Eurotrip - Featuring The Heff

Hello all!

Firstly, this blog is dedicated to one Lucy Kennedy, who has especially asked me to go into as much detail as I can concerning The Tree People of Bilston.

I’m writing the first half of this blog, in a very small shack, suspended in foliage that is sitting over a running river in four layers of clothes and a sleeping bag. In other words, I'm in a tree house, and I'm extremely cold.

I'll speak of our time in Edinburgh first.

After receiving a tip-off from a very friendly Australian girl in Stirling about a very cool and cheap hostel in Edinburgh, Benjamin and myself found ourselves smack bang in the middle of the country’s capital. We settled in nicely to the hostel, and like many of our first days into a city, we didn't really do that much. After walking aimlessly for roughly two hours, we went back to the hostel and spent the remainder of our night there. This was the cheapest hostel of the trip so far, costing 9 Pound a night, which includes breakfast, free internet, a Wii, a "Bean Bag Cinema", a bar and various other cool things we managed to stumble across. Certain things about this hostel made it even more exciting. For example, the shower screens do not have curtains, or doors, but just glass panels. At first, I was very reluctant to use these showers. In Australia, it's not common, or even accepted to be somewhere naked, unless it's in the confinements of your own home where not a soul can see. Obviously elsewhere in the world, it's that big of an issue, and why should it be? After debating with myself for almost a whole two minutes as to whether I would be comfortable enough to have a shower, where anyone could walk in and see me, I didn't come to a conclusion, so I just said "What the hell". During the course of my stay, I had a couple people walk in on me and unlike what I had envisioned, none of them stood there and laughed or gawked, but simply washed their hands and left without even looking.

Another exciting moment in the hostel was one afternoon when I was watching a lovely Spanish film in the "Bean Bag Cinema”. About an hour after watching, and thoroughly enjoying, a god awful noise started screeching like a banshee, and seconds later a man burst into the cinema yelling at me to “GET THE F#$K OUT OF THE BUILDING”. Apparently it was a fire alarm! I recall leaving Benjamin in the bar with my laptop, and enjoyed thinking of his reaction as to what to do with the laptop. Would he freak out and leave it there, or would he freak out and bring it with him, or would he freak out and not be able to decide and run around in circles? Once downstairs and outside, I’d realised I was not wearing any shoes. Remember, Scotland is a cold place. Moments after this realisation, I spotted some long-haired git with a mini-laptop freezing his Australian ass off. He was pretty easy to spot as he was the only one on the street without a jacket. There must have been almost 200 backpackers waiting in the street to find out what was going on. We saw two chaps that didn’t even get to finish their pasta, and therefore were standing in the street with their plates and food, but no cutlery, so they just had to eat with their hands. The fire brigade came, and ran into the building with all the gear, only to come back five minutes later saying it was a false alarm. Some bastard probably just lit a cigarette or something inside the building. When I returned to the cinema, the film had about two minutes to go, what a bummer.

We hadn’t seen that much of Edinburgh from our aimless walking of the streets, but we did find a poster informing us of a “Ghost Tour” of Edinburgh. This tour featured a man who looked like he should have been a grave digger so he set the mood very well before we even started. Basically, Edinburgh is thought to be the most haunted city in Europe. I'm not entirely sure how one measures this, but I'll accept it. This tour took us through a cemetery (The second most popular place for public sex would you believe!), a big creepy hill, a suicide bridge and other ghoulishly nasty places, all well after the safety of the sun had set. Alan, the tour guide, spoke of a fairy realm that is connected to the big creepy hill. Scottish fairies, unlike our friendly little Hollywood Tinkerbelle’s, are terrifying beasts that are very keen to see the human race destroyed. Coming in various forms that range from a one-legged, one-armed and basically half-bodied man, to the more dangerous one metre tall old bearded man who can run faster than any human, and tears out your organs using his insanely sharp hands (Think Edward Scissorhands). This makes me want to read more into the fairyland in Edinburgh.

Since Dublin, we’ve wanted to hire ourselves some pushbikes and ride the cities as opposed to the lengthy and sometimes loathsome sidewalk stomping. After noticing a hire-a-bike sign in our hostel, we took this as the perfect opportunity to hook into some super-speed cycling. It was a reasonable price, and the chap who hired the bike to us was pretty friendly, and even provided us with directions to one of his preferred cycling zones. Let’s remember that half of Edinburgh, and probably even half of Europe for that matter, has its roads covered in cobblestone. For you Australian folk that have never had the chance of seeing or rather feeling cobblestone…It’s pretty darn bumpy. It shakes the shit out of the bicycles, and causes some bits to become a bit loose apparently. The first 5 minutes of the trip were pretty cool, as it was all downhill. The next 5 minutes were tiresome, due to the upward slope and lack of fitness, but still enjoyable. In the next 5 minutes, my pedal snapped off and we both almost died (The bus drivers speed up when they see a tourist, 50 points for Australians) so we just decided to ditch the whole idea, and went to get a refund.

I’ve been debating with myself as to whether I should have just made two separate blogs, one for our stay in Edinburgh, and another for our stay with the ‘Tree People’, because there is so much to talk about with them both. I’ve decided that instead I’ll just write both, and I’ll give you good readers the chance to have a break.

Intermission.


I do hope you enjoyed that; I’d like to think that you’ve settled in nicely with a cup of tea, with perhaps a scone or some piklets. Whatever. Most of you bogan-bastards probably just got up to get another beer. I know how you Queensland folk operate.

Bilston is a little iddy-biddy village about 30 minutes bus ride from Edinburgh. Getting there was a bit of a bitch. We asked many locals, every employee at the bus station and even looked at a map, but it was apparent that the place didn’t even exist. No-one had heard of it, and it seemed that our search for the ‘Tree People’ was going to be a dismal one. After much searching, we found a bus number which one of the hippies kindly posted on the internet, got on that bus and made our way to Bilston. We arrived, and to call the place a village might be over-exaggerating. I don’t know what is smaller than a village, but I would call it that.

Our directions told us to go down this very eerie and dank path, which we found to be much like Russian Roulette. Everything looked soggy, but some bits were a bit soggier than others, and if you put your foot in one of those bits, your foot didn’t come back. After walking for a good couple of minutes we spotted a chap sporting dreadlocks almost reaching his ass, a lovely soiled beard and clothes that looked as though they hadn’t been washed since they were stolen from the charity bin all those years ago. This suggested that we were probably in the right place. Moments after walking into their campsite, I almost had to change my underwear. Although it was everything I imagined it to be, I had doubts and thought I was expecting too much of the place. Everything from the little rickety bridges across the river, to the insanely high tree houses themselves, everything was all so surreal.


From the very point the tree huggers noticed our presence in their village, they made us feel very welcome. Everyone is awesome, super-friendly and a good majority of them are genuinely crazy in the head. It’s hard to describe their set-up, but quite simply, there was a fire pit in which all the cooking, conversing, music playing, eating and warming up took place. Near the fire pit was a make-shift kind of kitchen that had a few fridges (There’s no electricity on the site, but the fridges hold the cold and it’s that bloody cold in Scotland anyway, the fridges probably stop the food from freezing) and little cupboards where they stashed their food. Around this centre point were many different kinds of tree-houses scattered throughout the forest and down the middle of the village is a constantly flowing river. That is probably a difficult description, but it’s the best I can do. In the case of an eviction, and the tree houses are destroyed, this net is used to sleep on, and the protest can continue. Whilst the tree-huggers are suspended off the ground, some protection is ensured and this makes the 'pigs' jobs are much more difficult and expensive in the removal.

The reason these tree-dwelling-hippies are here, and have been for the last seven years is to try and prevent a very large by-pass going through. The council’s plan is to demolish this forest and lay down a road in place of it. By living in the trees, the tree-huggers make it most difficult for the forest to be destroyed. To evict a protest site costs the council many thousands of pounds because of the way the tree-huggers set up their site. Not only are these people protesting the road works and deforestation, but are also promoting the alternative life-style. Of what I could gather, their aim is to encourage everyone to break free from stupid rules and other unnecessary government regulations such as taxes and ridiculous laws.

This is a wild garlic leaf. I swear, it tastes exactly like garlic, just not as potent as a clove. My breath smelt awful for the next couple hours.

In many ways do they achieve this, one such way is their source of food. Because none of these people have any source of income, they use a system they like to call ‘Skipping’. This involves walking to the back of a supermarket, and essentially going through the skip. I was amazed with the amount and quality of food they found in these bins. As soon as a packet of chips goes out of date, the store will skip it, where the tree-huggers will take it home to consume. It doesn’t stop at chips though. They found a 10kg bag of onions on our stay, bread is available every day, mince, cheese, milk, all forms of veggies, everything. What's more, when an alcoholic beverage goes off, or gets a dint, or looks trashy - skipped. Bottles of whisky are often discovered in the these skips in occassions. These people may have no money, but they eat a lot better than the paying folk. It seems that they never go hungry, and I’m astounded at the amount of food these big companies throw away. Their favorite skip is at this place that sells wholesale to all the five star hotels and restaurants. Buckets of olives, blue cheese, world sausages, quails eggs, loaves of bread as big as your arm that need to be cut with a handsaw…Dear god, the things they find.

It doesn’t stop at food. All the materials for their houses are sourced by the local industrial area. Anything from windows, planks of wood, rolls and rolls of rope, you’ll find it in the skips. Clothes are another item on the list. Charity shops can’t, or don’t accept some donated items for some insane reason, and when this happens, the tree huggers are there to make sure it doesn’t go to waste. On our stay they found a boomerang, a clock, a chest of drawers just to name a few. Apart from having no running water or electricity, these people are living it up.

I didn’t get any photos of the people themselves, because there was a rule board that said that we have to gain permission for any photo’s with anyone, and I didn’t want to seem like just another tourist coming through. For anyone who has ever called me a hippie…I think you are very mistaken as to what a hippie is. These people are hippies. Real hippies. Dreadlocks, yes, but they have real dreadlocks. The dirty bastards that have just matted themselves up, having one set of clothes, being a dog’s human rather than owning a dog and living off no money at all. I have a lot of admiration for their dedication and ability to live in those conditions for so long, but the whole idea still seems somewhat childish to me. I often found myself wondering when they would 'grow up', or realise that they're not really getting that far, or making that big of a difference.

We heard many stories of various demos and previous evictions of protest sites and it doesn’t seem pleasant. Between the years of constant drug abuse, maulings by dogs, tramplings by horses, shots by various forms of immobilizing guns and being forced to it in a trees for sometimes weeks, I'm really not all that surprised by how many crazy people were actually there.

I could go on about the tree-huggers, but I’m afraid that may just have to wait for another time, there is far too much to talk about concerning them.

We decided to return to Edinburgh to clean ourselves and see what we didn’t see before we left. This involved a free three hour tour of the city which was very informative and was hosted by an champion guide. To show your appreciation, the tour runs on a tip basis. Depending on how well the guide presented the tour determines how much they would get paid in a day. I think it's great! The bigger the group, the less guilty you feel if you give a crappy tip! :) I’m very glad we done it, because there was another 80% to the city we didn’t even know existed, and there’s probably still more out there.

The same company that runs the free tour, and the Ghost Tour hosts a pub crawl six nights a week. Because of the exceptional efforts we'd previously encountered with this company, we saw it only fitting that we had a go at the pub crawl. With three shots, a pint and a 'dram' (25mls) of whisky (Keep in mind Scotch whisky doesn't have an 'e') included with the already relatively low price, we were happy. As with all pub crawls I imagine, we met a lot of cool people, some ass-holes and a good time was had by most. I somehow managed to lose Ben, but he staggered home safely...I don't know how, that boy has the worst sense of direction known to man. Speaking of the boy, he loved the crawl so much that he's gone back again tonight for a second round. Good luck to ya son! I feel like arse, so I'm going to sit here and eat my 10 cent doughnut mmmm...

See ya round suckers!

Oh yeah, I should mention that we have no idea where we will be tomorrow, but it will be in England somewhere.