Hogmanay and the Loony Dook

This year for the holidays I didn't do any thing too crazy. Christmas I spent around London with some friends and just chilled.

But for New Year's I went up to Edinburgh with Haggis Tours for the Hogmanay street party with a brief visit to Queensferry for the Loony Dook (a brief swim in below freezing water!) on New Year's Day.

The guide from my Oktoberfest trip was also running one of the trips up to Edinburgh so I figured as least I would know someone on the trip. However the trip turned out to be the coach up to Edinburgh - we left at 730 am and got in at about 6... Long day on the bus. It also turns out that a few others from the Oktoberfest trip were on the coach too.

After checking into our hostel, we went down to the Three Sister's Pub for a Ceilidh (kay - lee) and a few drinks. A Ceilidh is a traditional dance gathering, think a bit of square dancing, line dancing and other things. Reminded me a lot of the Appalachian traditional dances as is probably the origin of some of them.

After a long night, we had a walking tour of Edinburgh in the morning and then met back at the 3 Sisters for a hog roast and to celebrate the various antipodean New Years! And it started snowing. Its actually snowing now in London, apparently we are in the longest cold streak in at least 30 years if not the last century. It seemed a bit odd but made sense, but there were several people who had never seen snow before...

After a few pork sandwiches (almost as good as NC BBQ), some of us just walked around and saw what we could. It was time to kit up in warmer gear and then meetup for the evening. We stopped in a chip shop for some food (fried haggis, chips, fried sausage... good old health food - a few other had a fried Mars bar... ugh).

On to the street party. The papers the next day said there were

about 80,000 - but it felt like more. Supposedly it is the second

largest street party behind Rio, but was messier than a Saturday night Halloween on Franklin Street. There were several stages with bands and DJs on, but in all honesty, I don't know many of them and had only heard a few of the songs before. Guess you have to be a dance (think DJ/techno/not the stuff they'd play in NC) music fan. The clock struck 12 and the sky lit up as the fireworks were fired from all around the castle. It was pretty cool. On to a pub for another late night... Oh yea - it was cold, -8C (17 or so F)

The morning came early as we had to get up and go to Queensferry for the Dook. The Loony Dook is a charity fundraising event that drew an estimated 800 swimmers and 3,000 spectators. Oh yea - its fancy dress too. I didn't plan well so just went in a cheap tourist kilt - and that was it. There were people in all manner of outfits - loch ness monster, bikinis, santa, nothing... but the water was reportedly -2C, so nice and brisk.

That afternoon most of us walked around the Royal Mile for a fire festival. There were all kinds of huge candles - some in spheres and even a huge candleabra / chandelier thingy.

Edinburgh is a very cool city and definitely worth a visit if you ever have the chance, this was my third trip through and I'd go back again.