Travel Blog Posts
October 15th 2007
We got up early in the morning on the 14th October and went for a short walk down to the harbour to board our ferry to Fishguard. This ferry was slightly larger than the one to Belfast as it had cabins and multiple decks, however there were fewer eating options. We did however have our breakfast on the ship as it meant we didn't need to get up even earlier. After we arrived at the Fishguard terminal which was again well integrated with the railway station, we had a 1 hour wait until the train arrived. In fact our whole afternoon was to be taken up by rail travel with three separate changes for some reason or another just to get to Cardiff. First we went to a place called Carmarthan where we changed to a ... read more
October 13th 2007
We left Dublin on a train from Heuston Station which took us through to Waterford which was the end of the line. Although we would have preferred to stay at Kilkenny we couldn't find anything there that was within our price range. The Waterford train was very crowded and we boarded the train in a similar manner as the train from Glasgow where everyone waited in the main concourse area until only a short time before the train was ready to depart. When we arrived at Waterford we had quite a long walk up a big hill before we could get to the hotle where we were staying which was on the edge of the town near the famous crystal factory. We also had quite a challenge finding anything decent to eat that night as there ... read more
October 12th 2007
We had little trouble catching a train to Dublin as our accommodation in Belfast was right next to a suburban train station and it was easy to change trains to the express train to Dublin. We caught quite an early train which we thought would give us plenty of time to find a place to stay as again we couldn't find anything within our price range on the internet. We arrived at Dublin Connolly Station (one of their two terminus stations) and after grabbing something to eat we went for a realtively long walk to the centre of the city where the visitor centre is located. There were a number of lines at the visitor centre, with a separate one if you wanted to book a b&b/guesthouse/hotel from the one to book a hostel. We decided ... read more
Belfast
Published: October 16th 2007Europe » United Kingdom » Northern Ireland » County Antrim » Belfast
October 10th 2007
When we arrived at Belfast ferry terminal we were hoping we would have been able to find some information about accommodation we we hadn't been able to find anything for a reasonable price on the internet. Unfortunately we found nothing there. Our fallback was to walk into town to get to the visitor information centre which had an accommodation booking service. When we left the ferry terminal building it looked like a long walk into town and we saw some taxis waiting out the front. As we waited a taxi driver approached us and offerred us a lift into the city for only £5. When he heard where we were going and what we were trying to do he offerred to find us something himself. He made a phone call and he ended up getting us ... read more
October 9th 2007
We didn't really do too much at Glasgow. We found our hotel quite easily which was on the edge of the CBD in a grid network of streets and we even found an on-street carpark that was located not too far away from our hotel that didn't require any payment. The Scottish cities seem to be much easier to find parking in than the English ones. On the morning of the 9th we returned our car, checked out of our hotel and boarded a train to Stranraer. This was our first train in Scotland and only our 3rd in the UK other than the Eurostar and our trip to Brighton. Luckily we got a cheap deal which combined this ticket with our ferry trip to Belfast. One thing that was strange about boarding our train at ... read more
Inverness
Published: October 16th 2007Europe » United Kingdom » Scotland » Inverness-shire » Inverness
October 8th 2007
We left Stirling Castle at around 6:00pm on the 7th of October, and we had a long drive (150 miles or so) to go to get to Inverness. To avoid the problems we had previously experienced of making calls to various B&Bs late in the afternoon as we drove along and then finding out the only places left were really expensive, we had decided to book a place to stay before we left Edinburgh. The place we chose was in a place called Nairn which was another 15 miles or so beyond Inverness. This meant that although we knew it was going to be late by the time we got there, we were not too concerned. We arrived at Inverness at around 8:00pm and decided we would look to for something to eat there first before ... read more
October 7th 2007
In addition to staying the night at Alnwick, we also visited the Alnwick castle which is the first castle we visited on our trip which is still inhabited. This one is inhabited by the Duke of Northumbria. When you go on the tour of the castle, not only do you see paintings of old royality but there are also recent photos everywhere of the current Duke and his family. It was quite a change to what we had been seeing at other places. Alnwick castle looks much more like what we would expect a castle to look like, prior to visiting all the castles we saw on the main European continent. This castle has also featured in some of the Harry Potter movies. After Alnwick, we continued up the coast to see another castle at the ... read more
October 5th 2007
We left the cheap hotel in the industrial estate and drove back to Whitby where there is the remains of an old Abbey on a cliff overlooking the sea which was built back in Saxon times. This was another place run by English Heritage and it had an excellent audio guide which we listened to in detail. After leaving Whitby, we drove into Durham where we stopped for lunch. Durham has a castle and a cathedral which are located on the top of a hill at one end of the town. Unfortunately the castle is used as a college for the Durham University and we were unable to go through it, however we did get a good photo of the cathedral from the other side of the river. We had learnt our lesson with parking in ... read more
October 4th 2007
We left Rotherham early in the morning and headed into York. Like Oxford, it was very difficult to find a parking space in the York town centre and it was also very expensive. York also has both an outer and an inner ring road around the town centre, we ended up parking in a pay carpark just on the outside of the inner ring road. (The inner ring road followed the outside of the old city walls, whereas the outer ring road was of a much higher standard and was basically the boundary of the built up area.) York is an impressive English town as it has a very intact city wall and city gates. We walked around part of the wall and visited the Richard III museum which is housed in one of the wall ... read more
October 3rd 2007
We had prearranged to hire a car from Salisbury and were aiming to travel all the way to York on this day in order to catch back up to our revised schedule after spending a few extra days with Ed and Ellen. This was quite a long drive. As per our revised plan, we headed into the town of Oxford for lunch. It was really difficult finding anywhere within the town to park for free! We noticed that there are signs advising you to park in large carparks off the ring road which encircles the town and then catch a bus into the town centre, but as we were pressed for time we ignored these. After not finding any on-street parking anywhere near the town centre we ended up parking in some dodgy free spaces in ... read more
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