Hey guys, I just got back from a 4-day road trip around Scotland. Two of Ronja’s friends came over from Finland, and the four of us took off in my heavily-packed car.

We first visited the Isle of Skye where we stayed for two nights in a self-catering cottage in the middle of nowhere. It was a long day of driving to get there, and we spent a lot of it driving through hilly countryside at night, which was scary. My car is not amazing so it struggles a bit on hills when it’s full. And the countryside has all sorts of traps like sheep standing next to the road and cattle grids. So it was an interesting drive.

On the way to Skye we stopped at Luss, Glen Coe (pictured) and Eilean Donan Castle briefly. There was no shortage of cool stops.

On Skye we hiked up The Storr hill to see the huge spiky rock formations on it (pictured). It’s quite a  steep hike but it’s not too long or challenging. It takes less than two hours to get to the rocks even if you’re not particularly fit for hiking. The weather was mostly good, but while I was at the top it rained heavily for ten minutes and that was me soaked for the day – I forgot to equip my waterproof trousers. Overall though I think this was one of my favourite hiking experiences ever. Very good views for relatively little work. (well except for all the driving to get there)

We stopped at the town of Portee and at the Sligachan Old Bridge (pictured) a few times, as these were nice places to take driving breaks.

We stopped briefly for hotdogs at The Quiraing (pictured), which was a nice view point on a high mountain road. We visited the The Fairy Glen, which is a small area of strange looking hills that looks like The Shire from Lord of the Rings, or something similar. The Mealt Falls was another viewing area we stopped at for a good view of the seaside cliffs.

While driving past the town of Uig, the highlight of the whole trip happened. We stopped the car as a stampede of sheep was herded around us. It was wonderful. (pictured)

The next day we went on a tour of the Talisker distillery. I was the only one in the group that wasn’t interested in whisky, but I found the machines, giant barrels, and smells in the place interesting. It’s also the first time I’ve heard the word “hopper” used outside of Minecraft! We also visited the Fairy Pools in Glen Brittle (pictured), which is a long stream with many varied waterfalls and makes for a great walking area.

After that it was another long drive until we got to Loch Ness. We stayed in a small rural hotel in Foyers, where we got a good view of the lake. Foyers also has a nice little forest path  (pictured) and an impressive waterfall with a few viewing areas. The change of scenery was nice compared to Skye’s rockiness and lack of trees.

From here we started driving back home, but on the way we visited Cairn Gorm, which is a popular skiing mountain in the Cairngorms national park. They’ve got a cool railway service that takes you to the top for a nice view. It looked like there was a lot to do in the area, but that’s all we had time for.

Then we went home. The end.

(credit to Ronja for most of these photos)

Update: Oh yeah, I should also mention that now’s a really good time to visit the UK! Brexit has caused our currency to become much weaker, so your holiday will be much cheaper than normal!

Hey guys, me and Ronja spent the last 5 days in Birmingham for the EGX expo, which is a huge games marketing event thing. It was our first time in the city, and we really liked it – it feels like a cheaper version of London I guess.

While there we spent a lot of time with Jimp and Jay from Massive Monster/Armor Games. They were showing off their games and made this video which I guess sums up the experience:

Massive Monster are working on The Adventure Pals and Never Give Up, both games that I’m personally interested in playing later on Steam – the earlier Flash versions were already a lot of fun.

Yooka-Laylee was a big thing there, but we didn’t want to wait an hour to play it, so we only watched others. It really does look like a modern Banjo Kazooie, which is all I want from it. <3

Snake Pass was another major indie game, and one that we got a chance to play. It’s a platformer with bizarre snake physics, and looks very similar to Yooka-Laylee visually. Very interested in this one.

Other interesting indie games we saw included BrawlOut, ForgottOn Anne, Dead-Cells, Overcooked, Y2K: A Postmodern RPG, She Remembered Caterpillars, VA-11 HALL-A and Black and White Bushido. All of these will be going on my “play later” list.

We weren’t very interested in the AAA stuff, especially since the queues were huge. There was also a retro-game section, some talks, cosplay shows, merch sales and gaming competitions. Tons of stuff to do, but we spent most of it in the indie games section, chatting to devs as well as looking for obscure games.

Besides EGX, we also saw a bit of Birmingham: The library is super impressive. We saw a bit of Kaleidoscope Man being filmed (crowds were running while tanks “fired”). We got tasty Indian Burritos from a place called Wrapchic.

And we had an awesome night out with a big group of the indie devs! I felt like a bit of an imposter since I wasn’t showing my games at EGX though, and Ronja’s… not really in the industry at all. Maybe someday.

Had a lazy week last week while waiting on the whole Greenlight thing. Went on two road trips to the seaside.

First one me and Ronja drove to the beach in the seaside towns of Troon and Ayr. I’ve been driving a few years now but haven’t really went far from home yet, so I’m starting to explore more. Most of Scotland’s population is concentrated around Glasgow and Edinburgh and sometimes I forget that there’s a lot more to Scotland than those cities, so there’s a lot for me to see still.

We got to Ayr a bit late and the beaches were crazy crowded, so we retreated to a cool underground pub called the Smoking Goat and had the whole place to ourselves. The basements of old buildings look very dungeon-like. <3

A few days later we headed out to the the island of Arran with my brother, his girlfriend, and a family friend from Poland. We didn’t plan things too well and the ferry to the island was all booked up for cars. We drove a little bit further and took a ferry to the island of Bute instead. The weather changed a lot through the day, from rainy to super sunny to rainy again. As it does in Scotland.

We stopped at a few beaches for picnics, and hiked along the seaside a bit and saw some cool cliffs. There was this fancy mansion with huge gardens that was a popular tourist destination – but entry was too expensive for the group’s tastes. I kind of want to go back there someday though.

The final and ultimate attraction was the seals! There was a rocky beach where about 12 seals were chilling out. The way seals move is hilarious – they just bounce around. Unfortunately Ronja didn’t get to see them cause she couldn’t make the steep climb down to the beach. ):

Also last night there was a power cut in our town. Looks like almost the whole town was out for an hour. I’ve never seen such a big power cut before – In my previous home it was usually only one street that got affected by these things. It was really spooky!

Me and Ronja went out onto a bridge over the motorway to see how far the darkness stretched. It was a lot of fun – seeing real darkness is rare in urban life.