bilboburgler

No not banning, appleby will be on as usual, just less buggy racing on the roads at night.

jane1144

DAY 9, THURSDAY, JUNE 7th

We slept in a bit this morning as breakfast isn't until 8:30. We haven't quite figured out the heating system so it was a little difficult to crawl out of a toasty bed. And, guess what? Yup, it's pouring rain with a cold wind. We showed some modest restraint with breakfast, because the odds on walking much in the rain are not good.

Once we were up and going, we headed out to Windermere. The hills were all shrouded in cloud and the mist was hanging over the lakes. It is beautiful here even in the poor weather.

We slowly made our way on some single track roads and some narrow two way roads to Windermere. We got parked, although the spaces were so narrow that I could barely get out of the car. We walked around until we were cold and wet, and then stopped for some delicious leek and potato soup, with a little bun. It was so good to have something warm to eat. When we emerged, it was still pouring so, even with Gortex coats, we decided to call it a day.

When I went back to the car, I had to get in on the passenger side and climb into the driver's seat. I backed out to let DH in. It rained all the way home. We stopped at our local pub to check out the menu, and made plans to go there for dinner. Naturally, as I look out my window now, I can see some blue sky!

Tomorrow, we are off to Edinburgh.

jane1144

DAY 10, FRIDAY, JUNE 9th

We had our last breakfast at the farm and a general discussion about sheep, which are raised here. We found we could call out our window and the "girls" would come to the gate.

We drove for a while on M6, but turned off to A7 as it is the scenic, and slower route, into Edinburgh. We stopped once for coffee , but basically made our way to where we are staying. Our B&B is at the University of Edinburgh, which we have been at twice before with the band.

We settled in and then did a Tesco run to get a wine top up. I think a few munchies might have fallen in our bag! It was nice to get out and walk in the sunshine..,yes sunshine, finally. We had few sprinkles on the way, but basically it has been a partly sunny day.

I must say I have new-found admiration for my friends and relatives who have ever had to walk with a cane. I have been using one for longer walks as I seem to have a tendonitis in my right foot. A lot of walking yields redness, pain and swelling. Poor timing, I know. Any of you who have been here know how hard it is to find ice! I don't know if the cane actually helps, or if it is the sore wrist and shoulder just taking my mind off the foot!!! DH thinks it's wonderful that I can't keep up my usual pace.

We are staying in for dinner tonight, and haven't really made firm plans for tomorrow...winging it a bit this visit

jane1144

DAY 11, SATURDAY, JUNE 10th

Last night was a little rocky. We had noisey neighbours who kept us up until about 1:30. Then we went happily to sleep until the fire alarm went off at 5:10! Fortunately, there was no emergency and we both got back to sleep.

We went for our first wonderful breakfast. We are staying at U of Edinburgh where we have been before with the band. There is everything you can imagine on the morning menu and it requires some restraint to stick with cereal and fruit and plain yoghurt.

We called our friend, Andy, who used to be the lead drummer of the Pipes and Drums of Canada. He is a Scot, who has now moved home in his retirement. He is in his eighties and still teaches drumming to the local band where he lives, just outside of Edinburgh.

Andy picked us up and took us to a village near where he lives, so we could see his band play at Gala Day. This is an annual event that each community plans for its children. The young kids dress up in home made costumes and get to participate in the parade. I think just about everyone wins a prize. My favourite was a brownie pack dressed up as sheep, mostly wearing white clothing covered in cotton balls. There were bouncy houses and other games to play. Everyone was very enthusiastic and there were no cell phones in evidence!

Andy took us to the local pub for a very good lunch. Then we went a few miles away where it is thought that the saltire flag was conceived. This is the flag that we know as the flag of St. Andrew, with a white X on a blue background. The legend is that the soldiers looked up to the sky and saw a cloud formation that looked like the X against a brilliant blue sky and adopted this sight as their emblem.

Andy returned us home in mid afternoon. We were so glad to have seen him and we had such a lovely, non tourist experience. We enjoyed meeting the band members who were interested in swapping band information.

We made a quick trip to the Co-op, because Stew was having a peanut butter emergency and I was getting short of red wine.

We stayed in to eat at the U of E pub tonight because my foot is complaining a bit with the walking we did. We had a light supper and watched the England vs Scotland football (soccer) game which ended in a tie. Since no one would mistake us as sports fans, we were fortunate to have been sitting beside a lovely Swedish woman who explained the game to us.

We are now in for the evening, looking out at a brilliant blue sky. We had a few showers early on, but it turned into a warm day with a fresh breeze.

jane1144

DAY 12, SUNDAY, JUNE 11th

We both slept really well last night, probably because the night before was more of a challenge.

We had a leisurely start to our day. After lingering over breakfast, we walked down to the Palace at Holyrood House where we took a most interesting tour. Even DH, who isn't a palace kind of a guy, seemed to enjoy it. We also looked at the Queen's Gallery, but it was a special exhibition of a famous Dutch artist who went around the world painting insects and plants. She made major contributions to scientific knowledge, but it felt a bit like a biology lesson to us!

After our tour and a brief heavy downpour, we started walking UP the Royal Mile, stopping in shops along the way. We had a lovely lunch and avoided more showers. When we carried on we were in sunshine.

We were remembering our first trip with the band in 2009 when we marched all the way UP the Royal MILE, mostly on cobblestones, leading the parade of the clans to Edinburgh Castle. That was after we had been on our feet all day at the Gathering. We must have been much younger!

We were standing just outside a building when we ran into friends from home. We knew they would be arriving today but we didn't have plans to meet. They were just waiting to check in to their accommodation. Small world.

We headed for home, and figured we had been walking constantly from about 9:00 to 2:30 with just a half hour break for lunch. I figure we should seize up shortly. My foot is doing better, but I put a bag of cold water on it which felt good. I was looking for one of those cold packs that don't require freezing, but all the pharmacies are closed on Sunday. Guess you can only get sick 6 days a week.

We decided to go across the street to pick up Chinese food, because it continued to rain intermittently. We got wet going over and came home in sunshine.

jane1144

DAY 13, MONDAY, JUNE 12th

We had a bit of a lazy start and did laundry in the morning. All set for another week.

We walked to the Royal Mile and had lunch at Bella Italia (thanks for the tip, Marilyn!). We went to get tickets for Mary King's Close but had to wait for a 3:30 entry time. That was fine. We used the time to walk down to Prince's Street to our favourite whisky shop, Romanes & Patersons. We had a tasting and selected a malt that we can't get at home.

We stopped for an ice cream cone and then trudged UP to the High Street again. We were too tired to walk anymore so we went in to St. Giles Cathedral, and just sat and waited.

When the appointed time came, we went back to Mary King's Close and had our tour. It was a bit hokey in presentation, but we learned quite a bit. It was really interesting to see what life back in the 1700's would have been like. We trudged for an hour on the tour.

We walked home, stopping for a pint at the Southsider, our favourite pub. We got a few groceries and finally made it home, where we are trying to revive ourselves for dinner with a glass of wine.

We had a great but tiring day, with a few showers, a little sun, and a persistent and enthusiastic wind. I was either too cold or too hot all of the time. Thankfully, we dress in layers.

Tomorrow, we are off to Stonehaven ( near Aberdeen) for one night. The objective is Dunottar Castle.

janisj

Isn't it great to have been often enough to have a favorite pub, and know your way around the 'old neighborhood'.

I do try to tell folks the everything is UP hill in Edinburgh. It should average out up and down but just never seems to work that way

Hope you had decent weather at Dunnottar. The hike out can be a bee-atch when it is wet/slippery.




(psst: >>We used the time to walk down to Prince's Street to our favourite whisky shop,<< it is Princes Street - plural of Prince - but you likely knew that and autocorrect intervened)

jane1144

(psst: >>We used the time to walk down to Prince's Street to our favourite whisky shop,<< it is Princes Street - plural of Prince - but you likely knew that and autocorrect intervened)

Thanks Janis...my bad!!

jane1144

DAY 14, TUESDAY, JUNE 13th

Well we had a little catastrophe last night. When I was closing the curtains, the rod broke and the curtains, rod and all fell down. Like the idiots we are, we tried to fix them. I climbed up in a chair, but wasn't tall enough, so DH wanted to try. As he stepped up, he engaged a slow swan dive and ended up gently hitting the floor. On the way down, however, he hit his back on the edge of a wooden bed. It is bruised and a bit sore, but we don't think it is too serious. I gave him an Aleve and he slept well. He says it hurts when he twists or coughs, but it hasn't really slowed him down. Even if he has cracked a rib, there is no real treatment except waiting it out. We called housekeeping who came and fixed the drapes. I guess there's a lesson here.....

We had our last breakfast at the University and set out for the fishing villages. Our car GPS obviously wanted to stay in Edinburgh so she took us in a complete circle. We have had enough experience in the city to realize what she did, so we reverted to the fail safe...road signs!

We arrived in Anstruther in time to share a fish and chip lunch at our favourite place. We looked over the harbour where the tide was completely out and all the boats were high and dry. I think the tidal range must be about 15 feet.

We headed next for Liff, a suburb of Dundee. We found the little church and churchyard where one of my ancestors, Duncan Blackhall, is buried. We couldn't find a stone for him. Perhaps he didn't have one, but, more likely, the stone is one of the many which are damaged, covered in lichen or otherwise unreadable. I would think that close to 50% of the markers were undecipherable.

From Dundee we headed north east towards Aberdeen. We stopped to take pictures at Dunnottar Castle. This an amazing ruin constructed, possibly in the 7th century on a rocky headland. It was raided by the Vikings and William Wallace among others. Just as we arrived, our mostly sunny day turned to light showers so we didn't make the walk all the way in. We admired the castle from afar and then moved on to Stonehaven for the night.

We are in a lovely B & B, on the third floor overlooking the sea. The proprietor offered all the guests a malt or some sherry at cocktail hour. We had an interesting conversation with an English couple who were deaf but very gregarious. Fortunately, their daughter could sign when we had difficulty. They were amazed that we had bears in Canada.

We walked down to the harbour for dinner. I had salmon skink (chowder) which was served in a bread bowl. Stew had a crab and avocado ciabatta. Neither of us could eat a full dinner after our big lunch. It was sprinkling again by the time we arrived home.

jane1144

DAY 15, WEDNESDAY, JUNE 14th

Another little calamity.....nothing serious! Some good with the bad.

After our lovely breakfast, we went up stairs to finish packing. For some reason I got looking for my laundry bags. I realized I didn't have them, nor did we have our light nylon jackets. In Stew's case that meant his FAVOURITE band jacket. They were back in Edinburgh...aaarrrgh!

So, instead of a trip through the Cairngorms and the Spey Valley, we shot back to Edinburgh in 2 hours 15 minutes. They had our stuff waiting for us, so we happily grabbed it and were back on M 9 going north again.

We stopped once for gas and lunch at a service centre. Lunch was a sandwich from Marks and Spencer's so it was pretty decent, but less than exciting.

The GOOD in all this adventure, was that we had to go right by the House of Bruar, just north of Pitlochry. This is a favourite store of our neighbours, who introduced it to us through the catalogue. When we stopped there a couple of years ago, Santa secretly acquired some lovely wooden spoons for the chef. We ran in quickly, found more spoons and were off again.

Barely up the road there was a serious accident and we were detoured off through a couple of villages that certainly couldn't accommodate the extra traffic. The biggest problem was that the larger trucks had to drive on the sidewalks just to get through. We lost about 45 minutes on this particular jaunt, but saw some pretty scenery and little villages we would have otherwise missed.

Once we got back on the highway, we called our next B&B to say we would be an hour later than expected. They were unconcerned. We arrived without any further ado, and are in a lovely spot with a view, over a farmer's field, to the water. We have two ducks and a chicken in the back yard.

We are in Tain in the midst of really lovely farming country, the predominant crop bring wheat. This is the farthest north we have been so far in Scotland, and I didn't expect crops, but we are right at sea level. We had a mostly cloudy day, but it was 19C with no wind. I hope that lasts for our ferry crossing to Orkney tomorrow. I have my Gravol just in case.

jane1144

DAY 16, THURSDAY, JUNE 15th

Hopefully, three events and it's over. Today, my hairdryer died with a spectacular popping noise. It's my dual voltage one which is about 10 years old. It really doesn't owe me much.

We had a wonderful breakfast (me with wet hair!), and left our spot in Tain, in sunshine. By the time we got just up the road to Dornoch we had showers. We stopped in Dornoch and walked around. It was very pretty, with roses of every colour climbing up the walls of the stone houses. We went through the cathedral and into a couple of shops. This is really a golfing town with a very good course. Our next door neighbours come over here to play every summer.

It continued to rain so we headed to our next destination, John O'Groats. We had our lunch there in a lovely little restaurant, but I had actually expected the town to be larger. We didn't walk around because it was pouring.

We drove on to Thurso, near were we would be catching the ferry. We managed to find a smallish British hairdryer so I am back in business. We filled in some time,looking around, until we boarded the ferry. We had our dinner aboard which was surprisingly good. I had been dreading the crossing, which is often really rough. The sun came out and the seas were only about 1-2 feet with a slight swell on the beam. Sure hope the sea state hangs in until Thursday morning when we cross back!

We disembarked, and made our way to our B&B. It is plain from the outside, but we have a lovely room with a king bed and a view over the sea. We will be happy here for two nights.

jane1144

DAY 17, FRIDAY, JUNE 16th

Maybe the hairdryer didn't count, or else we are starting a new triplet!

After a great sleep and a nice breakfast, we were up and going. We drove into Stromness, down one car width streets. If you made a three inch mistake, you would find yourself in someone's sitting room.

As we extracted ourselves from that adventure, I noticed that our low tire pressure light came on. We came home to ask where we should take it. The proprietor here has an air compressor and filled the tire (tyre), which was down by more than half. We only had to go about .5 of a mile to the local garage. They said to leave it for an hour, so we went for coffee. When we came back, they had pulled out a screw and put a plug in. We are so glad that this happened where we could get it fixed easily.

Then we set off for Scapa Flow and the Italian Chapel which we toured. This is a very historically rich area, especially if you are a World War buff. I remember reading a book called "Scapa Flow" when I was younger.

We continued south until the road ended. It is a bit hilly here, but there are no trees except where someone has planted one in the yard. It is all farmland which I was not expecting at all. There are more cows than sheep, and they are taking off crops of hay. We had a mostly cloudy day, but the rain held off until we got home.

We retraced our steps, but stopped to see two sets of standing stones, the Stenness stones and the Ring of Bodgar which are within a few hundred yards of each other. It is thought that these stones predate Stonehenge by almost 800 years. We found something older than we are!

After we saw the stones we worked our way home as we were getting tired. Perfect timing.....it's now raining.

irishface

The Orkneys are some place I always wanted to visit. thanks for sharing your trip with us!

annhig

I just found this and have much enjoyed reading your "letters home"; the furthest north i've ever got in the British Isles is Inverness so it's interesting to learn about what I'm missing! So far the thought of all those midges and the rain has put us off but we have friends who have moved to Shetland, so who knows?

jane1144

The Orkneys are some place I always wanted to visit. thanks for sharing your trip with us!

Hi Irishface, This trip was about exploring places we have never seen before, even though I would happily go back to almost every place we've been in Scotland.

jane1144

"I just found this and have much enjoyed reading your "letters home"; the furthest north i've ever got in the British Isles is Inverness so it's interesting to learn about what I'm missing! So far the thought of all those midges and the rain has put us off but we have friends who have moved to Shetland, so who knows?"

Hi annhig. I went loaded down with stuff for midges but didn't ever see one. I think it was too windy and rainy even for them! Have not been to Shetland yet, but my SIL is there as we speak. My fav was Lewis and Harris (coming up)

jane1144

DAY 18, SATURDAY, JUNE 17th

Of course, it’s gorse! (with apologies to Maitaitom!)

We had to get up early (4:45am) to be in the ferry line by 5:30 as required. It was light when I went to bed at 11:00 pm last night and light again when we got up. You sort of forget about how far north you are!

We had another easy crossing, although the swells were about 3 feet this time. We had our breakfast as we travelled along. We reached Scrabster, disembarked and got the car filled with gas.

Then we started out going west across the top of the North Coast 500 Route. Our intention was to go all the way around, but, since the forecast was poor, we decided to go as far as Tongue, and decide the rest of the route from there. We had pretty good conditions until we arrived in Tongue when the visibility suddenly went from clear to heavy mist and fog. The weather looked better to the south so we turned and headed that way. It was misty/rainy for the rest of the trip, but at least we could see. All of these roads are single track with passing places about every 100 yards. If you see an oncoming vehicle, the first one to arrive at a passing place pulls over and the other vehicle carries on. Occasionally both vehicles are between passing places and one of you has to back up to the nearest one. In addition there are sheep crossing randomly, sometimes just standing to look at you. We also saw our second ringed neck pheasant at the side of the road.

I had been noticing bushes with bright yellow flowers growing everywhere. When you are driving they look like forsythia. I asked someone in a coffee shop and got my botany lesson for the day. I had guessed that they might be gorse and some are. They are the bushes which are thorny. On the hand there are some with soft foliage and slightly brighter yellow flowers which are broom. No matter which you see, they are really pretty.

We finally arrived in Ullapool where we did a little shopping and walking around while we waited for our next ferry, taking us to Lewis & Harris. We finally got here, having had dinner on the boat. We are in a B & B in Stornoway. Our plan us to tour around the islands tomorrow.

OReilly

Loving your report jane

Gorse?

It grows prolifically in the west of Ireland as well.
http://www.irishamericanmom.com/2015...ish-landscape/

jane1144

Thanks for the link, OReilly. Interesting about the different names

bilboburgler

Glad you made it to Orkney (no "s") one of my favorite places in Scotland, full of sensible folk