The Cuillin Mountains

This is the second part of a post I wrote a few days ago to share with you guys the experience I undertook last summer. You can catch up on the first part here if you like :)
Although I kind of wish I had started this blog last summer so I could have written about it nearer the time, I feel like a post reflecting on what it was like is probably more interesting.

My mapping partner Abbi and I decided to map in the Isle of Skye for several reasons. Being able to speak the language (sort of), use the good old British pound and the fact we would still be able to use our phones being among them. Although what really sold it to me though was the tales Abbi had told me of a family holiday she had been on there and how beautiful it was.

The process of organizing a 6 week excursion began over 6 months before and we had meetings with our mapping supervisor Lisa and the 5 other mapping pairs who would be joining us in Skye. Lisa advised us on what to expect from Skye and how to prepare. We organized our accommodation by renting two cottages which we miraculously managed to secure for the entire 6 weeks.

Before the trip I spent a ridiculous amount of money on a pair of full grain leather walking boots and an incredibly sexy midge hat as per Lisas advice. Turned out to be good advice and I am glad I listened.

Our final preparation for the Independent Mapping Project was the uni packing our year group off to Anglesey in Wales for a week long field trip in early June. This was an intense trip as we only had a week to understand what the hell was going on in this area. Feeling exhasusted from the trip we headed home to start sorting our lives out before going to Skye.

Driving along.

The next task was we had to make and print off our field slips ourselves. This is not something we had done before and obviously you cannot just print it off onto any old paper. It has to be SPECIAL paper. So Abbi and I drove back to uni to make them and this was also my first test drive of Abbis car which would be our transport to Skye. It took us bloody hours to make these maps but we were reasonably pleased with our efforts considering we had left this until the last minute.

All too soon the day had arrived and Abbi arrived at my house to pick me up. We chucked all my stuff in the car (we took a ridiculous amount of stuff) and off we went. We tried to pretend we were excited and I got used to driving Abbis car which is much more powerful than my own. By sharing the driving we managed to get all the way to Loch Lomand by the end of the day where Abbis lovely parents had booked us into a beautiful hotel with dinner.

Our cute cottage (with HOT TUB).

The next day we continued on our next leg and arrived in Skye by mid afternoon. We eventually located our cottage where we were staying in Elgol with 2 other mapping pairs which was perfect.
Apart from the bed situation as Abbi and I were sharing a double. While we are great friends this is obviously less than ideal.

Our first week was mostly spent messing about locating ourselves within our mapping area and getting used to the crazy roads. Our mapping supervisor Lisa came up to visit us to give us a few key pointers but in truth left us with more questions than before!

Little BASTARDS.

Once Lisa had left we were on our own and we started to get into the rhythm of things. The hardest part was staying motivated as it gets very monotonous. When you are doing the same thing, day in, day out its hard to spring out of bed every morning with enthusiasm. If its pouring with rain (which it probably is) you know you will be out in it all day and after a few hours even the most high tech waterproof gear will leak. You are frantically trying to keep your work dry in your weatherwriter but every time you try to write your wet sleeve smears water all over the page. You decide you hate your life and every decision you have made that has meant you have ended up here. Along with the crappy weather comes the midges. I hate those effing things. Not only are you soaking wet but you are being eaten alive. The highlights of the day for me included lunch and getting back in the car taking my soaking wet boots off.

Standard view: a campervan

All in all it was tough. The conditions were hard. You are walking miles everyday over extremely challenging ground when you are soaked to the bone and sporting a sweaty midge hat. But the place is so heartbreakingly beautiful these days all I want to do is go back. I want to see golden eagles soaring over the Cuillins again and discover secret waterfalls not marked on the map.

Kayaking on Loch Ness (picture stolen from Zoe)

The days off were the highlight of the trip for me. We spent them visiting the Skye Serpenterium, going to Cafes, exploring the local shops, visiting Portree, going to watch How to Train Your Dragon 2 (which will forever make me cry when I hear the music), going out for dinner, heading out on a seal watching trip and going kayaking on Loch Ness. We made the damn most of those days off and I was so lucky to go out there with such lovely people.

Visiting Elgol

On the 4th week my Mum rang me to tell me that she had booked me and Abbi into a local restaurant and paid for our dinner. Abbi and I were do excited and on the Friday of that week we set off looking forward to a nice evening eating food for free. Only when we got there my parents were sat waiting! They had driven all the way from Wiltshire to come see me! I think its the nicest thing anyone has ever done for me and I spent the next day with them showing them around the island. Mum and Dad, I love you so much for that. It meant so much to see you.

The final week was a struggle. Somehow Abbi and I thought it would fly by but every painful second dragged. Even worse we had lots of work still to do but had officially run out of motivation. That final week was the hardest of all. I am still amazed even now that we managed it.

I love this girl so much.

Somehow though we made it and that moment of blissful relief was worth all the stress and hard work. We were finally finished!!! Abbi and I celebrated with an indoor picnic of smoked salmon, baked camembert, kettle chips and lots of Prosecco while hurling all our shit into bags. We headed home the next day after visiting Dunvegan Castle which is a seriously cool place.

I am not sure I ever want to repeat my experience of mapping. But I do want to go back to the Isle of Skye and I would love to visit other parts of Scotland. After living there for 6 weeks it started to feel like home and I actually genuinely miss it. Apart from here. I do not miss our mapping area of Broadford Bay AT ALL.

Broadford Bay. No. Just no.

New year... New Goals

Now I'm not really one for making New Years Resolutions. I never stick to them and that just makes me feel bad about myself. However since I was 14 every year with my sport of Carriage Driving I sit down and make a list of goals of what I hope to achieve each year. This tactic has allowed me to compete for GB so it must be working. In which case, its probably time to apply it to the rest of my life.

1. Be better with my skin care. I started using Clinique skincare back in April and it has made a huge difference to my skin. Over the next year I want to start being more dedicated to my routine and stop being so lazy.The effort is worthwhile and will pay off in years to come.

2. Finish my dissertation. This is a bit of a cheat goal because the deadline for this is the end of January and isn't something I am going to work on for the whole of next year. But this is a project I have been working on for the best part of a year and to finally complete it will be a huge achievement. I can't wait for the day after its done. I'm going to sit in PJs drinking tea and watching Netflix. Its going to be glorious and I'm already fantasizing about that blissful moment of relief.

3. Find a replacement curly hair shampoo. I've been loyal to Naked Bodycare for the past year and I've never been able to fault it. Unfortunately they have gone out of business so now everytime I venture into Boots I find myself leaving with every bottle they had in stock. Obviously this approach is not sustainable for ever so at some point over the next year I am going to have to go through the horror of trying to find something suitable to replace it with. No doubt that will appear on here at some point so keep your eyes peeled for that in the future.

4. Stop being so horrible to myself. I am very bad for talking myself down and telling everyone how bad I am at things. Now clearly I can't be bad at EVERYTHING so this needs to stop because the more you tell yourself things the more you start to believe it. It becomes this awful self perpetuating cycle and its very hard to break. This year I am going to make a concentrated effort to stop being my own worst enemy.

5. Care less about what other people think of me. This is a lifelong goal for me and I think it will probably appear on this list for a few more years yet. Certain events that have happened this year have brought how short life is into very sharp focus for me. Life should not be wasted worrying about other people. Over the past year I have started wearing a lot of lipstick, and I am sure it is not to everyone's liking, but it makes me feel happy so I do it anyway. This blog is another example of me trying to combat this problem that regularly threatens to cripple me. I felt like people would laugh at me if I started a blog and I eventually gathered the courage to do it anyway. Now I wish I had done it ages ago. I make small little baby steps with this everyday, but its important to keep focused on it. Otherwise I slip back into my old ways and that will not make me any happier.

6. Go on an adventure somewhere. I'm not really bothered where or what it is but I want to plan it and just do it. There are few things in life that are more invigorating than doing new things and its a worthwhile use of your money. Half the fun is in deciding what you want to do, or in just waking up and doing something on a whim. So while I have no plans yet, I will definitely be making happen.

7. Try to eat more fruit and veg. I'm not going to start whinging about dieting but I do need to eat a slightly more balanced diet and stop having eating so much junk. This ties in nicely with No. 1 and I'm sure my skin will thank me. I'm not going to give up anything or start being restrictive. Instead as a very picky eater I am going to try and be more inclusive and add some new foods to my repertoire. We'll see how this one goes.

8. Go on more dates. Both with my boyfriend and my friends. As mentioned above doing new things is good for the soul and is proven to forge stronger bonds between people. But aside from that its just plain fun. And I'm keen on anything that adds extra fun to my life :) I've already got a few things planned and I'm so excited for it!

9. Do the Race for life. Again I'm not going to pretend to have unrealistic goals of turning into a super fit gym bunny but I would like to do this in memory of my Grandad whether I run, walk or crawl it I don't care. I want to do it anyway. I think its a worthwhile achievement however you complete it.

10. Be more assertive. This is my big one for the new year. Despite my friends thinking I won't take shit from people I am actually incredibly prone to letting people walk all over me. The problem is I have a hard time standing up to people who are close to me. Yet I have no issues releasing my resting bitch face or scathing sarcasm on mere acquaintances who have mildly annoyed me. I don't want to argue with people or upset them and sometimes I let that be an excuse for allowing them to upset ME instead. This year I want to try to say NO more and start focusing on whats best for me. This might mean some of my friendships will change but I'm starting to realise that if they don't see that my happiness is important then they probably weren't my friend in the first place.

2014: My year

So this year has literally zipped by me. Quite scary really. Probably means I am getting old.
Its been a very busy year that has seen some huge changes for me and not all of them have been good. However I am proud that I have managed to get through what has been a tough year at times.
So here are some of the biggest things that happened to me over the past 12 months.

1. I got really ill. Like really ill. Back in January I had Urosepsis which is where an innocent little bladder infection gets totally out of control and gets into your blood stream causing blood poisoning. This was probably due to stress as it was right in the middle of my January exams and I felt horrific. My temperature was so high I was delirious and I just couldn't eat anything. Luckily some strong antibiotics from the doctors (which also made me feel like shit) got rid of it and I avoided being hospitalized. So yeah, that was me being all dramatic.

2. I went on a lot of field trips this year and I won't pretend to have enjoyed all of them. But I have been lucky enough to travel to some really cool places that I would never have seen otherwise so for that I am grateful. Some of them I would really love the chance to go back and explore again but for fun, and best of all a lot of them were in amazing parts of the UK.

3. I didn't compete in carriage driving at all this year. This is the first time since I was 8 that I have not been out and about on the carriage driving scene. At times I have found it liberating and at other times I have found it heart breaking as I was so disconnected from a sport that has shaped my life so much. The reason I had to take a step back was because of all the field trips I had to go on (looking at you, stupid geology degree) as I just couldn't do both. Now I am back and I can't wait to see what 2015 brings.

4. Back in June my Grandad passed away peacefully in his sleep after fighting a strong battle against cancer. This was a very tough time for all my family and I think we are all sad that we didn't get to spend much time together over the past few years. Grandad, you are sadly missed and we think about you all the time. I hope you are looking down from heaven watching all the madness and mischief we get up to. I now look at life very differently and have a greater appreciation of what really matters to me.

5. I'm not ashamed to admit I've had a bit of a confidence crisis over the past year. I've allowed certain feeling of being inadequate to get the better of me and it's time for that to stop. I've let people walk all over me and push me down and I'm no longer ok with it. Over the past month or so I've been feeling much better about myself and I think thats something to be proud of.

6.  This summer I completed my 5 week Independent Mapping Project which is probably the most challenging thing I've ever done. When my dissertation is finished I will sit down and write a post about it, but for now I will just say it was a huge achievement and I will be relieved when it is all finally handed in.