I love Scotland

I love Scotland. Edinburgh is great but the rest of the country is great too. We went up to the Highlands yesterday to search for Nessie. It is so beautiful up there. Driving along winding roads between green mountains covered in purple heather, buttercups and foxgloves, lovely streams and waterfalls by the side of the raod. It is just gorgeous.
We went to Loch Ness and traveled up the lock in a boat. It contains more water than the whole of England and Wales put together and is up to 260metres deep in places. It has all sort of fish including really big, strange ones. I am not sure quite what it was I am pointing to in the picture. We started off upstairs but it was too hot and sunny so went went downstairs. I dont know who started this myth about Great Britain being a rainy place. Its been hot and sunny everywhere we have been for the past 2 weeks. The water in the Lock is 17 degrees at the moment, even though it averages 5 degrees. It was pretty but not as pretty as the mountains. They only have 2 places to ski there which aren't very good and you cant get there when it snows because the roads get closed.
The wool industry is not doing well at the moment and they are not bothering to shear the sheep, just the lambs. In the photo, you can see that wool just falls off and lands on the ground. On the bus we heard the driver tell us all the stories about Robert the Bruce and William Wallace. So much violence! He said that Brave Heart is a load of romantic nonsense and is very inacurate. Highlanders have only been wearing kilts like we know them for the last couple of hundred years. They used to wear about 4metres of course woolen fabric which they wrapped around themselves. They used to get branches and grasses and lay them on the material and then pee on them, so that the urine would take the dye out of the plants to amke them more camouflaged. They didn't eat the hairy highland cows called coos but used them as money once a year to buy things such as cloth. They were hunters.
Anyway, I have decided that I really love Scotland. It is magnificent to look at. It is better than England which I still think is beautiful too. And Scottish people have invented so much including the television, the steam engine and pnuematic tyres. We might still be reading the bible in Latin if it wasn't for King James, a Scot. They are really creative and brave and strong, stick up for themselves and are a bit rebellious. They cant cook though. The food is terrible.
This morning we went to the museum. That was really interesting too. I love all this really old history about kings and queens and power plays and rebellion and find it fascinating to see the role of the Church in it all.
We wanted to see Holyrood Palace but the queen is in residence there at the moment so it is closed. Adrian asked the guard to tell Liz that we were in town. She has been having garden parties all week, and she obviously didnt know we were in town or we would have got an invitation.
The train trip back to London was lovely agoin but it took us 3 hours to get home from Kings Cross. Someone had gone under a train so we had to catch 2 buses and a taxi. We had to wait for ages for the bus as there were trainloads of people and only a few crowded buses. The London Undergroun is just the same as Sydney rail. When it works, it is wonderful but when it doesn't it is terrible. Don't know what we will do tomorrow yet. It is our last day in London.