I get around…

No news or updates this time around, but I figured it might be an idea to map out where I’ve been on my travels out and about in Scotland (specifically those bits when I leave my home town, Edinburgh).

This is just a ton of links to previous blog posts featuring places you might be interested in if you ever visit. (Or at least, the places I figured would provide a bit of variety while I was prancing about dressed up!) The links (below the map) are provided in the order they were published.

1: Happy Bunny (Dunbar)

2: The Swimsuit Edition and
The Swimsuit Edition II: Boobwatch (Belhaven beach)

3: Fife, The Universe, and Everything (Crail, St Andrews, Cellardyke lido, and Aberdour railway station)

4: Girly road trip: A Stab At St Abbs (St Abbs, Alnwick, and Scottish Border)

5: Girly road trip: By Jupiter! (Jupiter Artland)

6: Feelin’ Hot Hot Hot (Prestonpans)

7: Scotland, I Am In You (Wick, John O’Groats, Loch Fleet, Loch Ness, and Dalwhinnie Distillery)

8: Strange New Worlds (Dundee, Balmedie Beach, Daviot Stone Circle, and Tarlair lido)

9: Strange New Worlds: Get Tae F…alkirk (Falkirk Wheel, and The Kelpies)

10: Dumbarton Rocks? (Dumbarton Castle)

11: Getting Over The Ups and Downs (Pentland Hills)

12: What’s In For You At Inverewe (Corrieshalloch Gorge, Inverewe Botanical Gardens, and Loch Maree)

13: Scotland’s Tropics: Epic Pics (Glasgow, Ailsa Craig, Logan Botanical Gardens, Mull of Galloway, and Castle Kennedy)

14: Three Days Of Twist-ing (Kingussie, and Loch Morlich)

15: Girly road trip: Need For Mead (Lindisfarne Island)

16: Girly road trip: Hello Mondo Lomond Hills (Bunnet Stane, Lomond Hills)

17: Forced Feminisation Photos (Hillend Ski Centre, and North Berwick)
and Getting Old Rocks! (Yellowcraig Beach, North Berwick)

18: Girly road trip: Stirling Work (South Queensferry, and Stirling)

19: Girly road trip: Mind The Gap (Hadrian’s Wall, Sycamore Gap, and Vindolanda)

20: Girly road trip: Benmore Gardens

21: Girly road trip: Dawyck Gardens

22: One last, epic, Scottish girly day trip (Eilean Donan Castle, Glenfinnan Viaduct, and Glencoe)

I’ve also been to other places that didn’t really merit their own write-up, but you can find their photos lurking in the gallery:

a: Loch Lomond

b: Loch Chon

c: National Museum Of Flight, East Fortune

d: Newcastle Upon Tyne

Whenever I do more trips around the country, I’ll update the map… 🙂

One last, epic, Scottish girly day trip

There are only so many interesting places I can get to in a day trip, and most of them I’ve already visited. At some point, it’s inevitable that I’d come to the end of my list of the furthest-away ones, and well, here we are… (any more will have to be much closer to home!).

In Twist-mode, the ‘day’ has to include time to get the warpaint and structural engineering sorted out, and then the driving, which takes up several hours before we get anywhere. It’s tiring, ya know?

About time I got a photo in traditional Scottish weather…

This time I wanted to conquer a few bits of the Highlands I hadn’t managed before: Eilean Donan Castle, Glenfinnan Viaduct, Glencoe, and the Famous Grouse statue outside Glenturret Distillery. Sadly, the last of these, the Famous Grouse, had been removed when they decided to use a different malt whisky as part of its blend (I located it in an uninspiring industrial estate, a far cry from the leafy idyll at Glenturret)…

There can be only one! (It’s amazing the effect Photoshop has on an umbrella…)

Eilean Donan is famous from films like Highlander or The World Is Not Enough. The old mediaeval castle was destroyed by the Royal Navy in the 18th century during the Jacobite rebellions, and rebuilt in the 20th century with the bridge added. You can see why it crops up in films from time to time: it’s surrounded by water and hills and from certain angles seems timeless.

Come on Eilean…

It’s usually a stopping off point for people visiting the isle of Skye, but my next destination was 40km due south, but a lot, lot longer by road. We were also racing against time to get there: at 10.30am a steam train crosses Glenfinnan Viaduct. Yes, it’s also known as “the Harry Potter train”, but I gotta tell ya: I could grunt and strain until my face went purple and veins throbbed on my forehead, but I will never give even the tiniest, mouse-sized shit about Harry Potter… (nor have I ever).

I was the only person on this hillside not looking at the train.

As expected, it was mobbed with tourists from around the world, making it exceedingly tricky trying to find a spot to set up the camera with a view of me and the viaduct, but with nobody else in the shot. Managed it though!

We knew before starting the journey that this would be a day of long drives, and short intervals of leaping out of the car to take a few photos before driving on again. It wasn’t restful, and we didn’t really have time to appreciate the surroundings (another time, in another guise, perhaps). It was great for photos, but not so much as a journey nor a day out!

Glencoe: making myself centre of attention?

The last stop was Glencoe, and by this point it was the middle of the day and all the scenic car parks were overflowing. If you ever want to come to this part of Scotland, make sure you get here early (or off-season). We drove along, hoping to find even the most absurdly small spot to park, as one grand vista after another rolled by. Finally, we found one, with deep ruts, pot-holes, and puddles. It would do.

And then two coaches full of Italian tourists rolled up and disgorged their passengers. In an instant, most of the vantage points were gone!

I managed to find a gap between two badly-parked cars where we could get a couple of decent angles without anyone else in the way. And it was so hectic, I didn’t have time to put my boots on (not that most people would notice or care!) What the hell – sometimes the only thing that matters is the end result, and with the dramatic scenery of Glencoe behind me, I call that a good result!

End with a flourish!

Girly road trip: Stirling work

Another set of photos from a year or two back – which kinda help me show how I got to the stage of making these photo journeys more efficient. It isn’t just a case of finding a place and thinking “I want to take photos there!”, it’s also about seeing what stopping-off points I can find on the way.

Pretty, thin, and graceful: that bridge is everything I aspire to be. (Apart from the bit about traffic running over me, obviously…)

I was looking for reasonably well-known places in Scotland I hadn’t been before, which were attainable in a day or morning (and ideally included some of those sunrise/golden hour lighting conditions). Heading north meant I could update my Forth Bridge photo, first doing a second pic featuring the third bridge over the Forth estuary…

Och, hills! Ochil Hills! Och!

I figured it was time to show Stirling a bit of love, and looked around for locations (especially less-obvious ones) where I could get views of the scenery (it used to be Scotland’s capital and a major crossing point over the river Forth). One of the unlikely spots I found was an industrial estate car park with great views of the Ochil Hills. Pan the camera a few degrees away and you end up with a dismal concrete office.

Me with an impressive erection. …what?! It’s not *mine*! Jesus, you people. It’s named after a guy called… *checks notes* …Willy.

Stirling’s two big attractions (your mileage may vary of course) are the castle and the Wallace Monument. Trouble is, they’re more recognisable at a distance – the best shots of the monument come from a long lens at the castle car park. So the next best thing I could find was parking at the entrance to a field on the A91 with cars whizzing past on their way to Bannockburn.

Stirling stuff, this… (NB, this is combined from two photos to get me and the castle in focus.)

I found the best place for a view of the castle – unobstructed by the town itself – was in Cambuskenneth, situated on a long spur forcing the Forth on a meandering detour. I’d hate to think what the flood insurance is like here.

No idea why I struck this pose, but it’s different.

Cambuskenneth Abbey is largely in ruins – only the foundations and the bell tower remain – at the same time British religion took its cues from Henry VIII’s family values, it fell into disuse and its stones ended up being used to pad out the buildings around the castle instead.

Honestly, the only reason you’d visit is to get a decent photo of the castle and that’s it! But I got the shots I was after, and an hour later I was back home. Not bad for a quick morning’s work!

Inspired by the Divine Presence, or yawning? You decide!*
*(yawning.)

Girly road trip: hello mondo Lomond Hills

Found these photos lurking in my archives (from pre-pandemic days in 2019 – or ‘The Before Times’ if I want to be dramatic about it). This is from my hunt to find striking or bizarre places to take photos, and I found one halfway up a hillside in Fife (or the ‘Kingdom of Fife’, for those Fifers who want to be dramatic about it).

Of course it’s not a natural pose – not with that smile, anyway…

The main draw was a feature called the “Bunnet Stane” (Bonnet Stone), a mushroom-shaped outrcrop of rock on the north-western bit of Lomond Hills. Underneath is a hollowed-out cave known as the Maiden’s Bower with all sorts of romaticised bullshit about it being the home of a young, fair lassie who ran away from home in days of yore, but (more plausibly) was a shelter for a local shepherd in the 19th century.

That’s a map of the Pentland Hills. I’m in Lomond Hills. No wonder I’m lost.

Once you’ve seen it, photographed it, and walked around it… there isn’t much more to add. It’s a weird rock in the middle of nowhere. And there’s a limited number of angles to take photos where it looks good.

The Bonnet Stone is a peculiar feature. I’ve kept my own peculiar feature tucked safely out of sight.

I thought I’d figured out the best time and date to go for sunrise photos (I prefer doing these shoots in the mornings before the crowds of hillwalkers descend), but alas it remained in shadow (and if you ever want to sound like a portentous fantasy character, the words “alas it remained in shadow” will do nicely).

Contrived? Set up? Whatever could you mean?

Never mind – the surrounding scenery consisted of rolling farmland in early morning sunshine, and I took the opportunity to prance about in clothes I hadn’t worn for a few years and was thoroughly relieved I could still squeeze into. The only difficulty was trying to smile with my eyes open whilst looking towards the sun.

Slender, graceful, shiny, modern… I love wind farms.

Compared with the previous set of photos I’d done in this outfit, I now had a better camera and a proper zoom lens, so we could attempt more sophisticated shots. On a personal level, I’ve found it interesting comparing the older shoots with the newer ones – the desire to find distinctive (and quiet) locations has always been there, but the difference in the quality of the photos is like night and day.

Hey, tits! I’m not a twitcher, though. Can’t jiggle ’em at all, truth be told…

Stick to the path?

I don’t think I’d ever run out of places to go to for these photos. The limiting factor is inspiration: what to dress up as? What to do? How easily can it be done? And is it new, or am I just repeating something I’ve done before? I think it comes and goes in waves.

The main thing is to end up with a collection of photos and memories I can look back at and be happy with. The other thing, of course, is to keep making photos and memories…

It’s important to maintain a sense of stile…

Strange new worlds 2: morning star

First thing in the morning is a great time for photography for all sorts of reasons. For one thing, there’s the ‘golden hour’ after sunrise when the light is just perfect. For another, there are fewer people around to stare at you prancing about in a silver catsuit.

I’ve written previously about cosplaying as a retro astronaut, and there are a whole bunch of places where I could – with minimal photoshopping – make places in Scotland look like they were on another planet. I’m pretty sure the people who witnessed me wondered what planet I was on, too…

Sometimes the weird shit requires quite a tightly-focused angle. I ventured to Edinburgh’s Sheraton Hotel early on a Saturday morning to twitch my bumcheeks at guests having breakfast, posing beside artistic stone spheres and a hemisphere covered in shiny tiles. (These had seen better days; the trick was to find an angle where the gaps wouldn’t be seen, and to hide the abandoned fencing where posters had been hung to advertise shows during the recently-completed summer Festivals.)

The location in the city centre meant parking the car where I probably shouldn’t (just as well the traffic was light at sunrise on a Saturday morning!) And being in the city centre, it meant pulling on my go-go boots whilst weekend workers ambled past on their way to their workplaces. You can see why I don’t do this sort of thing at rush hour…

Another thing I sometimes have to pay attention to is the tide. (I’ve done this for various swimsuit shoots at Dunbar, for a Baywatch-themed shoot, and at a ruined lido in Fife.) If there’s one thing this has taught me – balancing tides with weather conditions – it’s patience and making the most of whatever you’re presented with.

For the spacey shots, the causeway to Cramond Island in the Firth of Forth resembled – to my feverish, teenage-geek-brain – the ruins of a long lost civilisation. (In reality, anti-submarine defences from the last century.) On this morning, there were a few more people walking about but the tide had only just receded far enough to make the causeway passable, so I had it to myself.

Some mornings you just have to take a chance. When it’s misty or foggy, you might get ‘moody’ or ‘atmospheric’ shots. And by happy chance you might get some epic, backlit clouds. At Arthur’s Seat (also in Edinburgh’s city centre), I got a few mountainous-looking photos in fog lit by the dawn sun. There was one old guy out walking his dog who asked if I was taking these photos for a Festival Fringe show.

I lied and said yes. (I’ve used this lie before.)

Sometimes, if it’s harmless and lets you get on with your day, it’s best to let people believe what they want to believe.

Of course, I’ve done a bunch of night-time photoshoots too (but that’s something for a whole ‘nother blog!)…

This is actually right outside a hotel’s breakfast room…

Pew! Pew!

Minimal photoshopping required…

Some days you get lucky with the view…

A water treatment plant. The smile is forced.