It is about time! I’m now on the Glasgow International Airport Lounge to take my flight up to Orkney. The expected flight time is 1 hour and 30 minutes and we will land in Kirwall Airport.

We will fly a small British Airways Saab 340 airplane operated by Longanair, a small local airline which was bought by British Airways in the mid 90s. For the Brazilians reading this trip report, you should compare that to Nordeste, which was bought by Varig in the early 90s.

About Orkney: It is a set of Islands in the north of Scotland. Most people say it is a very beautiful and peaceful place. I’ve been hearing a lot about the beautiful landscape and the cold weather, even during the summer. I was told to expect rain, even tough that is not going to affect the diving since Scapa Flow (where the wrecks are located) is in sheltered waters, just like a bay.

I should stress to anyone willing to go there how far north it is. If you get Google Earth you would be able to see that Orkney is in the same Latitude as the south of Greenland. The distance between Orkney and Glasgow is the same as Glasgow and London. That means a 9 hour train ride from London to Inverness, where you can either have to take a flight or a ride up to Stromness or Kirkwall (the two biggest ports in the Orkneys) via ferry. By plane you can get flights from all over the Europe (including Heathrow, Stansted and Gatwick) to Glasgow and Edinbourgh. From there you get daily flights (that means ONE a day) to Kirkwall. The only company that operate these flights is Longanair, so if you want an easy ride up to the north be prepared to pay up to £400 for a return ticket.

If you book early you might get a cheaper ticket (£160). I tought that was a good deal since it was a long way up and I didn’t have a ride. The best way to book, as always, is the internet. You can go to http://www.britishairways.com and take a look.

Well, talking about my trip. I came from Kings Cross Rail Station (London) up to Glasgow Central by train. The ride took 7 hours and the train is very comfortable. It even has power sockets and wireless access to the internet, so I could surf all the way up to Glasgow and didn’t get bored. The ticket price is also very reasonable (I paid £23.10 for one-way), but if you get a ticket be sure to reserve a seat beforehand. Buying a last minute ticket without reserving a seat can give you nasty surprise like having to wait until the next train that leaves hourly to Glasgow and Edinburgh.

The trip was very chilled out, and I loved the view of the sea. If you look at the UK map you will see that Glasgow stays on the northwest of London, meaning that the train goes up north (through York) and arrives on the eastern cost of Scotland just before getting to Edinburgh. You can not only see the beautiful fields from the midlands as well as part of the eastern cost, including some small ports from cites as (say name of the cities). A very nice ride if you are not in a rush.

When I arrived in Glasgow I stayed in a friend’s house. Rodrigo is also a student from Brazil doing his LLM in StrathClyde University and was very kind to let me stay in his place, which is in the University Halls of Accomodation during the night. We went out for a beer on a Scottish pub and drank a beer while listening to traditional Scottish music. We met some guys that were working to repair the sidewalk in front of the pub and discovered that they are from Portugal. They set with us and we had a beer. Only in Europe this happens... when would you imagine that the guy that is building the sidewalk will get in the same pub you are and have a beer with you?

They were a bit drunk, of course, but let’s forget about these technicalities and move on because this is not relevant to this trip report. :)

I left Rodrigo’s home about 11:30AM. I’m still very tired and, even tough I had a good night of sleep I woke up very early since the sun is rising about 4:30 AM and setting 21:45. It is a bit odd for me who was brought up near the equator to see this, but that’s how it works: as much as you get close to the poles the sun rises earlier and sets later in summer and rises late and sets earlier in the winter. That’s mean long summer days and shorter winter time… I have to get used to it, since Orkney is pretty much as north as Scotland can get.

I took a cab from High Street to Glasgow International and that costed me £12.50. The distance from Glagsow airport to city center is about 10miles, which made me arrive around noon through the M8. Glasgow is a relatively small town with 600k people. If you take into consideration people that live in the neabouring cities this can go up to a million people. Glasgow is the Scottish Sao Paulo, and Edinburgh, which is the capital, is a little bit smaller. Other interests around here include the Loch Ness lake (imagine how cool would be to dive up there and maybe meet Nessie, the moster?) and the Highlands, which stay up north and is said to be one of the most beautiful places around here. I wanted to go there and understand the story behind (nome do cara do Braveheart), which strangely enough seems not to have the same “hero reputation” that Hollywood pictured on the movie Braveheart.

Glasgow International is a relatively small airport, but it is the busiest of Scotland's three main international airports. Over 40 airlines serve around 80 destinations and, in July 2004, it became the first Scottish airport to handle over one million passengers in a month. My impression was good. Clean, organised and without long cues. Very different from Heathrow! I did my check-in and sat down on the lounge to watch the F1 Race on one of the many plasma TVs that there are available for the passengers around the walls. Rubinho and Massa, of course, were far behind. Nevermind, as Button was not doing well as well.

The other airport around Glasgow is Prestwick. It is very far away (more than 30 miles to the south) and it is very small. The only relevant company I could identify that operates there is Ryanair, which is famous for the £1 flight tickets. You could easily spend more for the ride from Prestwick to Glasgow or Glasgow International than to get up to Prestwick, so I recommend to avoid Ryanair if you want to come up here. Fly to a central airport as this will save you money and time.

Well, I think that’s it for now. My plane is about to leave so it is better to stop here. I’ll write more information to post when I get to Orkney, including about the infrastructure to move around the island and the main ports/entrances.

See ya!

Hi All!

I’m back after a “long winter”… You can read “winter” as my nice adventure of having to attend to 5 MSc. exams in just one week.

I don’t know why, but I really felt extremely stressed. Maybe is the fact that I am not doing anything else but the masters, or just the fact that they were very hard and covered a broad range of the Information Security subject.

Yesterday one of our friends fainted and gave up. She will have to come back next year to resit the exam as she didn’t have any conditions to attend to it. I felt like when I was running the Rio half marathon. The last 3 kilometres I was really exhausted, but I pushed a little bit because I knew how good is the feeling of completing something as hard and as challenging as the course in Royal Holloway.

One of our friends even had champagne waiting for us to celebrate!

After that we went to a beer in Crosslands, one of Royal Holloway’s pubs in Founder’s south quadrangle. It was a nice sunny day and we relaxed sitting down on the grass. As you can see on the pic it is no Rio beach, but it was good enough + the fact that you cannot have a 18th century Victorian castle at the beach… :)

Well, never mind. It’s done and gone and I am now in route to Glasgow, where tomorrow I will catch a flight to Kirkwall (Orkney). YES! I AM GOING TO SCUBA DIVE IN SCAPA FLOW!!!!

I’m so excited about that! I’ve been reading about this place since before I came to England. The nice thing about Scapa Flow is that it was a Royal Navy base in both the first and second word wars. This mean that a lot of ships were sunk in those waters and they are shallow enough so I can scuba dive!

There is also this story about the German High Seas Fleet, which was as big as the Royal Navy fleet in the end of the First World War. The Royal Navy intended to incorporate the captured ships into their fleet, and the German Admiral was not very happy about it. One day, when the British were doing exercise on the North Sea, the admiral ordered the sailors to scuttle the ships. Can you imagine dozens of ships being scuttled on a small lagoon? Diver’s paradise! :)

Of course most of the ships were savaged but 8 of them still remain under and are accessible for divers. The complete story about Scapa Flow and its wrecks can be read here: http://atschool.eduweb.co.uk/jralston/rk/scapa/

I will be staying in a live aboard. I have reserved everything through the Internet and at this time I am not sure about what I am going to find. But I am prepared for everything. As long as they have a power socket for me to plug in the notebook and start working on my project, lot’s of wrecks to dive, food to eat and a bed to sleep I will be more than happy. This is the page of the operator I will be using if any of you is interested: http://www.scapa-flow.co.uk/ . I hope Mr. Invincible is alright... :P

I will be posting more info (like a trip report) as this trip goes on, especially since my notebook was FINALY fixed properly (well… there is a small problem that I found just 1 minute ago, but let’s not talk about it since this topic is really up to give me ulcers). So please watch this space! :D

By the way, I am now in route to Glasgow, where I will take the plane tomorrow to Orkney. I am in the train and I am using wireless internet access. Of course all is unencrypted and I could eavesdrop on which pages that nice blond girl that is sat two seats back is surfing, but I prefer to go talking to her when she goes up for a coffee… One of the things I’ve learned in my like is that geek talk does not impress women very much… :D

So let me go get a coffee now, as I think this might be the time to make a move! ;)

See ya!

Ok, quick update!

After a long winter my laptop is BACK! :D

No time to cheer... Computer Crime exam tomorrow... c you guys!

Daniel