What? It scans.
First, the basics.
Inverness is cold.
Bloody freezing, in fact, when the wind’s blowing, but it’s OK, because the houses are built for it, and have heating.
At least, that’s what we thought.
Turns out that this place is being run … cheaply, so the heating isn’t turned on all of the time.
Or even most of the time.
Maybe 8 hours total, so the house never really warms up, and it certainly doesn’t stay warm.
To his credit, the owner did bring us an electric oil-fin heater when we complained, so that’s a good thing, and it did help a lot to be be able to make at least the room we were currently in warm.
There’s also no guest kitchen, thought there is a microwave and fridge available, so our plans for Christmas Day food had to be adjusted.
Or so we thought.
The place doesn’t have full-time staff, but does have a live-in student who does cleaning and so on, and who was going to be away for the holidays; They have a system for when people turn up and said student’s not there, involving a code-box by the front door with the key in it, and named cards with room keys taped to them giving directions to the room.
After we let in some other guests one evening a few days into the stay, so that they didn’t have to call the owner to get talked in, he asked whether we’d be interested in a deal; We deal with guests when we’re here, and handle the money & registration forms, in return for access to the staff kitchen while the regular student was away.
We said yes, and it worked out nicely.
It even meant better internet, because we now had access to the room where the WiFi lives.
I’d been considering hostel work as a thing I might like to try, and this was a nice introduction to it.
Plus, it’ll let me tell possible employers/work-for-accommodation traders that I have some experience, and they should therefore give me a job.
So, on to the photos.
Having prodded the options in my online hosting, it seems that there is an API, and that it might be possible to knock something together which could give me a bunch of embedding links at once, or at least would do it without having to get the dratted things one at a time from the online portal, because … that’s getting old. It’s not tolerant of crappy internet connections, and this is a crappy internet connection.
The River Ness, at more or less the edge of the centre of the city.
The guest house lies over the bridge and down the road.
There’s been a lot of rain.
As we got to Inverness a storm was heading for Scotland, and it hit a few days into the stay, over to the west. Thus, we got some strong winds, and some solid blasts of rain, but it was mostly visible in the river rising.
A lot.
This area, on a couple of wee islands in the river, was not normally flooded. The trees, and park bench, sticking out of the water are a subtle clue.
The upstream end of the island was hardened with stone.
Not sure how far down it goes, because, as you can see, it was pretty much at the water level.
Also, that end of the island really looked like the bow of a ship.
A stone ship, heavily laden, making it’s way upriver.The lamp-posts on the island gave it a somewhat All Aboard For Narnia vibe, to be honest.
There was also this; One watercourse crossing another, with an interesting pedestrian bridge for good measure.
We had hail one day, which made it look, for a brief moment, as thought it was snowing.
New Years Eve happened.
I don’t think we were the only residents at that time, but everyone else was out, so it amounted to the same thing.
The bit of Inverness that the guest house is in is bordered by the River Ness on one side, and the Caledonian Canal on the other.
The canal’s a good walking and running route, thanks to the tow-path, and there are points where river & canal are right next to each other, demonstrating that there is one hell of a height difference between the two.
Thus, the locks.
And then there were these things, in the window of a furniture store.