Scotland with Jim and Jenny, Post 2

Well, life is extremely frantic and Delle arrives in just 10 hours!!! :D However, I really need to finish telling you about our time in Scotland with Jim and Jenny, as we're about to launch into a new round of adventures and I'm already more than a month behind...

On Wednesday morning, we woke up in our bunk beds at the Chase the Wild Goose Hostel in Fort William, Scotland, and after breakfast and packing up the four of us set off in the car to the starting point of a wee 2.5 mile hike I'd planned through the Highlands. Well, it was beautiful!! We parked at Glenfinnan and walked up into the hills, first walking under and then looking down on the impressive Glenfinnan Viaduct, which as far as I could tell is not visible from any roads. Check out the photos below - recognise it? Yes, it is the very one from the Harry Potter movies!!



From the hills, we also had a beautiful view of Loch Shiel, beside which there is a monument to Bonnie Prince Charlie. And just after Ben, Jenny and I had rounded a hill and could no longer see the viaduct, a train came over it, which we'd lingered as long as possible for in the hope of seeing. So Jim was the only one to see that! The train then stopped for quite a while at the train station around the corner, so along with all the people from the train, we had a look around the station and listened to the busking bagpipe player. Then, we continued on with our walk and made it back to the car approximately 1.75 seconds before it started raining. :) A lovely morning!



Then, it was back into Fort William for a bit of lunch and shopping (I bought some very eye-catching gumboots) and on to Edinburgh. This was the first time Ben and I had seen Edinburgh in the daylight, and what we saw boded very well for what we would see when touring properly the next day. After checking into our hostel and having a bit of time there, we went to the evening meeting and met some lovely people there.

Later that night, Ben and I ventured out for some dinner, and ended up at a Nepalese restaurant where I had a very unfortunate encounter with a whole green chilli. This painful experience ended up involving a jug of water, four presumably-hysterical-behind-my-back young male waiters, and a bowl of yoghurt. Guess it livened up their night anyway!!!

The next day, Thursday, was the final day of our trip. We got going early and headed into the city centre for our full day of sightseeing on the open top buses. We got tickets that allowed us to travel on all four of the available bus routes, and set off first on the bus that would take us to the Ocean Terminal.

At the Ocean Terminal, we toured the Royal Yacht Britannia - yes, the Queen's own yacht!!! It was commissioned in 1954, and decommissioned in 1997 after logging over a million nautical miles and averaging one trip around the world for each of those years. The yacht has hosted four royal honeymoons - the third being Charles and Diana's in 1981, which was the first time a double bed was brought onto the yacht (see third photo below)!

Our tour was very interesting - we saw the separate bedrooms of the Queen and Prince Phillip (nowhere near as luxurious as you'd imagine - see the Queen's room in second photo below), a huge drawing room with lounge suites and a grand piano, many private family photos of the royals, the massive dining room where important (non-royal) functions are still regularly held (see panorama), and the pristine engine room.

We had audio guides to listen to as we walked around, and they even told us about amusing traditions of the ship's officers, such as playing tennis (first shot into the ceiling fan) with a one-eyed stuffed wombat (see photo of the real thing below). I definitely recommend a tour of Britannia if you're ever in Edinburgh!



After that, we rode around on the buses, seeing varous sites of great importance (such as the cafe where JK Rowling started her writing), and then Jim and Jenny disembarked near Hollyrood Palace and Parliament House while Ben and I went to the Royal Mile and just wandered around.

The Royal Mile is a fabulous old street where there are many attractions, shops etc - very touristy but that's able to be overlooked since the location is so awesome!! We had a delicious lunch and in the evening we met up with Jim and Jenny again for our tour of Mary King's Close...

This is a fascinating and unique aspect to Edinburgh: until the mid 1700s, Mary King's Close was a lively thoroughfare of pubs, shops and residences (for fairly poor families it seems) on Edinburgh's High Street. Then, around the middle of the 18th century, the city needed a spot to build its council chambers, so it simply lopped off the top storeys of the buildings lining the narrow close (I think we were told they were up to 13 storeys high originally) and plonked the council chambers on top on this convenient foundation!!!

Mary King's Close was therefore underground, deserted, and forgotten about for a few hundred years. In 2003, it was opened up as a tourist attraction, and so it's this underground street and the now-empty bottom storey rooms that we explored in the pitch dark with the aid of an entertaining tour guide who pretended she was actually from the 1700s and kept trying to scare us. Good fun and certainly a very interesting tour!

After this tour, it was off to the airport in a screaming hurry, where we only made our flight home because (a) they reopened the just-closed check-in for us, and (b) our flight was delayed by over an hour anyway. :)

That day our opinion of Edinburgh rose to such heights that Ben and I declared it our favourite city in the UK - yes, better than Cambridge, which had toppled Bath from first place and seemed impossible to beat. Edinburgh is just so old and amazing and interesting - words can't describe it and nor can my photos adequately capture it! Perhaps some might not like it because it is so, well, brown, but I think it's beautiful. What a fabulous city!!! Here are a few miscellaneous photos taken throughout the day...



Goodnight! PS. Now it's 8 hours until Delle arrives!!!!

Scotland with Jim and Jenny, Post 1

So there we were, waiting at Dublin Airport for our delayed flight to Scotland. To cut a long wait short, here's the story in a nutshell: due to the delay, by the time we got to Edinburgh around 11pm, the car hire counter was closed (we'd organised our car hire online and already paid a small deposit). Another counter nearby that was still open and had a car available provided a ridiculously high quote. A bus driver told us there was no realistic way to get to our B&B via bus. So, we hopped into one of the old-style black cabs and off we went.

Next morning, Ben took a bus back to the airport, waited an hour until our hire car was available, then collected the rest of us from the B&B. Then we set off for Loch Ness, 3 hours north, where I'd pre-booked a 2pm boat tour. All slightly stressful but never mind, we always said we'd have to ride in an old cab before leaving the UK, so at least we've done it now!

The drive to Inverness and then on to Loch Ness (point B on map) was beautiful - as was everywhere else we saw, actually - we all loved Scotland! There were bright blue rivers and lakes, vivid green and yellow fields, and a clear sky with a few fluffy white clouds. Further north, as we drove through the Highlands, the mountains were very dramatic but one thing in particular stood out: most of the hills were completely bare of trees, the ground covered instead in a dirty purple/brown colour that we later found out was heather.

Here are a couple of photos to illustrate the contrast between these two very different Scottish landscapes (unfortunately I don't have any better ones of the gorgeous yellow fields, although we saw plenty of them)...



After passing through Inverness, which looked like a nice city with lots of old buildings, we drove alongside a river that widened into Loch Ness. That road follows the line of the river all the way to Fort William, cutting a straight diagonal line from one side of Scotland to the other. The water was bright blue as it was a nice clear day. The banks of the river and loch were lined with rocky, tree-covered mountains, lots of yellow-gold gorse bushes (a frequent sight in both Ireland and Scotland) and some cleared paddocks here and there, although mostly the terrain looked too steep and rugged for growing crops.

We arrived for our tour with a little time to spare. The tour included a half hour boat cruise along the loch to Urquhart Castle, a free hour to wander around the castle and grounds, and then a half hour boat cruise back to where we started.



Urquhart Castle is an impressive medieval ruin sitting rights on the banks of Loch Ness. An hour turned out to be far too little time after we had crammed into it some posing in front of a trebuchet, watching a video presentation about the castle's history, and eating lunch in the visitor centre up the hill. Ben and I didn't even end up going inside the castle walls!! Jim and Jenny had a quick look around inside but then it was time to get back on the boat.

Anyway, it's an impressive old ruin in an amazing location, and the picture that has been the panorama across the top of the blog for a couple of weeks now is the view of Urquhart Castle from the visitor centre. (Note: you can access our previous blog banner panoramas by clicking on "Our panoramas" under the "Related links" heading in the column on the right.)



The boat ride back to the pier was a bit colder as we were heading into the wind, so Ben and I sat inside the cabin instead of up on the top deck like Jim and Jenny, who are obviously much tougher than us!!

As for Nessie, otherwise known as the Loch Ness Monster, I'm sorry to say that I personally did not catch a glimpse of her, despite keeping my eyes peeled. However, Jim said he saw her but just didn't get a chance to take a photo, so that's something isn't it!! Anyway, since poor old Nessie's been sighted, sought after, investigated, reported on, and sold as a tourist attraction since 1933, I'm actually quite glad we weren't the ones to prove her existence. She'd never get any peace then and the poor thing is obviously pretty camera shy!

After our boat cruise finished, we set off for the home of a family whose contact details we'd been given by some friends from home. They live on a farm near the small town of Tain, which is about an hour north of Loch Ness. (Incidentally, Tain is the most latitudinally north place I have yet been to!) After some slight difficulties finding their place, we ended up getting there just in time for tea and had a lovely evening with John and Christine and four of their kids (who are in their 20s).

We even tried haggis (see photo below)! Don't know that I'd go out of my way for it now that I can say I've had it once, but the others said they actually quite liked it! (If you haven't heard of haggis, you really must click on the above link and read the first few sentences...)



That night we stayed at their farm - Jim and Jenny in the main farmhouse and Ben and I in the cottage their daughter Christine lives in right across the road. It was very kind of them and we enjoyed our visit very much! It's so wonderful to make new friends along the way; that's one of the nicest things about travelling!

After breakfast the next morning, Tuesday, we said goodbye and headed a few miles away to the farm of John's brother Sandy and his wife Margaret, who had insisted we visit them too so they could meet us! There are also connections between their immediate family and people we know - not least that Ben's family had met their daughter Gwen in Australia a few years ago! (Gwen lives in Wales so we didn't see her on the day I'm writing about, but after (re)meeting her at Somerset recently we now have plans to go and stay with her in July!)

Anyway, we had an excellent visit and morning tea with Sandy, Margaret, and their visitor Traudie from South Africa. Oh, and the owner of a great pair of puppy dog eyes (see below)!



Afterwards, we drove back through Inverness and set off across the middle of Scotland to Fort William on the western side, along the river road mentioned above. On the way, we stopped in the village of Drumnadrochit for a look through the Loch Ness Monster Visitor Centre. After a brief kilt-trying-on session by one of our party (some photos never make it onto the blog...), we were on our way again.

Later, we stopped for lunch in the town of Fort Augustus. This was a gorgeous little spot right on the river, with a series of locks right in the middle of town. Just as we arrived, they were starting to operate the locks to let a few boats through, so we stayed to watch the whole process. It was the first time we'd seen locks in operation, so it was quite exciting! (Click here for an explanation of how locks work - click "up" or "down" to get started.)



Then we had a nice lunch, bought some delicious fudge and some groceries, and continued on our way. We had to stop a few miles out of Fort Augustus to wait for a swing bridge to be back in position before we could carry on - it had just let through the same boats we had watched go through the Caledonian Canal locks in Fort Augustus! Our destination for the night was the Chase the Wild Goose Hostel in Fort William (and yes, the name was a key factor in my decision making process when booking the accommodation!).

Once in Fort William, after some relaxing and lazing around on our bunks in the late afternoon, Jim and Jenny set off on a walk that ended up being quite a bit longer than they had intended. This was because just as we were about to set off in the car to pick them up and go out for tea, as agreed before they left, we realised that Jim actually had the car keys in his pocket...

Eventually we had a late tea in Fort William's town centre, and then headed back to Chase the Wild Goose for a good old snooze. Until next time - goodnight!

PS. Although we had been warned before heading to Scotland that "they speak a different language up there", we didn't have much trouble understanding everyone. However, click here for some scarily accurate phonetic representations of a Scottish accent!!! (You may need to persist a little before it starts to make sense though!)