Skye

This morning we woke to amazing views and a nice day.  We packed a lunch and set off to explore the island.  I can't begin to describe the beauty of this place and I know that the photos below don't do the scenery justice, but we will share them anyway.  :)

Sunbeams!

Waterfalls!

Mountains!

Moors!

Highland Cow (fellow strawberry blond)

Old Man of Storr

More Storr

Kilt Rock

Sharing the road

Sheep at the beach

Pretty!

Amazing!

oooOOOooo!

 ~Sara

Visiting Nessie

Mom and Sara brave Loch Ness

What visit to the highlands would be complete without a visit to Loch Ness?  Visiting a lake from the shore is never quite satisfying, so we arranged for a cruise on the Loch.  It was a quite blustery morning and our outbound trip was straight into the wind.  We braved the open upper deck and were rewarded with great views of the loch and Great Glen, as well as a fair share of spray in our faces and knots in our hair.

Urquahart Castle

The first leg of the cruise ended at the ruins of Urquahart Castle.  The Castle was built in the 13th century, but this was reportedly preceded by a Pict settlement which was said to exist when St. Columba visited in the 6th century AD.  In 1692 the castle was destroyed by its inhabitants to keep the stronghold from falling into Jacobite hands.  Despite the hundreds of barrels of gunpowder they exploded and the centuries since, a fair amount of the structure is still standing and afforded great views of Loch Ness.

Notably this area of the Loch is also the location of most Nessie sightings.  We were lucky enough to catch her in and out of the water for a few moments.

Nessie sighting 1

Nessie sighting 2

Roadside cairn garden

Our return cruise was much calmer as we had the wind to our backs.  Upon our return to shore, we drove the remaining length of Loch Ness, and passed a few other lochs including Loch Lochy (yes that's Lake Lakey).  On a lesser used side road, we encountered a massive collection of rock cairns that have been erected by visitors on a ridge over looking a small loch.  We added our own stack to this collection and topped it with some of the sea glass we collected on the beach at the Firth of Forth.

As we approached the coast Sara spied Eilean Donan from a distance.  This castle has been the background on one of her monitors for months.  It is located on a bit of land that is separated from the shore at high tide.  We stopped and snapped a few [dozen] pictures and explored the grounds, before heading off for our destination.  A few minutes later the Isle of Skye bridge came in view and we crossed onto the largest of the Inner Hebrides.  We will now get to set down roots for four nights in our amazing rental house, Tigh Roisin, and make forays to explore Skye's beauty.  I'll leave that for future posts, but even from our rental we have amazing views of the water and the heather covered moors!

Eilean Donan Castle at low tide

~Shawn

To the Highlands

Collecting sea glass near the Firth of Forth.

We set out from Edinburgh this morning with our sights set on the Highlands, home of Whisky, Nessie, and the Polson family.  We started our drive by taking the coastal route toward St. Andrews.  On the way we stopped at a beach and decided to take a walk.  Within a few seconds of stepping on the beach we began to spot sea glass mixed among the rocks.  Within half an hour of beach combing we ended up with probably close to a pound of well aged sea glass, by far the greatest concentration I've ever seen.  We ended the morning in St. Andrews where we took in the views and grabbed a bite to eat (including Mom's first haggis), before setting out toward Inverness.

Barber "incentives" in St. Andrews.

We decided to take the slower, but more scenic route to Inverness through the Cairngorms National Park.  We haven't had to try hard to take the scenic routes as our Garmin seems to default to it.  It has a definite tendency to send us down narrow country lanes rather than more developed roads.  Since the British default speed limit is 60, it just assumes we'll be able to go as fast on these little roads as on the more developed highways.  We've definitely seen more of the countryside because if it.  It has also allowed me to compare the English and Scottish road systems.  I'd have to say I prefer the Scottish roads, where even the back roads are likely to have a shoulder.  In England many (most) two-track country lanes are about 11 feet wide with an ancient stone wall directly abutting either side, such that there is about 1.3 inches to spare when two vehicles pass.  Of course the English drivers think this is plenty of room and drive straight at each other at 60 mph.  Surprisingly a few of them have managed to keep side mirrors on their vehicles.  After driving this gauntlet, the Scottish roads seem tame and luxurious.

Heather covered hills.

We weaved our way through the beautiful country surrounding the Caringorms, passing straight through the Glenlivet estate, eventually arriving in Inverness.  We checked into our hotel, a 12-room inn, and discovered that our room has a beautiful view of Inverness Castle and the River Ness.  After a brief break, we grabbed dinner (excellent Thai food) at a local pub called Hootenany (which was recommended by a friend).  They have live "Traditional Scottish" music every night.  Tonight two young local musicians performed and put on an excellent show rotating through guitar, banjo, mandolin, and fiddle.

~Shawn

Fireworks!

We had learned from a street vendor that today was the last day of the Edinburgh International Festival (another reason to love this city) which meant that there would be fireworks launching from the castle tonight. (Fireworks!!) So of course after we made our way back to the apartment, had dinner, and started settling in for the night, we forgot all about them. That is, until Candy heard them start. I was already in my PJ's, but I grabbed a sweater and we followed her out the door. We had to trek down a few blocks before we caught a glimpse of them. We watched for a few minutes and then they suddenly stopped. Candy wasn't convinced they were over, so we continued on, just to see if there was a better view beyond the next building. Then we heard them start again...and we did get that (slightly) better view. It was so odd to us that there would be 5 or 10 minute breaks between clusters of fireworks. When we thought that we must have seen the finale, we started back to the apartment (me in my PJ's), but as we were walking we heard even more fireworks...and then a few more.  I think I was almost asleep back at the apartment when we heard the last of them.  It was a great nighttime stroll!

Prepping for fireworks at the castle

(The next morning we saw in the paper that there was a concert that went along with the fireworks, which explained the odd timing)

~Sara

I love this city

We have enjoyed the cozy little apartment we are staying in. It is just outside of old town, where Edinburgh Castle is located. And that is where we were heading today. I immediately liked the vibe in this city, or at least this neighborhood. There is a huge variety of restaurants, coffee shops and newsstands all interspersed with historic looking churches and tattoo parlors. We found some amazing coffee, and then took the bus to old town. We ended up on royal mile where you can find all things Scottish (for us tourists) and a few diamonds in the rough in the form of local artisans. We took our time strolled around the shops, had lunch in a pub and then made our way to the castle (yes a castle!).

Browsing the Royal Mile

The Edinburgh Castle is perched impressively at the top of Castle Rock overlooking the city. In fact it looks as if the massive stone walls grew or erupted out of the rock rather than being built. Spiraling out of the mountain like Minas Tirith.  The Scottish Crown Jewels (The Honours) are on display there, as well as various military museums and memorials. The oldest building on site was a small chapel built around 1130.

Edinburgh Castle

rock or walls?

time to pull out the big guns

Candy is thinking of enlisting

Candy and Shawn make pretty good sentries

While the castle was interesting, the most impressive thing to me was the 360 degree views of the city.

Views of a beautiful city

Also....look at that sky!

On the way back to catch our bus we came across a street performer from Australia that might have stuck around after this ...or maybe not, but there were tricks and jokes and we were entertained.  On the way back I also fell in love with these, apparently I have expensive taste...even for wellies.  :)

~Sara

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Edinburgh

Unintentional Geocaching at Hadrian's Wall

After an excellent stay at the String of Horses Inn in Faugh, we set out eastward along Hadrian's Wall (yet another World Heritage Site).  The wall was built by the Romans in the second century A.D. to keep the unconquerable Picts in Scotland and marked the Northwestern extreme of the Roman Empire.  It was quite a feat spanning the entire width of the island from coast to coast over 80 miles.  It was also built along some of the most forbidding ridge lines in the region adding both to its security and difficulty to build.

Mom at Hadiran's Wall

After exploring a couple sections of the wall we came to an area called Cawburn Pass.  The Romans built milecastles every mile along the length of the wall, Cawburn has the ruins of one such outpost (Milecastle 42).  We hiked about half a kilometer to the wall.  There are gaps in the wall which we learned were due to quarrying of rock throughout the centuries, often removing the entire ridge that the wall was set upon.  But in areas where the wall still exists it is an impressively strong structure considering it has been exposed to the soggy, windy climate of the borderland moors for almost two millenia without maintenance.

Geocache at milecastle 42.

While at Cawburn, Mom noticed something lodged up under the wall.  I investigated and discovered that the English Heritage Trust had planted a geocache in the milecastle.  We opened it and found a booty of pirate related trinkets.  We left a note in the log and carefully placed it back under the wall (probably a tad more camouflaged than before).

Twice Brewed Inn and Pub

After Cawfield, we made a brief stop at the Housesteads Fort near a town called Twice Brewed (we couldn't resist stopping for lunch at the Twice Brewed Pub), before heading north for Scotland.  We arrived at the border by mid afternoon, just in time to see some strange guy back his car through traffic, so he could park it on the sidewalk next to the "Welcome to Scotland" marker and get a picture of it (it wasn't even that nice of a car) with the sign.  After waiting for him to clear out, we took a few pictures ourselves and headed for Edinburgh, where we arrived at our rented flat just in time to grab some fish and chips takeout and watch the season premier of Doctor Who on BBC-1!

Welcome to Scotland!

~Shawn

Enter the Dales

Our journey continued north and we stayed in a little town called Ilkley last night so we would be set to see the Yorkshire Dales and the Lake District today. We got lucky, in that we stayed in a great little inn called the Dalesway Hotel.  Ian, the keeper, was full of suggestions on sites to see and gave excellent directions.

At his suggestion we started out at the ruins of Bolton Priory built in the 12th century and home to an order of Augustinian Canons. That is until Henry VIII forcefully closed the monasteries when he broke with the Catholic church. Apparently, the Duchy of Devonshire acquired much of its property (including that of the Priory) and wealth by supporting Henry in this endeavor.

From there our route continued through the dells with some beautiful scenery and quaint villages and some very narrow roads.  In one of these villages we were told to go to the Wensleydale Creamery for a cheese tasting.  This turned out to be excellent advice as we were able to sampled at least 25 different cheeses, and all were good...some were amazing.  We continued heading north and next stopped at the Station Inn for lunch and a great view of the Ribblehead Viaduct which was built in the 1800s and has 24 arches.

Just as we were on our way again, the clouds began to come in, and while most of the rain held off, our afternoon in the Lake District was a little damp.  Still beautiful though!

~ Sara
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Ilkley, Yorkshire