Shit, almost two years already since I touched down in the UK and set up camp here. The first nine months or so were an absolute trial in a lot of respects. After Mo and I travelled around Western Europe for a month, the UK was fast heading into winter. It was cold, it was dark when I left home to go to work, and dark when I left work come home, and it sucked! Climate aside, so many things about Edinburgh are so far removed from anything I'd ever known. It's bloody old, there are all these flats just smooched together, there are no back yards, there are no front yards (I open my front door to a stairwell), and so forth and so on.  To compound the matter, I was working full time in Glasgow - a city I've grown to absolutely loathe, and my time there didn't do the country's image as a whole any favours in my eyes. A few other things around that time didn't work out for the best either, and with all things considered I felt very lost and very alone. Regardless, I knew my time here and in the UK was only temporary, and between the strength of the pound and the travel and the careers opportunities there was no way I was going to leave no matter how miserable I got. I was willing to gut it out and just go through the motions for time being.

However, 12 months ago things started to change. I stopped working in fucking Glasgow for starters and instead spent all of my time in Edinburgh. I met Lisa and we had a thing for a while. It was summer and I had a shiny new bike sitting there barely used, and so started to fully explore the city I'd lived in for almost a year but knew nothing about. A few other things had fallen into place as well and so for the first time in a long time I was ok with my situation.

Since then pretty much everything has been great: my job, the travel, the people I've met, and the experiences I've had. The place is still old and cold but I finally managed to get over that mental hurdle when I started exploring the city on the bike and seeing for myself how bloody gorgeous Edinburgh really is. Be that as it may, at the time I never realised this, and it's only been over the last while when this whole London thing finally came up (despite it always being the plan to move there about now) that it really hit me how much I'm going to really miss Edinburgh for so many reasons! Barely twelve months ago I never would have thought I would ever say those words. It's a bloody great place to live, and in the mere 2,500kms I've covered of it by bike, it has really grown on me.

All good things must come to an end as they say, and it's now onto the next phase of the plan: London!