Hey everyone it’s Cian writing from Gleneagles again, my focus in this blog is to give a bit of insight to life outside of work at Gleneagles. The accommodation is on hotel grounds but it is nowhere near as luxurious as the hotel itself. The rent is dirt cheap, £215 a month, but the room is very small. There’s some means in place to maximise space in the room, some is practical and then some is not. For example there’s two drawers under the bed which help to create space, but there is also a shelf above the bed that’s a good idea for creating storage but not a very well thought out design because I have hit my head off the shelf when getting out of the bed several times already. The bathroom is small but at least it isn’t shared. The shower is reliable for hot water but it’s a bit on the short side, I’m 5”11 and I have to squat a bit to wash my hair properly. The kitchen is shared with all Whitemuir residents and it is a poor excuse for a kitchen to be honest, it’s two fridges and two microwaves and a kettle. Having no cooker or oven means I have to rely on the canteen or microwave rice for dinner on my days off. This would be a more significant issue if I wasn’t working in the kitchen and had no access to food when on shift. The laundry room does the job and the gym in the accommodation isn’t too shabby either.
My nightmare of catching Covid living in tiny Whitemuir became a reality…. 7 days isolation in the tiniest of rooms with no kitchen access and having to rely on the canteen to deliver food really tests you! It felt like prison but luckily if you test negative on days 6 and 7 you can end your isolation which was lucky because I couldn’t stand another day cooped up in that room.
I knew the hotel was going to be remote but I underestimated how far things were from the hotel. The nearest town, Auchterarder is about 25 mins walk away from the hotel and this area is limited in what it offers. In the town there is a Spar, a Co-op, two pubs and a few takeaways. The nearest cities are Perth and Stirling and the hotel has regular bus services to these areas. Glasgow and Edinburgh are easily reachable via the train station too so despite the remoteness of the area it could in fact be much worse than it is. The key to this is either know how to drive or befriend someone who does drive, as silly as it sounds, when I moved from the Birnam to the Dormy I met my two best friends who live in Stirling and can drive, so we have gone everywhere together and have plans to go more places in the summer, if we get the same days off!
Because Glasgow and Edinburgh are roughly equal journeys away I've been to both quiet frequently, I've visited Bethany several times and we have complained about the amount of tourists on Princes Street, that shows how settled we are into the country! I find Glasgow is the better city for a day of shopping and a night out whereas Edinburgh is more of a tourist destination for sightseeing. The Gleneagles Townhouse opens up on the day of me writing this vlog, 6/6/22, so it could be a potential option for me in the future because I'm always jealous of the options available when living in the city in comparison to rural Perthshire!
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