Bonnie Scotland - Day 1 of the tour

Not much time - only ten minutes but I'm going to start anyway while I have wifi access and put up just a few photos of this amazing place.

The flight over was long and boring but fortunately uneventful. The short train ride from Glasgow to Edinburgh got me all excited as I had forgotten just how amazingly green it is here. So different from home - the agricultural landscape, the style of the cottages and barns etc

My friend Paul met me at the central train station in Edinburgh and we just picked up the conversation where we left off about three years ago. He is a good tour guide and we just did a lot of walking as well as have dinner and that was just what I needed after such a long journey and it kept me awake until 10pm.

The tour started the following morning. A motley crew of Aussies, Kiwis, Americans, a French and a Belgian. There are four of us more mature-aged folk and the rest younguns - just 15 of us in all.

Here is the bus taken at our first stop to have a good look at the Forth Bridge. The tour guide Stevie was quite a character  - he reminded me a lot of Rob and Cale Marangon actually.

Here is a photo of the Forth bridge - the largest cantilever bridge in the world. The engineering of the bridge inspired the building of the Eiffel tower subsequently.

The next stop was Dunkeld "fortress of the celts". It is the smallest city in scotland because they got a cathedral because the local priest agreed to bury the mad, bad Alexander Stewart when no-one else would.