Category: 2022 Epic Adventure

Today is another cloudy day but, luckily, we only got a couple of sprinkles. Rain is expected later but we had already walked over 12000 steps by early afternoon so we were tired and home by 2pm.

Our first stop was the only remaining part of the medieval York Castle, Clifford’s Tower. The first castle on this site was built by the Normans in 1069. The Tower was completed in the late 13th century.

There were quite a few stairs getting inside but Peter made it like a champ. There are several info boards on the inside telling the story of the castle.

I walked up a couple of flights of the spiral staircase to get to the top.

Then we headed to York Minister, the cathedral. It’s the largest Gothic Cathedral in Britain.

Unfortunately, it was closed for the 10-day period of mourning for the Queen so we weren’t able to get in to visit. It is open for individual prayers so we may go back tomorrow but we won’t be able to wonder around and take pictures. Here are a couple I found online.

After walking the perimeter of the Minster, we headed to the Shambles which is one of the best preserved medieval shopping streets in Europe. If it looks a bit familiar to Harry Potter fans, it’s because this street was used as the vision for Diagon Alley in the HP movie franchise.

Then it was off to St. Mary’s Abbey, a ruined Benedictine Abbey from the mid-11th century. On the way, we stopped in at St. Helen’s Church.

We’d walked quite a long way so we rested for awhile in the York Museum Gardens. Even though it was cloudy it was a beautiful day.

We could have taken a city bus home but we would have had to walk 8 minutes to get to the bus and it was only 15 minutes to walk home….so we walked home. Along the way, we passed part of the city walls. You can actually walk around the city center on the walls. We may do a part of it tomorrow.

Tomorrow is supposed to be a beautiful day. We thought about driving east to the York Moors National Park, but I would love another drive-free day, so we are going to hang here. There are sightseeing river cruises so we may do that.

Another day, another castle. Castle Howard is one we hadn’t planned to visit, in fact we didn’t even know about it. But, we were looking for something to do close to York to kill time before we could check into our Airbnb flat at noon.

Construction of Castle Howard began in 1699 and ended in 1811. In 1940 a fire destroyed a large part of the castle, including the dome, the central hall and the dining room. While some of it has been restored including the dome, the entire east wing remains unfinished.

The castle has been used in many TV programs and films including Barry Lyndon, Brideshead and Brideshead revisited, Harry Potter, Victoria and most recently, the first season of Bridgerton on Netflix. It was the filming of Brideshead in 1980 that gave them the money they needed to continue with the restoration of the house.

Of course there was a chapel.

And a few gorgeous stained glass windows.

The grounds were massive and included a playground, lake and formal gardens.

After the castle we had a 40-minute drive to our new flat and were settled in no time at all. Tomorrow we’re visiting the sights in York, probably taking the hop on/hop off bus. It’s supposed to be a rainy day, but who knows what will actually happen when the sun comes up.

Our main objective today was to visit Hadrian’s Wall. On our way we stopped at the Garden of Remembrance in Lockerbie cemetery which is where the memorial is for the victims of Pan Am flight 103 is located. Flight 103 exploded over this small Scottish town on December 21, 1988 due to a terrorist bomb planted in a piece of luggage. In total, 270 people were killed included 243 passengers, 16 crew and 11 people on the ground. The latter were killed when a wing section hit a house and exploded.

In addition to the main memorial, there were individual tributes.

There was a also a row of trees that had name plaques of additional victims of the disaster.

It really was a beautiful memorial and we’re so glad we went. It was only about 5 minutes off our intended route and well worth the time.

After the cemetery, we were on our way to Hadrian’s Wall. It runs 73 miles along the width of northern England, just south of the Scottish border and marked the northern most border of the Roman Empire. Building started in 122AD (exactly 1900 years ago) and took 6 years to build.

The first part we saw was the remains of a Watch Tower which were placed about every mile along the wall.

Then it was on to the next major stop, the Birdoswald Roman Fort, one of the best preserved forts along the wall.

Then it was on to the Roman Army Museum. It’s a small museum but had some nice exhibits and artifacts.

Here’s me trying my best to be an archer. I did okay with two hands but then someone would need to hold the bow so I could pull back the string.

After a lovely lunch where we had a long chat with a Scottish gentleman, we found a part of the wall that was only a 2-minute walk from the car park.

We’re spending the night in Sunderland and tomorrow we head south to York for 3 nights. We weren’t sure if we were going to make it down there as it was either York or the Lake District. But given the cloudy, rainy weather we decided to head for York instead. I’ve heard it’s a beautiful city and I can’t wait to see it.

Given the Queen’s death, we weren’t sure if anything would be open today but we were able to see the sites we had on our agenda. It was, though, a little sad to see flags at half staff and pictures of her in the Regimental Museum at Stirling Castle. Her amazing smile will certainly be missed.

We started at Stirling Castle. There has been a building on this site since the mid-7th century but the current buildings were built between 1490-1600.

It has been the home of King James IV, V, and VI as well as Mary Queen of Scots (mother of James VI).

Mary Queen of Scots was crowned in the Castle’s Chapel 479 years ago today (9 Sep 1543) when she was only 9 months old.

https://youtu.be/d0PweCk9oPY

The Castle is known for its Stirling Heads, 16th century oak medallions carved with images of kings, queens, nobles, Roman emperors and characters from the Bible and classical mythology. At one time they decorated many of the ceilings in the Castle. The ceiling in the King’s Presence Hall has been restored with copies of the medallions.

There was also a museum dedicated to the Argyll and Sutherland Highlander Regimental, which had been headquartered for many years at the Castle.

After the Castle, we drove just a few minutes to the Wallace Monument. It commemorates Scottish hero, William Wallace of the movie, Braveheart, fame. The tower is almost 220 feet and we could have access the roof and exhibition halls if we wanted to climb the 246 steps to get there. We didn’t.

After lunch, we headed to our last stop, the Battle of Bannockburn Visitor Center. This battle occurred in 1324 between Scotland and England. Leading the Scots was King Robert Bruce who bested English King Edward II. As a result, Scotland won its independence from England.

Tomorrow we head south back to England where Peter will finally get to see the remains of Hadrian’s Wall. Should be fun.

Right now the UK is in a bit of a panic as news reports are talking about the Queen’s family gathering in Balmoral. She looked so frail on Tuesday when she met with the new PM, Liz Truss. It will be a sad day; she is a remarkable woman and the world will miss her when she finally passes.

1835 (6:35pm) OMG….they just announced that the Queen has died. My heart is broken!

It’s so hard to continue with this blog, but…

We spent our day in Glasgow, dropping the car at a park and ride then taking the train the short 15 minutes to city center. The sun poked out a little but the sky was mostly cloudy and it rained a little in the afternoon.

The train station is adjacent to George Square, a one-block square square in the center if Glasgow. The square was laid out by King George III but, oddly, there’s no statue of him in the square. The hop on/hop off bus guide said that when he “lost” the colonies, Glasgow lost a major trading partner as the city used to trade with the tobacco growers in the colonies. Apparently, he has never been forgiven.

There is, though, the only statue in the world of Queen Victoria on a horse.

We started our sightseeing at the Glasgow Cathedral, which looks like it could use a good power wash.

But the inside was beautiful.

The Cathedral is built on what are believed to be the remains of St. Mungo (real name Kentigern) who died in 614. He was a missionary and is the founding member and patron saint of Glasgow.

After the Cathedral, we got on the hop on/hop off bus and made a few stops. First was at this beautiful fountain, the largest terra cotta fountain in the world.

Across from the fountain is Glasgow Green, a 15th century park that is the largest park in Glasgow. A law still on the books is that any citizen of Glasgow can graze their cows and/or sheep in the Green. I looked but didn’t see any grazing. This was also the place Bonnie Prince Charlie gathered his army before the Battle of Culloden, which if you remember, didn’t turn out so well for them.

Then it was back on the bus and heading to an area near George Square for lunch. Of course it was Italian as, if you haven’t already figured out, Peter is not terribly adventuresome when it comes to trying new food.

Since it was starting to rain, we decided to to to the Royal Theater for a matinee performance of Bugsy Malone. The main characters were played by children and, while a little corny, we thoroughly enjoyed it.

Here’s a video of the curtain call. The kids had a ton of energy.

I can’t write anymore. I’ve got BBC on and am watching the coverage. God Save the King.

The day started beautifully with the sun shining and a delicious breakfast at our B&B. Joan prepared a full Scottish breakfast, minus the baked beans (seriously, who does baked beans at 7:30 in the morning??).

We’re used to eating a few scrambled eggs in the morning so this is way more food than we eat for breakfast. But everything was delicious.

We left Joan’s to head for the Glencoe National Reserve on our way to Stirling Castle, about a 4-hour drive. It was a beautiful drive along Loch Lochy. Here’s a short video Peter took. You can just barely see the lake to the left of the screen but the mountains were beautiful with a low level of fog.

Shortly after this video was taken, about 90 minutes into our journey, we had our 2nd misadventure in less than 2 weeks. I think the picture says it all.

OK, so going about 50-55MPH (speed limit 60), I hit a ginormous hole that I didn’t see until it was too late to do anything. This is the result. The road was two lane and full of curves so it was at least 1/3 mile before I could find a safe spot to stop. I could actually smell something burning and was afraid the tire was going to ignite when I saw a gravel road that was luckily on my side of the street.

We unloaded the trunk to try and change the tire except, wait for it, no spare. Apparently they don’t put them in the rental cars anymore We had an emergency number for Europcar so we quickly got someone working on getting us out of there.

Unfortunately, what wasn’t quick was actually getting out of there. After about 45 minutes roadside assistance called and said she couldn’t find anyone to come out to change the tire so she would sent a tow truck and would let me know when it was available.

I waited almost 90 minutes with no call from roadside assistance, so I called back and was transferred to someone else who said she would find a tow truck and I would get a text with an estimated time. A few minutes later I got a text that said someone would be with us in no more than 240 minutes. For you math wizards who quickly did the calculation, that’s 4 hours.

By this time, though, the expected clouds were rolling in so we settled into the car to wait. Luckily about 30 minutes later a tow truck came rolling up and within 15 minutes we were on our way to Fort William and the tire store. The driver had just gotten the call about 20 minutes before he picked us up so I think whoever I spoke with on the 2nd call dropped the ball and never reached out to a tow truck.

We were very fortunate that the repair shop had the correct tire in stock and that I didn’t damage the wheel when I drove on it before I could stop. So within another 30 minutes, we were on our way. Except by this time it was after 2pm so instead of stopping at Stirling Castle we came straight to the Doubletree Resort about 15 miles outside of Glasgow. As it was we didn’t get here until almost 5pm.

While inconvenient, it could have been so much worse. I could have lost control of the car when the tire exploded. Or we could have been slammed into from behind when our speed dropped to almost nothing for the time it took to find a place to pull over. So, as they say, all’s well…yada yada yada.

It turns out that our route didn’t change at all so we still saw Glencoe Natural Reserve and the eastern edge of the Trossachs National Park. It was a bit rainy and we were tired so we didn’t stop for pictures, but I found these online. Even with the clouds it was a beautiful drive.

We didn’t get to see Loch Lomand as it’s on the western edge of the Park and we drove down the eastern edge. But there were plenty of other pretty lakes so we don’t feel like we missed too much.

We couldn’t face getting back into the car to go to dinner, so we ate at the hotel. Tomorrow we head to Glasgow, hopefully without any more misadventures. One can always hope.

Today’s weather was better than forecasted with sunny skies in the morning and a few clouds in the afternoon, so it was a great day for our drive around the Isle of Skye. Here’s our route, starting from our B&B (Rasa Sayang) in Kyle of Lochalish just the mainland side of the Skye Bridge. It took exactly 4 hours for the drive but because we had lots of stops it didn’t seem that long.

The first thing we saw was at Sligachan with its famous bridge.

About 45 minutes later, we arrived at our castle de jour, Dunvegan Castle. It is is the oldest continuously inhabited castle in Scotland and has been the ancestral home of the Chiefs of Clan MacLeod for 800 years.

The castle was first built in the 13th century and, like many others, was added on to piecemeal over the years.

While certainly not small, this castle was one that I could actually picture living in. It had a homey feel and wasn’t over the top in its decorations. The current Chief of the Clan, Hugh MacLeod, lives in apartments on the top floor.

The Ferry Flag hanging in the Drawing Room is one of the Clan’s most prized possessions.

The flag was brought back by a MacLeod from the Holy Land when he returned from the Crusades and is said to have special powers. Here is a link to the story of the Fairy Flag. https://www.scotclans.com/pages/the-fairy-flag-of-dunvegan

The North Room was filled with memorabilia, including another one of the castle’s prized possessions. The Dunvegan Cup is made of wood with silver plates and dates to 1493.

There was also a dungeon. It was small and at least 10 feet underground. No way I want to spend 5 minutes down there.

Once finished in this fascinating castle, we headed out to the gardens. We only visited a couple of the many gardens in the 42,000 acre estate.

After Dunvegan, we headed to the Fairy Glen which is a number of conical hills that look man-made but are the remnants of an ancient landslip. It almost looked like the hills were covered in moss.

Next up was The Quiraing. The road between these two sites was one of those one lane with pull off roads that Peter hates. We only had a couple of problems when cars were coming way to fast and we had to make emergency pull offs. My honey was pretty white knuckled after those but we made it without any major problems.

We only saw one part of the Quiraing as well as this walk was even further than Fairy Glen, 2 hours round trip at a moderate pace. Since our pace is anything but moderate, it would have taken forever. So we took a few pics from the overlook and moved on.

Then it was on to Kilt Rock. Its name comes from the ripple on the rocks that resembles a folded kilt. There was no walking this time, just a short trip from the car park to the overlook.

Our final stop was Old Man of Storr but for this one we didn’t get further than the car park. We had seen it from the distance during the drive, but once we got there we realized there was a steep walk of over an hour to get to the rocks. It should come as no surprise that we didn’t even get out of the car.

Our final stop of the day was Portree, the largest village on the Isle. By this time it was after 3pm and we hadn’t yet had lunch so we were starving. Most of the restaurants had stopped serving lunch but weren’t serving dinner until 5pm but we found one diner that served all day. After a lovely beef burger dinner, we headed back to our B&B for a relaxing evening.

Tomorrow we have our longest drive yet, 4 1/2 hours. But we have several stops to make so hopefully it will go as fast as today’s drive went. As always, thanks for traveling with us on our adventures.

Today was an absolutely gorgeous day. The temp was in the low 70s and the sun was shining. Unfortunately tomorrow is supposed to be cloudy and rainy again so that made today even more special.

The first stop today was Eilean Donan (pronounced Ail-en Do-nan) which is the most photographed castle in all of Scotland and was the site of the Scottish HQ of MI6 in several James Bond movies. Not being a James Bond movie fan I wouldn’t know but maybe some of you recognize it.

The original castle was built in the 13th century and became a stronghold for the powerful Clan Mackenzie and its ally, Clan Macrae. In response to the Mackenzie support of the Jacobite rebellion, the castle was destroyed in 1719. The current castle is a 20th century reconstruction of the old castle. It is still privately owned but the family no longer lives there.

We chose not to go into the castle as there are 100 steep stairs on the self-guided tour and we just didn’t feel up to dealing with them today. Since we’ve seen so many castles in the last few weeks, we don’t feel like we could have missed too much.

The castle was surrounded by a beautiful marsh, some of which you can see in this video.

In case you don’t feel like watching the video, here are a few pics.

After having our lunch at the castle, we drove another 40 minutes to the Torabhaig Distillery on the Isle of Skye. We tried several times to go on a distillery tour but could never get in so we’re glad we were able to do this one.

We’ve been to lots of wine and beer places but this is the first time we’ve toured a whiskey distillery and it was very interesting. It’s only a 3 step process but then the whiskey must age at least 3 years and 1 day. Longer is better but that’s the minimum.

At the end of the tour it was time for the tasting. I don’t like Scotch whiskey but didn’t want to be rude so I gave it a try. It was horrible. I mean even worse than other Scotch whiskey I’ve tasted. It was very smokey, which is their thing, but it tasted like I had put a piece of burnt firewood in my mouth. The guide said to try adding a few drops of water to dilute the smokey taste. Well, my thought was unless the water turned it into a Pina Colada, I’d take a pass. Peter tried it with water and said it didn’t help much. Even though we didn’t like the product, it was still fun to see how it was made.

After the tour we headed back off the island to just the other side of the bridge where we’re staying at a B&B for the next 2 nights. This is a first for us as we’ve always either stayed in an Airbnb flat or a hotel. But, we couldn’t find anything either on or close to the island that was reasonably priced so we decided to try something different. Rasa Sayang has a 9.5 (out of 10) rating on booking.com and the photos looked nice so we booked it. When Gracie was leading us here, we thought she’d gone bonkers again but when she said “You have arrived” my first thought was, arrived where??? This is where we were at the time.

But when we drove about 50 feet farther down the road, we found this on the opposite side of the street.

Our host, Joan, said that when they bought the house it they could see the bay but then a few years later the government built the military base right across the street. So, the view isn’t much but the home is lovely and our room is very nice.

The town of Kyle of Lochalsh is very tiny and doesn’t have a restaurant, so we went back across the bridge to the Isle of Skye to eat at a place called The Moils Restaurant. The food was very good but the view was spectacular.

Tomorrow we’re off to explore the Isle of Skye in more detail, stopping to see some of its most famous sights. It’s a beautiful island so we’re looking forward to the day.

It’s only 8:30pm and I’m trying to stay awake for a little while longer so I thought I’d tell you about our amazing anniversary dinner. At our host’s suggestion we ate at Contrast Brasserie, a Pan-Asian (what does that even mean??) restaurant about a 10-minute walk from the flat.

In spite of all the rain today, the weather cleared up enough for us to walk to dinner, which is great because we had less than 4000 steps today. On our way we passed a pretty church and some statues dedicated to Faith, Hope and Charity.

At the restaurant, they gave us a complimentary glass of Prosecco as a anniversary gift, which I wish we would have gotten before we ordered an entire bottle of Prosecco.

We both ordered the Rib Eye with King Prawns which was absolutely delicious.

After a delicious dinner, we walked home along the River Ness. By this time the sun was setting and it was beautiful.

All in all, it was a wonderful anniversary. Here’s hoping for many more.

It’s hard to believe but Peter and I have been married 7 years today. Considering I got married for the first time at age 60, who knew that we could pull this off. Given the potentially disastrous fall Peter had just over a week ago, we consider ourselves very blessed to celebrate the day together.

We started our special day with a nice breakfast and, of course, mimosas.

After breakfast we headed about an hour north to Dunrobin Castle. As with most of these ancient castles, it started as a Keep (1401) and was continually built on by subsequent generations. The part of the castle we saw was primarily from the mid-1800s.

We arrived just after 4 coaches of tours arrived so the number of people to see the castle was ridiculous. One of the stewards told us that they would be leaving in about 45 minutes to see the falconry demonstration and the castle would empty out nicely at the time. Since we’ve seen things like that before and weren’t interested in standing in the rain to see it again, we went to the café for a mid-morning snack to wait them out.

As you can tell from the pictures, it was a cloudy, rainy day. But, since we’ve been in the UK exactly 6 weeks today and this was our first real rainy day, we’re not complaining. The weather has been absolutely amazing so it was no big deal to skip the walk through the formal gardens. It’s not like we hadn’t already seen gardens.

Tomorrow we leave Inverness and head southwest towards the Isle of Skye where we’ll see another castle (seriously, how many are there??) and go for a tour of a whisky distillery. We’ve been trying to do that since we got to Scotland and haven’t been able to get in. Hopefully it will be worth the wait. We’ll let you know.