Advertisement
Published: September 16th 2008
Edit Blog Post
On the 5th of September, we said farewell to Damo as he left for his long bus ride back to London, as this was also the day that our Scottish adventure was to begin. We had our rental car delivered to us at Agnes’s place, filled out the paperwork, under my name now that I’m 25 and all and all responsible and stuff now... Anyway, Alex and I said goodbye to Agnes, and drove to fuel up the car. We bought a map at the service station, and Alex, being unable to drive a manual, was gifted the task of navigating us through the country. Luckily, the trip to Inverness, our first stop was quite easy, getting onto a road called the A82, it turned out it led us straight there. We stopped off in a small town called Tyndrum, where I had the best fish and chips ever!, and Alex had a curry. The rather scenic road was quite breathtaking, as we travelled through some of the beautiful Scottish highlands. After a 6 hour drive, we ended up at Inverness, where we booked into our accommodation, the Inverness youth hostel, which turned out to be ok.
The second day we
travelled down the A82 again, stopping off near Loch Ness for some breakfast, this was on the way to Urquhart Castle, a ruin that sits on the coast, overlooking the famous Loch Ness. We walked around the site, going in and out of the former rooms, keeping an ever watchful eye out for the elusive Loch Ness Monster, which we didn’t see..... boring!!! We left Loch Ness for a drive down to Dornie, a town right near the Isle of Skye, where low and behold lies a former Castle that belonged to Alex’s Scottish family, the Mackenzie’s. However it appears that at some point in history, the Mackenzie’s gave the castle to the McRae’ clan to govern and look after, and therefore all the stuff inside and in the gift shop is all about that clan, so I told Alex that it wasn’t his castle anymore.... He wasn’t too happy with that... On our drive back home to Inverness, we stopped off at a Cairn... I had no idea what one was before Alex told me, but apparently they are Neolithic burial sites, dating from about 2000 BC. It looked nothing more than like a mound of rocks with stones
propped up encircling it, but obviously it meant something serious to the people back in their time.
We left the old burial site and returned to Inverness, where we went out to an Italian restaurant for dinner.
The next day we left Inverness for a long drive in search of a castle that belonged, and still belonged up to the late 70’s to my Scottish heritage, the Irvine’s. It turned out to be a easy drive as we were on B roads for most of the trip, so the lawn mower under the hood of our little beast struggled with the massively steep inclines. The scenery however was just as beautiful as the heather had started to come out on the hills and we drove though a couple of ski villages packed up for the summer. We stopped off in a town called Tomintow for some breakfast and then travelled all the way to Drum castle, near the town of Banchory, not far from Aberdeen. We walked through the castle, which resembles a fine stately home now, as it was lived in by the last laird of Drum up to the late 1970’s where he then sold it to the
National heritage trust of Scotland. It was a lovely place, and I signed the book that was kind of an Irvine visitors guest book. We took a walk around the grounds, and decided to get on with our journey back to Glasgow, to Agnes’s house.
On the way, we stopped off at the Wallace memorial, where we took some photos from the outside, to those who don’t know, William Wallace is kind of the National Hero of Scotland, immortalized in the Mel Gibson film, Brave-heart. The monument was built in the late 1800’s in his honour. After some difficulty, we arrived finally back at Agnes’s place, where we cooked up some burgers and had an early night.
We said goodbye to Agnes again, and departed for our next stop, the Coastal town of Berwick upon tweed. We stopped off at Alex’s dad’s favourite site, or at least the site he told us to see, known as the Falkirk Wheel, in Falkirk.... duh! It is a replacement for a series of Locks on a river canal system, which connects one canal to another. However, with the canals being at varying heights to each other, the Wheel allows for two boats to
urquhart castel
alex was impressed by the trebuchet enter it, and within 5 minutes, it rotates around, and deploys the boats at the opposite side. Amazing!! We had lunch and watched the wheel turn, which was actually not very thrilling, but it was good to see. The following drive was uneventful, and we arrived early in Berwick. We went to a pub to kill the time before check in, and then checked in to the Hostel, which turned out to be nothing more than a cupboard sized room with 1 bunk bed and a TV. For 40£, we thought it was a bit of a rip off, but hey that’s Berwick for you I guess quite pricey because it was a beautiful costal town.
We gladly left the town to the next stop, York, which was only 3 hours away from Berwick. We got in about 12pm, only to find that York’s River bank had flooded, and it was raining, typical English weather really... We parked the car and had a walk around the old fortified walls that used to surround the medieval city. From there Alex and I walked down the shambles, and old Tudor styled street that used to be the Butchers quarter, where all the
meat was, but now it’s a plush street, adorned by tea houses, in which I had a cream tea (kinda a Devonshire tea), and we wandered though some Jewellery shops. Due to the rain, we decided to find something indoors to do, so walking past the Old York Cathedral we walked to the Museum, which had various artefacts’s dating from Neolithic to roman to Viking and Norman times. Also in the park grounds surrounding the museum, was the ruin of an old Abbey that was occupied in the 12th century, and some Roman Ruins dating back to around 300AD. Once it hit 4pm, we picked up our car and drove 3 minutes to the Hotel for the night. When we checked in however, the girl behind the desk said that someone, also called Alexander McKenzie, and checked in, so accidently, they were placed in our room, which was a double, and only a single was left. Instead, the girl gave us a room in the adjoining building, which turned out to be a lovely, huge room with ensuite bathroom and couches and a TV, and even books and stuff. So it didn’t turn out bad after all. Alex and I
went to a pub for dinner, and we drank some wine and watched some TV before turning in for the night.
The next day we had our drive to Norwich, where we were staying with Dave and Liz again. We had a lovely stay over the 2 days, going into the city to shop, and seeing Alex’s great Uncle Fred once again.
We left Norwich to return the car to Ipswich in the morning, where we arrived after some confusion with the directions, but it wasn’t before long where we settled in back at our home away from home at Sue and Keith’s house. Thus concluding the end of our Scottish trip.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.287s; Tpl: 0.014s; cc: 6; qc: 47; dbt: 0.0831s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb