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Beach day :)

We enjoyed again perfect Scottish weather (warm sunshine and a lovely refreshing breeze) and found a great beach for long walks. Bathing was no option due to cold water and a bloom of lion’s mane jellyfishes. Really odd to look at such somehow immensely beautiful and then again also really ugly fascinating creatures, some looked like huge brains melting in the sunshine 😉

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New feature – Guestbook

We got already over 100 comments on our blog, amazing. To make it easier to for the next 100 we implemented a guestbook feature inclusive emojis 🙂 All existing comments were transfered into it. You will find the guestbook entries and the link to enter a new entry just on the right side (or at the bottom for the mobil version). Because of the automatic spam filtering we also get rid of using captcha, yippieh. It’s now also easier to subscribe, you will find the widget on the right side.

Watch out the new posibility and tell us how you like it …

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The Simple Pleasure of being in Nature and (of course) … A little Ode to Heather 3

Even after so many weeks we still don’t have enough of admiring the wonderful Scottish nature and also not of gazing at the blooming heather everywhere.

It’s so peaceful and tranquil when you go for a walk and nearly see no other people… sunshine warms your skin, a soft and refreshing breeze strokes your hair, a lovely river gurgles in the distance, bumblebees fly from one flower to the next and look so incredibly fluffy … what else do you need to be happy? 😀

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What a Royal Surprise ;)

Driving through the Cairngorms today we saw a sign ‘Glen Isla Highland Games 23th August’ and off we went following this sign into nowhereland (it seemed), no cities around, just meadows and hills … and just inbetween: the Games. But we were not the only ones who seemingly had this idea, Prince Charles seemed to have the same one and surprised all the people at the games with his royal appearance 😉

It all seemed so easy going, just one security guy accompanying him when he said hello to the folks, smiled for the photos taken by the parents, who wanted to have a picture from him with their daughter or son. And Prince Charles seemed like a nice guy you would really enjoy having a cup of tea with 😀

And one picture for the Highlands feeling 😀

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Dunnottar Castle – historical Scotland meets GoT

Dunnottar Castle is a very important historical place for Scotland and it still provides its power.

You can feel it in the sourounding…

…and see it in the beautiful nature

We are pretty sure G.R.R.Martin got some of his ideas for GoT from here

  • Dragonstone
  • The Eyrie
  • A dragon egg
  • King‘s Landing cave
  • Red Keep back entry

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World Drifting & Zen

World drifting is for us like practising Zen. Always a kind of letting go of fix plans and thought patterns. If we want to plan ahead, especially for the colder winter months where staying overnight in DumbleBee is not possible, we just do it (so we are booked out as house & pet sitters till end of April next year). Otherwise we mostly don’t plan our days … we drift through the day, do what needs to be done or what comes to our minds. This freedom of living is what we really enjoy 🙂

Being a world drifter for us also doesn’t mean that we drive or fly through the world all the time. It means more like that the whole world is our home and we like to drift through it. ‘… off to see the world’ means macro and micro viewing for us.

Never knowing what will come or happen next. Being open to what life offers us every moment, good or bad (surely we have some tough moments, too,!). Don’t clingging to any expectations we may have of whatever (if possible). And trusting life deeply. That’s our day to day life style.

We, for example, don’t know how long we will be house & pet sitters. As our sits for the next 6 months are in the UK, even Brexit may affect us somehow. And confirmed sits are also getting cancelled or changed by the house owners or emergency sits pop up – nothing of it is written on contract papers ^^ And that’s what we love, too. Having plans, but staying open to unexpected changes every second 🙂

As a relaxation therapist I got to know and deeply felt connected to the Zen way of life. So world drifting is also something like our kind of living a Zen life. Again and again it is a letting go of what we thought before (our fictive barriers in mind), how we ought to be or not, how others may think about us and what we think of others. We now encounter so many different people with completely different life styles, so amazing! Who would judge what is right and what is wrong? We live at people’s houses, which could not be more different: from very rural and simple to very exquisite with hot tub and mega tv. Also the pets are completely different.

Then again we live in a very simple camper van, don’t have a toilet or shower and drive through the country to find a good place to stay for the night. Completely different kind of life again.

All of this is what we enjoy so much: The beautiful diversity of life! You don’t even have to drive in different countries to wonder about all the endless variety how life is lived and perceived.

What’s also very interesting for us: nothing of all the staff we use in the houses we sit belongs to us! We enjoy it when we have it, we take care of it, but it’s not ours. Especially for me, as being the house wife or carer before, a very interesting feeling and I often realize old thoughts, like: it would feel more comfortable and easier, if the things belonged to me and if something gets broken, it would be my stuff and not from somebody else … the moment I realize such a thought I often have a quiet laugh about how mind is working. I just let these thoughts pass by and at once I am at peace again and enjoy everything I touch with all my senses. This sudden feeling of awkwardness was just a thought and I realize that being not the owner of all these house interiors helps me to stay attentive with every part of it. Why would I need to be the owner of a thing, a cup for example, to enjoy it? To really ‘be’ with a cup with my whole attention is what makes it special in this moment, not that I own it! So being not the owner also helps me not getting unconscious when I use things. Same with the pets, I don’t need to own them to love them and take the best care of them that I can offer.

Another topic of what world drifting and Zen for me have in common is: Letting go of how I think life should be or people should live their lives (e.g. not so stressed or busy). All these different countries, houses, pets and life styles again and again show me in what unbelievable different ways life expresses itself. No matter, if you see people in Asia and how they live and behave or in Europe: it’s all this ONE life in endless diversity playing it’s own kind of game. And we are both so thankful for our part in it 🙂

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Next lesson learned ;)

Yes, we are past 50 now, but we still have to learn a lot ^^ After our midges experience we drove up to the most Northern part of Scotland (as an app told us there would be less midges there). And yes, nearly no midges! What a relief!!! So we had quite a good sleep in Dumblebee (maybe a little too wet and cold at night, but ok) near Thurso at the sea.

Unfortunately we parked DumbleBee in quite wet grass, which we did not notice, and had no chance of getting out of that grass in the morning. After many many useless attempts (with all kinds of stuff we found to support DumbleBee) a very kind Scottish guy with a van helped us out of the deep dip we were in by then. Yes, definitely: Next lesson learned 😉

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Driving the Northern Highlands

Even with the midges being so annoying, we still LOVE the Highlands! Today we drove from Ullapool to the Northern top, Thurso. And again it was sun, rain, mist, fog and even thunder and lightening that accompanied us. Mystical and wonderful 😀

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Life at it’s worst :(

We learned a very important lesson today: don’t camp in the Highlands in August, especially when it’s raining and there is no wind!!!

Nearly got crazy this night and morning as millions of midges first flew outside of our van and until morning had made it to the inside … better not imagine how this may feel, cause it’s even worse! We really got mad this morning with all these nasty bites and had to drive about 30 min in this midge invested car to get to the next town and buy some ‘Kill all insects’ spray to get DumbleBee clean again. Horror and definitely something we won’t do again! The picture were taken at sunset when we thought the midges would vanish until morning … what a mistake!

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Life at it’s best :)

Second time we have been invited for a delicious dinner from Louise & Owen and had a lot of really interesting talks. We could even stay the night in their beautiful cabin, do some washing and to top all of this: the delicious cups of coffee from Owen!!!

We are so much looking forward to meeting both again, at the latest beginning of February next year, when we do our 3 months house & pet sit for them. So good to know that people like Louise and Owen exist and care and do their brave part of making the world a more peaceful and better place.

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House & pet sit in the middle of a forrest

Actually we had some plans to travel to the Orkney Islands this week, but as we decided to drift through life and let life lead us, we spontaneously ended up for a last minute kind of ’emergency’ house sit in Rafford (near Forres). And here we are: cuddling two pets and walking through the woods, instead of driving to the North (which will surely wait for us) 🙂