There’s a moment on Scotland’s west coast where everything just… slows down. It might be when you’re driving past a loch that looks suspiciously like a screensaver. Or when you realise the “road” ahead is basically a polite suggestion with passing places and blind corners. Or maybe it’s when you’re standing on a beach that […]
Author Archives: Two Scots Abroad
I turned up in Belfast expecting a city still defined by its past. What I found instead was a place that has done something genuinely impressive: it has turned that past into something you can actually engage with, rather than just feel awkward around. Titanic Belfast alone would justify the trip. The fact that there […]
Traveling with teenagers is a bit like negotiating with a tiny, sarcastic adult who didn’t ask to be there in the first place. You suggest castles. They suggest WiFi. You suggest museums. They suggest… staying in bed. And yet, somehow, the UK actually pulls this off. There are places where history meets just enough chaos, […]
I turned up to Belfast once with a coat so heavy it could have doubled as body armour. Wore it twice. Spent the rest of the trip in a lightweight waterproof jacket I nearly left at home because I thought it looked a bit sad. Lesson learned, eventually. Belfast’s weather has a personality. It’s not […]
I’ll be honest: before our first trip to Belfast, I had done the kind of obsessive pre-trip research that would embarrass a PhD student. Conflict murals, the Peace Walls, the Troubles, Orange parades. I had basically talked myself into thinking we were heading somewhere genuinely tense. We arrived, walked around the city centre for about […]





