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I was very honoured to be selected as part of the panel for the 2022 Scottish Field Whisky Challenge which took place on 29th July 2022.

This year’s challenge entailed the blind tasting of 38 whiskies. After introductions the morning started with a knock out tasting to limit the number of whiskies for the afternoon tasting. It was lovely sharing tasting notes with so many real whisky aficionados, which truly enhanced the experience. It was also quite difficult to “spit” some of these amazing whiskies but everyone wanted to keep a clear head to write the tasting notes in the afternoon.

Scottish Field provided a lovely lunch so we all felt sober enough to face the afternoon tasting with detailed tasting notes and ratings to be decided.

It was a glorious summer day in Edinburgh so after we had all handed in our ratings and tasting notes, we ventured out to enjoy the sunshine and cocktails before we said our goodbyes and headed home.

I still have no idea which whiskies I was allowed to sample and await that revelation with great exitement.

The entire experience will be rounded up with the awards dinner which will also be hosted in the Sharaton on 28th of October 2022. Surely, more whisky to look forward to!

Scotland has in excess of 3000 castles, many can be visited and I will feature a few of my recent visits and of course all time favourites, such as Stirling or Ediburgh or Eilen Dunan Castle.

Cawdor Castle is privately owned and very well maintained. It is a true pleasure to visit. Be my guest and view these lovely insights:

Without thinking I pressed the update buttons for WordPress and the Word Theme which resulted in a critical error on the website. Luckily, it still displayed the landing page but that was about all the functionality it had.

My sincere apologies to anyone who tried to look something up. These things never happen at a good time and as I was quite busy it took a while to be rectified and actually only happened because of the most patient person in the world: Robert from DotScot. Thank you, thank you, thank you!

I was on tours two days in a row; day one a wee tour from a cruise ship and up to MacAllan whisky distillery the following day. This is such a privilege and such a rewarding job: you meet new and interesting people every day, you still discover new things in beautiful Scotland and most of all you always learn. It is a never ending joy.

MacAllan is currently only open to the public on the weekends and provides private tours during the week, which last about three hours. My guests took five hours so it must have been good.

You are never short of things to do in Speyside, even if whisky is not you main theme I may add. While my guests were looked after by MacAllan I visited the The Cooperage, Aberlour Whisky Distillery and Glenlivet Whisky Distillery, went for a walk outside Aberlour and ended up have the most amazing Thai lunch at The Croft Inn, which I very highly recommend!

As stated earlier in this blog I had the privilege to participate in the Creative Mindful Retreat hosted by Visualising Scotland, Rebecca on the Wing & and Mindful Routes.

This wonderful retreat included one day on your bike, which was a true pleasure. Back home I went on a 14 mile walk for the Siobhan Trust followed by a day tour down to Kelso which was blessed by wonderful weather and customers.

Just before the season begins for real my usual mode of transport, the four wheeled Viano, required some TLC, so the aircon got serviced on Monday, it had a valet on Tuesday and has since been away to get the paintwork tidied up.

The garage who serviced the air conditioning kindly provided me with a courtesy car

It was very weird sitting so low to the ground and felt a little retro too. I went to investigate Linlithgow a little on what turned out to be a rather rainy day.

The car was finished in time for me to get back to Cupar to teach my yoga class.

The day the car got a valet while I took my bike to teach two yoga classes which let me cycle 15 miles. On Wednesday I loaded the bike into the Viano to dropped the car off at the paint shop in Dundee and cycled 13 miles back along the coastal path.

I had to have an ice cream break since the weather was so stunning. While the Viano was at the paint shop I got on my bike another two days and summed up 60 miles of cycling for the week.

It is my birthday today so I filled it with yoga and some pony riding. Normal Starfish Travel tour guiding duties will resume as of tomorrow

3rd time lucky and not only that we were presented with stunningly good weather to conduct the 14 mile walk from Tentsmuir Forest all the back to Siobhan’s residence, Birkhill Castle. There was also the choice to opt for a 4 mile version as well as a meander through Birkhill’s garden.

I had a leisurely start at 10 am and had the company of Lucazs and Fran. We took an extended lunch break with cheese, crackers and port and helped to clean up and take the tent down.

We only returned to Birkhill Castle at around 5pm and were welcomed with BBQ food and more port.

The walk had good attendance and hopefully will have raised plenty of future funds for all the good the Siobhan’s Trust does.

Kim Grant from Visualising Scotland, Rebecca Gibson from Rebecca on the Wing and Jen Price from Mindful Routes organised the perfect retreat at Victoria’s The Loft, which was a truly perfect location for our intentions.

Kim is mostly involved in creative photography but is an equally talented writer. She lead several amazing walks along the coast line inviting all of us to explore our creativity in taking photos as well as encouraging us to turn our focus to the little things, notice the colours changing, finding an object which would bind our minds and engage in some creative writing. Additionally she is outstanding in providing technical knowledge and inspiring us to explore different technics.

Kim is also extremely talented in being in the right place at the right time. On our first evening we were privileged to observe some dolphins, which really is a thrilling experience.

Rebecca is a wildlife author by profession and an nature lover by passion. She possesses inner peace and calmness in conjunction with her exhuberance for anything living. Sharing time with her will sharpen your awareness, enhance your learning and most of all will enable you to notice things you may have overlooked all your life. Did you ever asked yourself how a fulmer flies or how a dipper sounds if he is upset (or in our case needs some food)?

Jen is a personal development coach, a breathwork teacher and mountainbike coach. All of which she incorporated into our retreat and invited us to “risky play builds resilience” on a mountainbike experience. It was a fun day on the bike and everybody did it.

Our four day retreat was over way tooquickly, everything flowed, there no pressure to particpate and the various activities complimented each other, not to mention that everyone participating was a true pleasure to be with.

Thank you all!

With some luck there will be another retreat end of Septmeber 2022. I cannot wait

with Alexandra Hoadley, Conservation Project Officer for Fife Coast and Countryside Trust, and Kirsty Strachan, Community Development Worker (Gaelic) at Fife Council

Today I had the opportunity to join the Gaelic and Wildlife Walk in Cupar, This was my second walk and I did enjoy it just as much as the first one. We had warm temperatures and bright sunshine (both thinks we obviously always have in Scotland). Both Alexandra and Kirsty are fabulous story tellers, immensely engaging and super knowledgable.

The name Cupar stems from pre-pititsh times and mean the coming together as Cupar is the place where the two rivers, the Eden and the Landy Burn, come together.

We had the opportunity to learn a bit on meandering rivers since we were walking alongside one, which in places was restricted from meandering.

Alexandra providing insides on many native trees, such as the Scot Pine and you will have to forgive me for not remembering the Latin name. I do, hoever, remember that it can produce 3000 cones a year and is regarded as a blessed tree, used as way marker and that people in fishing villages used its roots as candles.

Somehow the Capercaille came into the conversation and we learned that it means the wee horse of the forest and if you ever heard one of those birds they do make sounds like a wee Shetland pony cantering through the woods.

The Ash tree is regarded as the most blessed tree, the tree of life and can turn its entire crown toward the sun.

The cailleach bheag is the crested tit in English, however cailleach in Gaelic means old woman (or witch) and bheag is small and perhaps the song of the cailleach bheag/crested tit does sound a little like old women chattering?

I massively enjoyed our donder across Cupar Park and will hopefully join the next one too.

Tomorrow at 1.30 pm at Waid Academy in Anstruther there is a talk on place names

It is World”s Sleep Day on Friday!

Very few of us sleep enough because most people are leading rather hectic lives. What I certainly did not know is the impact this can have.

Years back I worked nightshifts for my partner’s taxi company and had tentatively started Starfish Travel offering tourists bespoke tours all over Scotland. That resulted in working several nightshifts, going on a day time tour and then returning to nightshifts.

It is common knowledge that nightshifts are not particularily healthy as they interfere with your bio rhythm and how you body reacts to sunlight.

If I was vaguely aware of this I ignored it and carried on switching between day and night shifts. I began to notice that I started to not sleep well during the few hours I did have for sleeping I lay awake worrying about oversleeping, not hearing the alarm clock going off.

This carried on for quite some time and I lost a lot of weight and worse still all interest in anything else in life. I was permanently way too tired to do anything. I also felt physically a lot weaker and it so coincided that my childhood asthma re-appeared as well.

You may think this is easily rectified ; just go and sleep. This is, however, not what happened in my case. I felt worse and even began to loose coginitve abilities. I would forget things and quite often struggled to even make the simpletest calculation. It effected me emotionally I mostly felt nothing. It affected how I interacted with people all the while just feeing too tired for life.

I went on a tour with customers over several days and began to feel quite normal after my first night’s good sleep in months. It happened again when I went for a MBA refresher course. Sadly, it did not seem to click in my head. I was strangely imprisoned in the world of little sleep.

I came across Matthew Walker’s book “Why we sleep” and it absolutely changed my life. While reading it I decided to try to sleep regular hours and preferrably at least seven of those for two weeks. Within days my memory, my mood, my health improved and I have not worked a nightshift since.

Instead I took up yoga to deal with my asthma and lack of general movement. I have meanhile qualified as a yoga teacher. I still ocassionally drive my taxi, but I have learned to look after myself in mind, body and soul and all of thanks to Matthew Wakers amazing reseach. Read his book or look him up on Youtube

The new Johnny Walker Experience in Edinburgh is what you expect: very American, nice and shinny!

I went to explore it with a seasoned whisky lover and friend. We walked in and it did feel like entering “the Staates”, very posh ambiente with a glittery feel to it.

We were greated by a very friendly member of staff, who sadly failed at my first question. I asked if the had the Diageo special releases (which I first encountered at Dalwhinnie Distillery), he replied no and I did find them later in the shop and my friend even got to try them.

Our second question was if there was availability to have lunch in the 1820 Rooftop Bar. A phonecall was made, we were accompanied to the impressive elevators and re-assured that we would be welcomed by another member of staff when reaching the rooftop.

We got there to an empty space and made our own way to the bar where we spent a few minutes feeling out of place. Eventually one member of staff approached us and lead us to a table.

It is a stunning place this Rooftop Bar, very stylish, but that resulted in not the most comfortable seats. We ordered drinks. I had orange juice which was fine and my friend opted for red wine which he found dissapointing. Fresh bread was brought to our table, which was amazing and we did get exited to see what the food would be like.

When it arrived it was a real dissapointment it looked as if it had spent hours under a heatlamp. It really was not appetising at all. The actual tase was not too bad. I pressume the name gives it away it is a bar rather then restaurant.

We skipped desert on the grounds, but the cappuchinos were nice. We took a wee walk around the terrace which offers stunning views over Edinburgh.

On the ground floor my friend was invited to taste some whiskies (I was driving), which was a nice experience and we ended up buying some whiskies as well.

So, overall I would say it is probably what you expect I personally enjoyed roaming around Edinburgh’s many whisky shops more and regarding bringing my guests/customers to Johnny Walker? Not for food and I would rather opt for the two Scottish Malt Whiskies Society (SMWS) Experiences in Edinburgh, the one in Queen Street or the Vaults, in Leith.

In saying all this I still need to experience one of their tours.

‘Reflections – the Light & Life of John Henry Lorimer’, City Art Centre, Edinburgh

I have mentioned Kellie Castle elsewhere on this website more than once. Pre-pandemic I did volunteer at Kellie Castle as a room or tour guide. John Henry Lorimer came to Kellie as a young man and the place captured him and influenced his art.

I could go on what positive influence Kellie Castle, my fellow volnuteers and NTS staff has had on me. Instead I would suggest to you to go to the John Henry Lorimer exhibition at the City Art Centre and experience John Henry’s, or JH as the Lorimer family called him, work in the context of place, identity, femininity, family & home.

If JH captivates your soul as much as he has hold of mine I strongly recommend your next step to be a visit at Kellie Castle. Even though JH’s paintings date back to pre 1936 once you enter Kellie you will see much of what has inspired this amazing artist.

The NTS provided volunteers with the privilege to be guided through the exhibition by Charlotte Lorimer, who co-curated this truly amazing reflection on light & life of JH Lorimer…..

Charlotte is also responsible for Upward and Onward, where you can find out more about the various talents the Lorimers produced

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