As the wedding isn't until Saturday, we decided to spend a few days exploring England and Scotland. People we spoke to were surprised that we'd consider driving straight to Scotland, but we drive further on our holidays back home. We headed off early and travelled via the Lakes District, stopping at a place called Keswick for lunch, which was quite touristy, however the area around it was very beautiful with the lakes (of course) and the villages.
We had been told by K's Scottish friend Nicola that we should honk the horn three times and yell "freeeddduuuum" in true William Wallace style as we crossed the border into Scotland - but we didn't (nor did anyone else that crossed with us).
We stopped at Motherwell to see Nicola and walked around Strathclyde Loch nearby. Nicola told us we were lucky enough to enjoy the nicest day that they expected to have all summer, it must have been all of about 24 degrees!
We arrived at Glasgow in the evening, checked into our "mystery hotel" that we'd booked through lastminute.com, which ended up being the Hilton.
Day 135: Glasgow to Edinburgh, Smart@IQ
We walked from our hotel into the streets of Glasgow, not a sunny as yesterday but still not cold. The old Glasgow Cathedral with it's amazing history was interesting, as one of the US tourists said "Some of these plaques are older than our country!". From there we headed to the People's Palace with the Doulton Fountain, the largest terracotta fountain in the world, with figures depicting the Commonwealth at the time it was built in 1888 - Australia, Canada, India and South Africa. The People's Palace was very interesting, with its museum covering life over the years for the local Glaswegians. It also has a beautiful indoor glass house garden which we expect would be popular on Scottish winter days.
In the afternoon we drove the hour or so to Edinburgh expecting to have the same good luck with lastminute.com that we had the night before. However we discovered that Edinburgh is much more popular with the tourists, and therefore much more expensive, so we settled on a £60 place, only to turn up and find that it was student accommodation. Although we were taken aback at first, as it turned out it was quite nice - newly refurbished, and it appeared that noone had ever stayed in our room. It was a nice little studio apartment for (we presume) students from quite wealthy families!
Day 136: Edinburgh to Corbridge, Norgate B&B
It was a nice stroll to the top of Edinburgh Castle where we were met by a swarm of tourists for the changing of the guard. However we have no idea what they were guarding as it's only a tourist attraction. We found the number of people quite overwhelming and we are wondering whether Europe will be like this as well. We then walked the Royal Mile to Hollyrood Castle, Queen Elizabeth's Scottish Residence (dropping in to Edinburgh Cathedral along the way) only to find the palace closed as the Queen was in town, but wasn't expecting us. Instead we did the next best thing and visited the Royal Yacht Britannia. The yacht has been left with all its original furniture including the very 60's plastic woven on metal legs that were all the rage when we were babies. It was interesting that the only double bed on board was the one Charles had put in for his honeymoon, even the Queen's was just a single bed. We debated taking afternoon tea on the top deck but decided it was probably hideously expensive so decided to save our money, so continued our journey, driving back to England and spending a night at a B&B in Corbridge, with a meal at a typical English pub.
Day 137: Corbridge to Backwell, A's House
A lovely driving day today taking in some of the eastern side of England. First stop was Hadrians Wall, built by the Romans in the 2nd century AD. We checked out a section of the wall in a field near Chollerton, then visited Chesters Roman Fort. Walking Hadrian's Wall is very popular, as we could tell by the number of people we saw, including our fellow guests at the B&B we stayed at.
After the fort we drove to Durham and visited the impressive cathedral there, then on to York where we took a trip through a reconstructed Viking village before visiting yet another cathedral. We made it back to Backwell just after 10pm, just as the sun was going down. It is lovely being able to enjoy the incredibly long days, so far we have been doing really well at seeing countries at their best and the UK has certainly turned on charming weather for us.
1 comment:
Cool you saw the Lake District - that's where Dave grew up :)
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