The Most Beautiful Place in the UK?

Hello everyone, and welcome back to my Simple English podcast. I'm Ruben, and you are listening to the podcast. which helps you to learn the English language by listening to me talking about different topics. How are you doing? I hope you are well. I hope you're having a good day. Or a good evening. As for me, maybe you can tell from my voice. I'm very tired. Very tired, you guys.

I think I have mentioned in a previous podcast, in a previous episode, that I have a job at the moment. I work to gain some money before I go to university next year. And it is hard work. I work in a supermarket, a job in a supermarket, and I am doing many hours, many shifts. working a lot of the time. And today I was actually in the supermarket cafe. Some supermarkets in England have a cafe built in where the customers can go and drink some coffee and have a sandwich or drink a cup of tea.

because it is very posh English. Yes, we love a cup of tea. It is quite a posh supermarket, actually quite an expensive supermarket. It is called Marks and Spencers, if you know it.

and if you have ever worked in a cafe before you will know that it is very tiring um so i am very tired from from the work but nonetheless i wanted to produce an episode I wanted to make an episode for you guys so that you have something to listen to in English as I'm sure you know the most important thing if you are trying to learn a language

is to immerse yourself in that language, which means to listen to that language or to read to that language often. Often, meaning... every day if you can, or, you know, multiple times a week, so I want to, um, I want to keep these podcasts quite regular, keep producing them quite often, keep making them often, but... Because I am so tired, I do not want to make a serious episode today. I don't want to talk about anything too serious or philosophical.

I'm not going to be talking about the meaning of life. I just wanted to share something nice, actually, which some of you guys might not know about. You might not have... considered, which is a place in the United Kingdom in Great Britain which you may not have been to. you may have not been to and you may not even have heard of it so without further ado let's get into the episode

So, I live in England. I think I have said before that I live in England, and I live in a small town called Shrewsbury. Shrewsbury is quite nice because it is a town but it is near the countryside what do I mean the countryside I mean the nature I mean, open fields, lots of grass, lots of greenery, some nice hills, sort of small, small mountains, hills. People talk quite a bit in...

around here. The people talk about the Shropshire Hills, that is what they're called. Shropshire is the region, the county. For those of you who don't know, England is divided into counties. It is made up of lots of counties.

um they are sort of the regions and uh my my county is called shropshire and then shrewsbury is a town within the county of shropshire but like i say there is some nice countryside you can go on a nice walk on a hill um it is it is nice um especially in the summer um when you have a nice day but i am very used to it

What does that mean, I'm used to it? It is a strange English expression. You probably know it, but it means that for me it is normal. I have grown up in this area, and so I am used to it. It has become... It is no longer something that impresses me or something that I appreciate, something that I value, because I know it's too well, I am too used to it, it is too normal for me. It is sort of habitual for me, if you like. And so...

For me, what I love is foreign landscapes. I love landscapes in other countries, other countryside, in hot countries, or where there is the sea, or big mountains. and also cities because I come from a small town in the countryside I would really love to go to a big city like New York or Paris or London even, you know, big, big cities. That is something. We have an expression in English. We say the grass is always greener on the other side.

And that means if you imagine you are in a field, you know, fields are big areas of land with areas of countryside where grass grows, and there is a fence that separates.

the field from another field, and there was a fence in between, and we say that the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. It is more green, it is more... more tasty on the other side and what does that mean it is a metaphor of course that means that wherever you are or whatever you have you don't really appreciate and you always wish that you are somewhere else and unfortunately i think for me i am a bit of a grass is greener person meaning in my mind

and when when i think about things the grass always seems to be greener somewhere else and so because i am used to the countryside around shropshire i i want to go to cities instead I mean, yeah, I know some people who live in cities, they say, oh no, I would love to go to the countryside. And so it is sort of that same. phenomenon, a very human thing, very normal thing, that the grass is always greener wherever you are not. But, well, actually...

Let me know. Maybe leave a comment on Apple Podcasts or on Spotify. Or if you message me, the podcast now has an Instagram page. If you search the name of the podcast, Simple English with Ruben Constantine. into Instagram, you will find the page. You can give me a message or leave a comment and tell me what do you think? Do you prefer?

the countryside do you prefer nature the outdoors or do you prefer big cities with lots of buildings lots of people which uh which which do you prefer which do you like best tell me anyway

I have rambled on enough about that. My point is that I don't like England that much, or I don't like the UK that much. For me it is a little bit boring, and I would, if I want to go on holiday, I would want to go to another country and not stay in the UK. But... There is one place in the UK, one location that I visited, I went to this year in June, so a few months ago now. We are now October.

and it really surprised me. It came as a real surprise for me. It was really, I didn't expect it, because it was very different from... anything else that i had seen in the united kingdom in the uk it was very very different um and i almost had a hard time I almost struggled to believe that it was in the UK because it really seemed like somewhere foreign and somewhere exotic and that place is actually Scotland.

But not just anywhere in Scotland, but the north of Scotland and especially the Outer Hebrides. The Outer Hebrides. I don't know if you've ever heard of them, but they are a group of islands in the sea off the coast of Scotland. Like I say, they really, really surprised me. Why is that? You might be wondering. Well... Now I said that I had never been to Scotland before. That is actually a lie.

I had been, it is not the truth, I had been to Scotland already with my family but we only went to the south of Scotland and the south of Scotland is very nice. But it is quite similar to England, or at least where I have known. So it was not too special, not too different. But this year... A friend of mine, very good friend, my best friend in fact, named Christopher. Hi Christopher, if you're listening. He asked me if I would like to go on an adventure.

on a holiday together, just the two of us as friends, to Scotland. And I thought, wow, you know, this will be an interesting adventure because I have never been. On holiday, I have never been away without my family. I have never stayed anywhere without my parents. I was only 18 years old at the time.

And so I said yes. I thought, wow, this will be an adventure. But I wasn't expecting it to be... very special i was expecting it to be um similar to the south of scotland because you know it is still scotland but my friend christopher he planned out a route. So he pre-planned, he told me, okay, this is what we're going to do. The route meaning the journey.

that we were going to go on and it included some parts of Scotland, the mainland, so the main part of Scotland that is connected to England and it also included some islands and some of these islands were the outer Hebrides and also the Isle of Skye. which is another sort of island that is actually connected to the mainland as well, but it is basically an island. And the Outer Hebrides are a group of islands, like I say.

So, we went. We went in June after we finished college in May. We finished our A-levels. If you don't know what A-levels are, I suggest you... listened to my episode that I made where I spoke about the education system in England. I think it was episode number six. if you'd like to find out. But yes, we went there together, and we were camping, which is really quite exciting.

I don't know if you know the word camping. I think it is similar in some languages because they borrow the English word. But camping is when you don't sleep in a hotel. or an apartment. You don't sleep in a building, but you sleep in a tent which is made of fabric. You're sleeping really outdoors, but in a little portable uh device that you take with you and we were um we were camping and we were cycling so we had bikes bicycles uh a bike each and we would uh have

these things called panniers which are like bags on the back of the bikes so that you can carry all of your things you can take all of your things with you on the bikes we had lots of luggage actually because it was two weeks long so we had all our clothes and our sleeping bag, that is that bag that you lie in so that you can sleep, it keeps you warm in the tent at night, of course

We brought some things to cook so that we can heat up our food, we can have warm food. We brought lots of things and we had it in these bags on the back of bikes.

we cycled then from place to place and the amazing thing about Scotland is it has a law which means you can do something called wild camping wherever you like so that means anywhere all everywhere um in in scotland um you can put your tent down and you can camp which is different to england where you can only camp on a campsite which is a specific place specific location where you are allowed to camp but you have to pay to use it whereas in scotland you do not have to pay

And you can wild camp anywhere, sort of savage camping. And so it was amazing. We camped and we put the tent down on the top of hills. on islands, by water, next to lakes and things or a lock as they are called in Scottish, and it was really really amazing.

Because what was really amazing was the scenery, the imagery, the countryside. Like I said before, it was like nothing that I had ever seen. in England. It really felt like a foreign country. Why was that? Well I think the mountains were very big. And the landscape was very green and very luscious. We can say luscious is a nice word that means sort of green and healthy. But the interesting thing was there were no trees.

In most of the outer Hebrides especially on these islands, there were very few trees, almost no trees, because they had all been cut down many years ago. and it made the landscape look totally different it means you could see for a very long way you could see a long way into the distance we could see for miles you could say because there were no trees uh in the way no trees to block the view um so that was interesting um there was also i think all these locks

They really have a lot of... Sorry, my Scottish accent isn't very good. A lock. No, I don't know. There were a lot of locks. There were very many of them. Which... gave an amazing impression. It looked very interesting when you cycled around from sort of one body of water, one lock, one lake to another. And there is sort of water everywhere in the landscape. It was very interesting.

The accent as well actually was amazing. We spoke to some people and on the Outer Hebrides the accent is quite different to mainland Scotland. They actually almost sound Irish, which is interesting because I suppose it is quite near to Ireland. If you are actually from the Outer Herodies or from Scotland, you might disagree. You might not agree with me, but that is the impression I had. And...

It is also really interesting from a language point of view, a linguistic point of view, because in Scotland and in the Outer Hebrides they speak Scottish Gaelic, Scots Gaelic, which is a language. that is very rare now very interesting language it is a Celtic language the same as Welsh and Breton and Irish Gaelic as well But it is a really, really beautiful language. And it is becoming more and more rare because even a lot of these Gaelic speakers nowadays speak English as well.

which is a shame. But it was amazing to hear this language. My friend Christopher, he even bought a book to try learn this language, but it is very hard. I did not actually bother. I did not even try.

even attempt to learn but it was amazing and it was also funny because we met a lot of people we spoke to a lot of people And we met a lot of tourists, so a lot of people who were on holiday there, a lot of people who were on holiday in Scotland in the Outer Hebrides, who came from other countries, who came from Germany, who came from the Netherlands, who came from Holland, instead of coming from England.

we didn't meet very many people who actually came from england which is really interesting it seems to me like scotland especially the north of scotland and the outer hebrides are almost like a hidden gem for English people. What do I mean by hidden gem? I mean... It is something that they have not yet discovered, they do not yet know about, they have maybe never heard of.

as was the case for me before. It was like that for me before. I had never heard of the Outer Hebrides. I didn't know how nice it was. It was sort of hidden. A hidden gem means something that is... hard to find but when you find it it is really amazing and that is that is the case for the outer hebrides for english people it is like it is a secret not many people know about it

Maybe if this podcast episode goes viral, then lots of people will suddenly start coming to the Outer Hebrides. Who knows? No, I'm joking. But it was really, really interesting. That is more or less all I have to say about it. I think it was a real amazing adventure. I would like to thank my friend Christopher for taking me. And I just thought I would...

speak about it to you guys, speak to you about it, because it is winter here in England. I don't know where you are. what the season is it might be summer when you are listening to this but it is winter well nearly winter it is getting very dark it is becoming dark earlier and earlier each day I find that a bit depressing, I find that a bit sad, and so it is really nice to think, just to reflect, and think about summer memories, memories that we made.

in the summer, when it was sunny, when we were on holiday maybe. Just remember what good times they were. We call that nostalgia. from the Greek nostalgia, which is a longing for the past, really, a longing for our homeland. And I am a very nostalgic person. It means I feel nostalgia a lot. I think a lot about the past, normally about holidays, and about summer memories, maybe with my family, and now also with my friend Christopher.

it helps me. I like to think about old memories, remembering good times that we had, and I'm really looking forward to this summer. I really hope to do some more traveling and discover some more nice places. I hope you are able to travel as well. Maybe, with your new English, you could travel to Scotland. The only problem is you might not be able to understand Scottish, because the accent is very strong. It is beautiful, but it is quite hard to understand, even for me sometimes.

Good luck if you do. But nonetheless, I hope you have enjoyed listening to me talk about Scotland. and about summer holidays, really. Thank you for listening. If you have enjoyed, please do leave a review on Apple Podcasts or on Spotify. Please follow me on Instagram, like I say. Learn, sorry, Simple English with Ruben Constantine. And otherwise... I hope you have a good day or a good evening whenever you are listening to this. I hope you have a good week and I will see you next time. Goodbye.