Been here 1 year, trip away to Culture City

Goodness, we've been living on Skye for just over a year, it was the 11th Feb the day before my 50th birthday last year when we arrived. We hadn't managed a trip off the island in that year so just before the anniversary of the year we decided to go mad and make a surprise visit back to Yorkshire to see family and a few friends, but also to visit the dentist as that was a task needing doing.

Very weird to book a holiday cottage back home just 10 minutes from where I used to live, in a cottage that I had driven past many times over my years of living in East Yorkshire.

It turned out pretty good, a nice spacious barn conversion which was close to getting to the dentist, family and friends and also pretty important, close to shops for stocking up on all those cheap essentials you can only get by travelling hundreds of miles from Skye and back amongst normal shops.

The first week in Feb when we escaped for this much needed break, my sister was also in the country visiting my parents, this allowed me to rope my sister into keeping the secret of my surprise visit. It was brilliant, I managed to facetime my parents on the friday night before the long journey, get up early on the saturday to make the 11 hour journey and then knock on the door to mum and dads on the saturday evening. The look of surprise and shock and working out how it could possibly be me was a priceless thing to see!

The week kicked off with me and my sister visiting Hull, our City of Culture this year and we visited many of the old haunts from our youth which have been given new leases of life as old warehouses and buildings are being turned into cultural hot spots and groovy spaces in the city.

My photos are mainly in the old town area around the marina, fruit market and dock side.

 Special mention to Studio ten and a half, long gone now but a place where I started off my craft selling career. I used to make handmade cards in about 1982/83 which I sold here, the sign is still there, a ceramic one permanently built into the fabric of the building. They also had one of the first wholefood cafes above this gallery. a very groovy hangout for the creatives of Hull.

Here is the iconic 3 ships mural which lives above the old BHS shop and is currently in debate as to will it stay or will it be pulled down, lets hope the mosaic mural is saved.

Another favourite hangout of mine as a teenager, Hepworths Arcade, filled with weird little shops, Dinsdales joke & trick shop the place to spend your pocket money on silly things, I seem to remember buying lots of little packs of sneezing powder (still there), Beasleys alternative clothing (still there) and some fusty musty second hand clothes shops where myself and my best friend would buy our very trendy over coats (long tweed coats that old people deposited) for college!

 In the wonderfully named Land of Green Ginger area we have this quaint building and Englands smallest window.

A photo taken in the old market place which is a view I turned into a pastel picture 30 odd years ago at school.

And lastly in Hull, something new, a piece of sculpture called the Blade, a huge wind turbine blade manufactured in Hull and controvertially installed at great cost by having to remove traffic lights and things to get it into position. Quite a spectacle though, it looked a bit gloomy the day I saw it but I hear on a bright sunny day the reflections are quite superb.

I think that is City of Culture 2017 done.

My week progressed with a dental visit and then can you believe it, the day after I'd been to the dentist I went and broke a tooth off eating a toffee! What a nuisance as my dentist only operates 3 days a week, when I rang them with a plea for help my dentist had gone off sick. Complete panic on my part wanting this sorting before having to go back to Scotland with a broken tooth. Anyway the receptionist fortunately got me an emergency appointment at another dentist in Hornsea, cost a fortune just for one toffee!

I tried taking it easy with food for the rest of the week but of course we had to visit our favourite coffee shops in York and then another couple of places for a cake, it would be a shame not to as we can't do this sort of thing in Skye.

The green cake above is fig and pistachio cheesecake with edible flowers, it was lovely!


I made fleeting visits to Bridlington and Driffield, mainly to visit bargain shops, Boyes, Yorkshire Trader, factory outlets, Lidl, Aldi, Morrisons oh wow it was great to find a choice in veggies and to stock up on some cheap supplies, absolute heaven.


Also made it to Ikea in Leeds, had a list of stuff which seemed to get added to once we saw all the fabulous things not on the list! Started to get a bit worried if all the purchases would stack in to the car for the journey back. It was potentially going to be a hairy ride back as the car dashboard was sporting 3 warning lights which kept coming on and off. Possibly faulty wiring, possibly a problem but it would have to wait.

This is the car being rammed with all our stash.

Well it certainly was a good week seeing family, getting to catch up with a couple of old friends and buying much needed supplies. Sadly there wasn't enough time to relax or feel quite like a holiday or do everything or go everywhere but hopefully it won't be a year until the next time.

These are a couple of wintry shots driving back through Scotland.