A festival with no-one there!

Really. Because I was up at Rockness on Thursday to check that the Schuh Welly Exchange (more in a mo') was looking alright so, for the first time ever, I got to go to a partially built festival. It lacked atmosphere (duh) but it was kinda fun to be there before it got all manky and muddy and before everything kicked off. Consider this mainly to be a post in pictures.

Festival dressing in Scotland = thin layers for warmth/coolness. Rucksack for your crap and flat boots (wellies are better! I'm fairly sure my boots now have an indelible whiff of cow poo.)

Sunglasses. Cause sometimes the sun shines in Scotland. And sometimes it's bright even when it's cloudy. These were free from work. They were K-Swiss branded but, as I'm not a K-Swiss fan I removed the branding with nail polish remover. Ha!

Even if you're only at a festival for the day, these are essentials.

So do you want to see the festival half built and sans people?

 Great! Here it is...

Empty.

Will the main stage be finished on time!?

Big and indeed, wheely.

The most stunning location, right at the end of Loch Ness. Can you see the Loch Ness Monster?

The view from behind the Schuh Welly Exchange - breath taking!

Building one of the bars - they weren't this posh at festivals when I was younger!

Apparently 'haggis or death' involves competitively eating haggis and, when a horn is sounded, downing a shot of Buckfast. Sounds like something I DON'T want to do when the only facilities are portaloos!

So, by now, you may be wondering (and if not, you really need to start reading the words or having a greater sense of curiosity about random things) what the Schuh Welly Exchange is. In a nutshell, you turn up at the festival in trainers/sandals whatever. You realise it ALWAYS rain at festivals and you're a soggy footed doofus. You take your soggy/dirty/ill advised shoes to the Schuh Welly Exchange and you swap them FOR FREE(!) for a shiny new pair of wellies! No joke. The old shoes go to a charity (the Newlife Foundation) who either re-sell or recycle them, raising money for disabled and terminally ill children in the UK, which means money to a good cause AND virtually no landfill on account of the recycling! Yay! Here's the tent...

And time to go home! I decided to be a train station spotter, rather than a train spotter coming home:

How gorgeous is the station in Pitlochry? So cute!

All of these pictures were taken from my train seat. They're not the best quality but I thought it felt more like a story when they were all shot from the exact same place - no cheating and moving to get a better shot. I think people thought I was weird. Or a tourist. Or both.

Gorgeous evening

The tiny glints of light are from the sun's rays reflected on windows in Edinburgh. The pictures were taken from the other side of the Firth of Forth.

The Forth Road Bridge in the gloaming. The gloaming is old Scots for dusk time.

The bridge from the train. The evening light was just beautiful.

And home! My street in the last of the evening light. By this time it was about 11pm. I love summer.