A Glossary of Scottish Terms

As much as the Scots like visitors, they like to confuse tourists and make them work hard for their pleasure. The simplest way to do it is to call everything by another name - almost always it is the Scottish Gaelic term for the word - but it does take time to sink in. On the contrary, it did give me a sense of excitement as I'd end up thinking that I'm going to see something very special!

Some of the terms that I'll be commonly using in future posts are as follows:

Loch - Lake
Glen - Valley
Strath - A wider valley
Ben - Mountain
Doune - Castle
Blair - I'm not quite sure but as far as I remember, it refers to an area
Trossach - Roughly translated as the bristled country

These are the ones that'll come up the most. If I think of any more, I'll add them here and also explain them wherever I mention them.

The first travelogue coming up in a few hours!

Long time! And back with a half century from the UK

Well, I've been gone a long time and finally I've found, or rather made, some time to write here. For those who don't know (presuming that I haven't lost all my readers anyway), I've just finished a three month training in Livingston, Scotland that is situated 20 miles west of Edinburgh and now I've got about 12 days off in which I'm traveling around the UK.

During the initial 3 months, I managed a couple of visits to Edinburgh, one day trips to Stirling and Glasgow and a two day trip to London. Apart from that, we didn't really have any time to travel. After we finished our course some 4 days ago, I started my travels in earnest and first of all visited the very beautiful Scottish Highlands, and now I am in Oxford and loving it here. Plans are to go to London from here, then to Cornwall and after that, probably to Cambridge or explore more of Edinburgh. It's still undecided.

After constant reminders from mainly Amiya and Misha, I'm actually going around with a writing pad, taking notes as I go around for the benefit of everyone. I'm not yet at a stage where I can think of writing a story from the material I have, but I can definitely blog about it and keep you all happy. I've got loads of interesting stories from the locals, sprinkled with a fair bit of history that you might or might not know and there'll be pieces of pure information at places. I'll try and make it as interesting as possible and break up my trips into smaller stops and anecdotes but bear with me if you start to get bored and comment about it. I'll try and spice it up. Also, I think I can begin to write about it because I've been here for just long enough to get used to think of fries when I read 'chips' on a menu and not of 'crisps'! Other pleasures of being in the UK include pronouncing 'Z' as zed and not zee, and at the end of meal in a restaurant, asking for a bill and not for a check! So much for Americanisms. ;)

Oh and incidentally, this is my 50th blog post here, and though it was a long time coming, it's still welcome to me. :)