ft. William to catch a bus out of the highlands. I left myself a good half day in Glasgow to explore, but ended up just seeing one of the local parks (Victoria Park) and the Museum of Transport. There was not a lot notable about what I saw of Glasgow, except some petrified trees in the park and a bunch of interesting cars, boats, trains, motorcycles, etc. in the museum. Or maybe I was just so tired at this point that nothing would have been too interesting.

The end of the West Highland Way in Ft. William. I cheated and only did the last 35 of the 95 miles, but only for lack of time.

Petrified forest in Victoria Park, Glasgow.

Traditional gardens in Victoria Park

Did you know Scotland produced cars? Here's one from the Scottish Museum of Transport.

Anyhow, I caught a bus out to the airport, then a cheap domestic flight to East Midlands airport, which put me about 7 miles from the conference site. A short taxi ride later, I all but crashed in my room at the 4 star hotel. The event was the Rapid Manufacturing Conference, which is an international gathering of researches and companies from the rapid manufacturing (3D printing) community. I got my fill of traditional English food at the hotel, and the talks were interesting. However, I had to leave early on Thursday, because I was due to present a paper at another conference back across the pond in Montreal the next morning. London was about an hour and a half train ride away, and the international flight went without a hitch.

I showed up in Montreal at about 7pm that evening, caught a shuttle bus downtown (which was a mess because of a jazz festival going on) and checked into yet another amazing 4 star hotel where the conference was being held. I tell you, don't let a grad student get used to this continent hopping, 4 star lifestyle! My talk the next morning went smoothly, (some people even showed up for it at 8:30am!) but the rest of the conferences was, well, pretty boring. This conference was GECCO (Genetic algorithms conference), so it was mostly computer programmer types, who I don't associate with especially interesting talks. I did have a couple chances to explore around Montreal, and surprisingly, it felt almost more European than the UK did (something about the fact that the language and road signs are all in French there).

Montreal at sunset

Anyhow, a couple of my colleagues had driven up from Ithaca, so I just rode back with them to complete the loop. All in all, I was gone less than two weeks, but it was a crazy whirlwind of a trip. And even more of a headache to plan! I added it up and it turns out I made use of more than 10 different transit companies (planes, buses, trains, taxis, etc.), all of which operate independently. But all the planning paid off, and I got to do and see everything I had hoped to do, and came away with a very fun and memorable trip!

UK09: Day 5 - Ben Nevis

[Note: Accompanying photo gallery for the whole Scotland experience here]

The next morning I awoke to a drizzle. After the last couple days where the general trend was clearing up into the morning, I decided to hang tight, since I only had 10 miles of hiking slated for the day. That happened to be up the tallest mountain in the UK (Ben Nevis, at 4300 feet), but still. Don't need all day for that. After a lazy morning, sometime around 10:30 the rain stopped and it looked like things were maybe clearing up. Or at least I was bored sitting around camp. So I set out.

The hike up was mostly dry, but the trail wasn't too interesting. Just up and up, and it was really well traveled. By that, I mean hiker highway. Oh well... I'll do anything once. It started raining towards the top. Hard. And cold. And windy. The last mile or so was above vegetation line and through a barren rock landscape. There was even a patch of snow to hike across, which I was mildly surprised at. The top was more or less flat, although with no vegetation there were views in the directions not blocked by clouds. Also present were the remains of an old observatory and a few monuments. After about 10 minutes of getting soaked hoping the rain would abate, I gave up because I was soaked to the skin and starting to lose body heat to the wind. I think the mountain was generating its own rain to some degree, because I could look out under the clouds and see that it was light and almost sunny out in the valleys below.

Climbing Ben Nevis. Town of Ft William below.

The summit of Ben Nevis is flat, but there are dramatic cliffs on the one side. (You can just barely see people next to the monuments at upper right for scale)

The trip down was.... miserable. Not to look for pity or anything, but I was tired, didn't want to stop to dig out food from my pack (so starving) and there was no shelter up there whatsoever. And the rain would let up for just a bit before coming back seemingly harder than before. You would think that given I was soaked to the skin it wouldn't be so bad, but the continual, cold drenching felt... spiteful. I am still definitely glad I did it, but let's just say I probably would have enjoyed it more had it been a little dryer. But hey... Rain is the reality of hiking in Scotland, and I had lucked out the previous two days.

It poured most of the way down, despite apparently being sunny right down there in Ft William.

I had been considering getting a bed (and a shower) at a hostel that night anyway, since I would be traveling by bus (and plane) back down the island the next day. But given my cold and drenched state, my mind was made up. Fortunately, there was a nice hostel right at the base of the mountain that was set up with a drying room among the other amenities. So 18GBP later, I had a nice, clean bed, a long, piping hot shower, and all my stuff was drying out nicely in the drying room. Much, much better than a cold, wet night. (It did continue to rain for most of the rest of the day).

Met some cool folks at the hostel, including my roommates who were from Poland, biking Scotland for a month. Sounds like fun! I actually went to bed quite early (partly out of boredom), and slept long and hard.

UK09: Day 4 - West Highland Way, Part 2

I gently awoke to the rushing mountain stream and a dark, gray, misty day. It had definitely rained overnight, but that I didn't mind since I stay cozy and dry in the hammock under the tarp but far away from the wet ground. Much better than tent camping in the rain! Packing was a quick affair and I made my way back to the trail and finished the descent into Kinlochleven. Two minutes down the trail, it started drizzling. I stopped under a tree for shelter, and had visions of the next 17 miles of cold, wet trail. Fortunately, the rain had all but stopped in 5 minutes, and as I set off down the trail, the clouds began to lift and break. By the time I got to Kinlochleven, there were patches of blue sky all over, and the dark looking storm I had woken up under was fleeing over the next ridge.

If I could make a postcard from the trip, this would be it! This is actually tidal salt water, although the open ocean is far (30 miles?) away.

Kinlochleven is a small town way, way at the end of a long inlet of the ocean. (They still call them lochs, whether freshwater or saltwater) The trail came down into town following the feed stocks of a medium size hydro plant which I suspect takes care of most of their energy needs. I think most of the highlands runs on hydro power, actually. With their combination of mountains and nearly year-round rain, it makes sense. The town itself was not so exciting. Lots of B&B's. As I made my way up the valley on the other side of town, the weather continued to improve, and even started to get rather warm for trudging uphill with a pack.

The Town of Kinlochleven at the end of the loch. The West Highland Way comes into town along the hydro feedstocks (visible on the far side of the valley).

After a small detour to get a scenic vista of the town and Loch from above, the trail dove away into another broad valley. The next several miles through the valley were broken up by some of the local sheep/goat residents and some more old stone house ruins. I fell into step with an middle aged couple from New Zealand for a while and gleaned some useful information about hiking there if/when I get down there (high on my want-to-do list!). The day was absolutely beautiful, and the afternoon could have even been called "partly cloudy" instead of "partly sunny", although it was on the dividing line between the two.

Ruins along the trail, although they are apparently still inhabited.

Many miles of crazy nice, open highlands terrain.

The last several miles of trail into Glen Nevis (more or less my destination for the night) went through by far the largest tree plantation I had seen. It was odd. One moment, I was hiking through vast, open highlands. Two minutes later I was in an exceptionaly thick, dark, enveloping evergreen forest. For a few miles. Strange, but it was nice and cool in there. Glen Nevis is a small outpost of a campground and a couple restaurants about 2 miles from Ft. William (my exit point for the Highlands). I manged to work my way up the creek a mile or so and find a suitably remote spot to set up for the night, again right by the water. There was a nice rocky beach, and blessedly no bugs! I was thrilled that I could actually hang out outside without staying on the move!

Within one of the tree plantations. The cool, dark, enclosed feeling is a direct contrast to the open, sunny highlands.

Campsite the third night. One could get used to sleeping along creeks like this!

It was fairly early still (maybe 6pm?) so I lounged around camp and skipped rocks for a while. As things progressed towards sunset, I grabbed my camera and headed towards the trail up Ben Nevis (which I had slated to climb the next day) to try and get some good sunset shots. It turned out to be one of those "right place, right time" moments. A big rainsquall came cruising through and set up a beautiful double rainbow right over the mountain! It was perfect. Except that my first camera battery died, and my spare was sitting in my pack back at camp! Arg. Never forget the spare! My last shot was pretty close to the peak of intensity, but still...

Rainbow over Ben Nevis

I weathered the squall for 15 or 20 minutes under the covered trail information sign, but then had to bushwack through all the freshly watered bushes to get my battery, and then right back through them all. Oh well. So much for staying dry. The sunset was interesting, although not quite the spectacular affair I was hoping for (the rainstorm kind of blocked most of it) As dusk set in, I headed by to camp and setlled in for the night.

UK09: Day 3 - West Highland Way, Part 1

I awoke to bright sun streaming through the thick, evergreen canopy. Yes. Evergreens. In the Highlands. Turns out the pulp industry is pretty big up there, so there are groves of planted trees that are sustainably grown and harvested. The total area of these tree plantations is quite small compared to the open space, but I was perplexed to find that most of these groves (which I had scoped out in the satellite views as places to set up the hammock for nights) had fences around them. Turns out they're for deer (not people) and I never had a hard time finding a spot to set up camp without hopping fences.

Anyhow, the bright streaming sun was temporary. As I made my way out of the grove, most of the sky was grey, but with blue patches - although the clouds didn't look too threatening. Most of the rest of the day was spent walking through some very pleasant terrain. The trail went by a remote inn before joining what used to be an old military road. Naturally, the trail through here was pretty straight and flat so I made good time. I found some old ruins of a small stone house just off the trail on a hunch, after seeing a huge hedge of rhododendrons ("those don't look native!")

Ruins of an old house just off the West Highland Way overland hiking trail

Typical Scottish highlands terrain.

Other points of interest included a ski lift (near one of the road crossings) that was carting mountain bikers up the mountain for a super lazy (but no doubt adrenaline infused) downhill biking experience. I also passed the "oldest continually licensed" inn in Scotland, and the trail went up the "devils staircase" (which was quite overhyped) to the highest point along the West Highland Way. (400 meters elevation, I think?)

Downhill mountain biking. They ride a ski lift up and just go downhill. Pretty soon they'll just stop putting pedals on...

A spot of sunshine! The so called "devils staircase" climb of the trail visible in the lower-left.

It started to spatter a little bit late in the afternoon, and even rained for a couple minutes, but all in all I hardly got wet. I began the descent into Kinlochleven aroun 6 pm, and found a nice spot to set up the hammock along a stream (with native trees, this time!) well before dark for a total of maybe 18 miles that day.

Campsite the second night. Hammocks are SO versatile. Falling asleep to the sound of the creek was amazing.

UK09: Day 2 - Edinburgh to the Highlands

I was hoping (but not optimistic) that with hardly any sleep the previous night on my trans-Atlantic flight I would at least be able to catch some shut-eye on the overnight bus ride from London to Edinburgh. Apparently I wasn't quite tired enough. The bus was full and kinda noisy, but hey... It was cheap and I paid much less than I would have for a room in London that night, and traveled 400 miles to boot. It wasn't helped by the fact that Scotland is pretty far north and the sun rises early. (I caught the bus at 11:15pm and the first pre-dawn glow was visible around 3:00am.) For reference, Scotland is roughly level with the panhandle of Alaska. The bus took us along the eastern coast, so I got to see some of the shoreline there as the sun rose. Not too exciting. Just rolling hills and fields dropping into the ocean.

Nonetheless, I emerged from the bus station in Edinburgh eager to see the city. After taking a few minutes to get oriented (There are not too many signs for visitors such as I) I was on track for the center of town. Edinburgh is kind of unique in that it has a chunk of the Scottish highlands stuck right in the middle of the city. At least that's how it felt. Arthur's Seat is an 800 foot hill right in the middle of Holyrood park, which is directly adjacent to the city center. It's kept relatively ungroomed, so it was easy to forget that I was in the middle of the largest city in Scotland... until I looked out, at least. The 360 degree view from the top was great, although hazy weather made good photos quite challenging.

The view of Edinburgh from Arthur's Seat, looking out toward the ocean. Palace is in the middle-left of the image.

I then descended to the Palace of Holyrood, which is the queen's official residence in Scotland. She apparently was staying there at the time, but was out and about so security at the palace was at normal levels. Like Buckingham palace, the exterior was rather understated, so there wasn't too much to see. Much more interestingly architecturally, the scottish parliament was across the street in an uber-modern organic building. I am not often a fan of trendy new architecture, but the whole complex was so whimsical with complex 3D shapes and exterior decorated with sticks (Yes, 2 inch diameter laquered sticks!). I couldn't shake the feeling that somehow it was inspired by the forts that kids make out in the woods.

A typical section of the "Royal Mile" of very old buildings

Starting from the palace, the "royal mile" heads up a gradual hill to its eventual terminus at the Edinburgh fortress. This stretch contains many of the oldest buildings in Edinburgh. This included not only grand buildings, but also many "ordinary" buildings lining narrow, winding streets. I walked up to the fortress (they have a huge parade ground with grandstands surrounding it right in front), but didn't pay to go in, mostly for lack of time to fully appreciate it. It is definitely an imposing fortress, and reminded me in many ways of Salzburg (see my post here), especially how it really dominates the city.

The main entrance to the Edinburgh Castle. It is quite imposing. I certainly wouldn't want to try and get in if it was being defended.

From there, I was beginning to drag a bit as the last 3 days with very little sleep started to catch up, but I manged to wander to the National Museum of Scotland. It's a super nice, modern museum with a lot of very interesting history of Scotland, and of course many interesting artifacts.

Random artifact in the Scottish National Museum. Yeah, kinda strange.

By now, it was late afternoon and time to cath my bus up into the highlands. I made my way back to the bus station through the narrow streets, satisfied with the amount I had been able to see of Edinburgh. I think the strongest impression that came across (almost immediately) is how much stone is visible in the city. Literally almost every building, in fact. Much of this visible stone was darkened by the forces of nature and presumably human pollution to some degree, which only helped enhance the feeling of age.

My eventual destination was out practically in the middle of nowhere of the Scottish Highlands, at a lone hotel at the "Bridge of Orchy"where the West Highland Way (overland hiking route) intersects the highway. Fortunately, the Scottish CityLink busses make frequent trips into the highlands, and stop wherever you need them too. I had to switch busses in Glasgow, and almost missed my connection due to traffic, presumably resulting from being Friday afternoon and the fact that the skies burst open and poured for a while. That didn't bode well for me, since I was headed out into the elements to backpack for 4 nights, but fortunately as we headed up into the highlands the rain tapered off. When I arrived at the Bridge of Orchy Hotel, the clouds had lifted a little, leaving a fresh, damp evening, although still threatening rain.

Looking at the hotel from the Bridge of Orchy itself. This was my point of departure backpacking the West Highland Way.

I set out on the trail right away around 7pm, just to get away from what little civilization was there. After about a mile I found a suitable dark grove of trees, set up my hammock, and crashed hard. As I was setting up, I had my first experience with midges. The highlands are famous for these little biting insects, and they had me hopping and rushing to get my hammock set up so I could get inside. They're not particularly nasty (their bites are not anywhere as bad as mosquitos), but there were so many of them it felt like my skin was crawling. I was relieved to find out their bites hardly affected me, but nonetheless I didn't particularly appreciate the feeling of having them all over any exposed skin. I dove into my hammock and sorted out my stuff behind the safety of the bug netting. It briefly crossed my mind as I got set up to sleep that I hadn't taken my shoes off in 3 days... then I was out like a rock.

UK09: Day 1 - London

(Note: check out the accompanying photo album for more pics and map!)

My flight got into London about an hour late (from delays in Philly - go figure.), but it was a bright, sunny morning, approximately 10am local time. (so... 5am EST) I had a rough plan for what to see, so to start things off I caught the tube to South Kensington. I didn't spend a ton of time here. There was the Museum of Science and the Natural History museum, both of which were interesting, but I would put them a notch or two below their respective Smithsonians in DC. Perhaps it's national pride, or perhaps I was tired enough to make them less interesting, but they definitely seemed smaller and less impressive.

BMW in the London Science Museum. Perhaps I should trade mine in for one of these?

So, I hopped back onto the tube and popped up right near the Tower of London. Right off the bat, the first thing that hit me was that London had a lot of stone and a lot of glass. An odd combination, but the modern and the historical were all intermingled in a way that I'm sure is unique in some way to London. Anyhow, the tower was cool. It used to be a fortress, and the walls and moats (including the River Thames on one side) were still intact, so one could imagine the defenses. Tower bridge was, of course, right nearby, and a tall boat handily came by at just the right time to watch it in action.

Many layers of the Tower of London, from many different eras.

Tower Bridge.

Glass and stone: the materials of London

From there, I made my way on foot along the Thames, with the eventual goal of the Parliament building. There are paths along both sides of the Thames through here, weaving around and between the buildings. I deviated a few blocks north to check out St. Pauls cathedral, which is supposedly one of the largest in the world. Then, accross the Millenium footbridge and along the other side. The London Eye is probably the big attraction over here. It is a 443 foot tall ferris wheel cantilevered out over the Thames. Quite large and impressive, and I'm sure the view was stunning, but the line was long enough I decided my time (and pounds) would be better spent elsewhere.

It was getting on towards late afternoon by now, so I headed across the river from the eye to the Parliament buildings. Big Ben was there, dutiful proclaiming every quarter hour, and the House of Commons had some very intricate stonework. Westminster Abbey was a block away, but unfortunately they had just closed for the day, so I didn't get to go in. Still, the outside was quite impressive.

Big Ben. Still there, still chiming!

From there, I worked my way up through St. James Park to Buckingham Palace. Buckingham Palace is not too impressive from the outside... its just a big, kinda nice looking building. From what I've gathered, it is incredibly opulent inside, but that didn't matter to me much. Absolutely no chance of getting in. There was a dutiful guard standing stock still in the little booth though. Poor guy. Must be a very, very boring job.

St. James Park

By now it was getting on into the evening, but I had a bit more time to kill. So I wandered up to Hyde park. Along the way I was met with a rather pleasant surprise to London. I had been seeing nice cars all day, but walking up to one of the main intersections behind the palace, wham. Lamborghini drives by. 30 seconds later, Ferrari. Seeing a pattern, I stopped and watched the intersection for a while, and it was officially, by far, the most exotics I've seen in one place. Every cycle of the light it seemed there was an Italian exotic, or german supercar, or British beauty. I stopped counting after a while, but we're talking maybe 20 exotic sports cars in as many minutes. Even a Mercedes Benz SLR Mclaren, of which only a couple thousand were ever made worldwide! (I've seen one before, but in Mercedes' own museum in Stuttgart! (see here) The craziest thing is that these people drive them full out in London traffic!! (well, everyone drives full out in London traffic, but these are in kind of a different performance league than the average traffic!)

I finally tired of car watching and worked my way into Hyde park to watch the sunset. Nothing too interesting. No clouds, just the London smog to add color to it. As it got on towards dark, I headed towards the Victoria Bus station, to continue on my journey up to Scotland. My impressions of London are quite positive. It was a beautiful day, and the city was quite unique and photogenic, and of course there was no shortage of stuff to see. I scraped the top surface of what to do there, but I'm sure there are many, many hidden gems all around the city. The toughest part was getting used to everyone driving on the wrong side of the road! There's no such thing as a standard intersection in London, either, so every time crossing a street I just had to look both ways about three times each to convince myself it was safe!!

UK09: Day -1/2

Today kicked off my second adventure to Europe, ever. This one was much more brief than the last (1 week vs 10... see EUR06 blog), but still quite exciting. The main reason was an academic conference in the town of Loughborough (about 80 miles north of London), but since it makes no difference to the research budget WHEN I fly over there, I bought my ticket 6 days ahead of the conference. At that time I had no idea what I would do, other than figuring something out shouldn't be too hard. Of course by now I had a much better idea, but we'll get to that as it unfolds.

Anyhow, I called this "day -1/2" because I caught an early evening flight out of Ithaca to Philly, from which I had the long-haul hop across the Atlantic. I can't say anything really exciting happened (which is good when traveling on airplanes!) other than some dozing on the flight. But things got a bit more interesting starting the next morning.

Summer... About to begin!

Well, technically the school year ended a month and a half ago, but I've been working like crazy (with a few climbing trips in there) leading up to this point. I have three conferences in the next month. In three different countries no less, although two are the US and Canada. I'm headed out later today for the UK, so check back soon for (hopefully) some decent pictures and a report.

For now, I'll put up a couple of the few pics I've snapped around here in the last month.

Isn't mount Doom over here somewhere? (This is out on the slope - right along my walk to and from campus)

Down near Buttermilk falls, trekking over to the Finger Lakes Trail from my house to backpack overnight.