Short Stint in Scotland

Hello Everyone

We have gone from England to Scotland and back now.  Our first stop in Scotland was Edinburgh where we stayed for 5 nights.  It is a really beautiful city with many things for tourists to do.  So unfortunately many things we didn’t get to so would definitely return.  The things we did manage during our time were.

Scottish Parliament building

Edinburgh Castle (lot’s to see but we took even longer in Stirling Castle 5.5hrs)

3hr guided walking tour around the city

camera obscura

ate my first Haggis (I have 3 times now YUM)

Hairy Coos Highlands Bus tour (9hrs) which amongst other things visited Doune Castle which was used as the set for Monty Pythons the search for the holy grail.

Botanic Gardens (which included seeing a Sparrow Hawk nest on a video link)

Holyrood Park (but not Arthurs Seat, it looked really high!!!

Georgian House

And believe it or not we did get some rest during these 4 days.

After Edinburgh we took a bus to Stirling our next destination (very good value campsite called Witches Graig just a bit out of town)  from which we took a train on Saturday to Linlithgow Palace to see a Jousting Tournament show.  Checked out the Palace for about 1.5hrs then the Jousting event for about 3 hrs.  Second day we went to Stirling Castle. They have just done up the royal apartments and the Queen had been there about 4 days prior to open them.  They were very spectacular and the whole place was excellent value and as I mentioned above it took us 5.5hrs. Day 3 in Stirling we took the bus to St Andrews (the Home of Golf) Yay!  It was freezing cold so we quickly walked around the town checking out the ruins of the Cathedral and the Castle before heading down to check out the St Andrews Old Course and the British Golf Museum.  At the Golf Museum they give you a very nice guidebook with your entry fee.  Nicky enjoyed although I did take a little longer so she went for a walk around more of the town.

Yesterday we caught a bus from Stirling to Dundee and on route it passed a music festival called T in the Park Scotland’s answer to Glastonbury, and as is traditional it had rained very heavily so was a bit messy.  Gumboots were the order of the day.

There really is very little to do in Dundee, hence i have time to blog J.  With our full day in Dundee we went for a walk around the riverside area, then we caught a bus to an area called Broughty Ferry where we visited the ‘Castle’ which has a Free museum and took a walk along the beachside esplanade, killed some time on the main street before getting a meal deal at 3pm that was our lunch and tea at the same time.  Dundee was not at all a tourist destination and a bit rough in general, noisy on the streets until the early hours on a weekday.

Pleased to get on from there.  Fortunately or unfortunately depending on the way you look at it we have now stopped for a bit to do some work over the school holidays.  We have gone back down to Hadrian’s Wall.  We are wardens at the Hadrian’s Wall Caravan and Camping Site.  Which means long hours and very little money but we are being put up in a caravan for nothing.  The main reason for doing this is to avoid paying extreme high season rates and stops us chewing through our money and give me more time to find suitable work.

Hope everyone is doing well.

Bottom to Top, Kent to Northumberland in a month.

It has been one month since I wrote due to us being so busy with travelling and planning and writing job applications.

Before leaving we had pretty much planned our first month in the UK so for the last month we have been trying to keep ahead of ourselves which is not always easy.

Anyway, last time I wrote we had been to a heavy horse show in West Sussex.

Next on our way to Ashford in Kent we stopped off in Brighton for a couple of hours, walking to the Royal Pavilion and Brighton Pier.  We based ourselves in Ashford to visit various locations in Kent over 3 days.

The first was made up of visiting Sandwich, Deal & Walmer.  We visited Sandwich to see the Richborough Roman Fort, which turned out to be a pretty significant walk and after getting some dodgy advice trying to find a shortcut back we ended up running for our train.  A few minute train journey along the coast tool us to Deal where we visited Deal Castle (former artillery fort), then another short train ride to Walmer to visit Walmer Castle (former artillery fort and royal residence).  The Queen Mother was apparently very fond of Walmer Castle and stayed a week very year, there was a special Queen Mothers Garden.

We went to Dover on our second day, first visiting the Roman Painted House, then Dover Castle which included a tour of the underground WWII hospital.  After finishing at the Castle we walked to the National Trust site at White Cliffs of Dover where we went on a 1.5hr guided walk with National trust ranger and I got to ask a lot questions about conservation.  Canterbury was the main destination for our third day where we visited the Canterbury Cathedral & St Augustine’s Abbey.  With our extra time we took a train to the Northern Kent coastal town of Faversham for a very quick look around.

After this stint in Kent we returned to London visiting my friend Matty and his girlfriend Amy.  We took the highspeed train which only took 30mins.  Matty and Amy showed us the Olympic Village area, took us to Greenwich Park and the planetarium.  Other things we visited in London where Apsley House (Duke of Wellington’s residence), Churchills War Rooms, British Museum, Florence Nightingale museum, HMS Belfast, Titanic exhibition at the O2 arena.

Cambridge was our next destination on 16^th June.  We were staying in a campground in a nearby village called Comberton.  Here is was able to get a haircut and beard trim as it was getting a bit excessive.  While in Cambridge we punted twice, once during the day to see the colleges and once at night for a bat safari.  Unfortunately it rained hard during the bat safari and when it rains the insects aren’t as active so the bats don’t come out so much.  I saw a couple of glimpses and Nicky sort of saw one.  We also visited the Duxford Imperial War Museum which is very large (lots of aircraft).  We also caught a few overs of a local cricket match, after which Nicky visited the Polar research museum and I did the Fitzwilliam Museum.  On the Sunday with no bus service we stayed in the local area, walking to Barton on town over where we visited a farm open day being run by the Countryside restoration trust, where we saw and farrier demonstration and discussed traditional sheep breeds.  We also visited Burwash Manor which had boutique shops and tearooms where I had a Devonshire tea.

Peterborough (Cambridgeshire) was our next destination; unfortunately we found it was closed.  I’m being facetious of course but what I mean is that pretty much the only reason to go to Peterborough is to visit Flag Fen, unfortunately when we went to the visitor centre to find something else to do they explained the Flag Fen was actually closed for a few weeks, and also Longthorpe Tower our second thing was also closed.  Further discussion with the visitor centre staff found that the local museum was also closed and that the greyhound racing although advertising Tuesday was also not on.  Even when we tried to go to the Peterborough Cathedral we found it was closed until 2pm, so it was a running joke for a few days that Peterborough was just closed.  We did end up visiting the Cathedral and then we walked to the Movie Cinema where we watch the documentary SENNA on Ayrton Senna 3 times formula one Champion who was killed in a F1 accident while leading the 1994 San Marino GP.  This was an excellent movie.

Our next destination was York where we spent 3 nights.  We visited Jorvik (Viking centre) and Merchant Adventurers Hall (video on youtube) http://dalenickyoe.blogspot.com/ link through the blog to my youtube and flickr.  We also visited Cliffords Tower, York Minister, Castle Howard and took a free walking guided tour through the town.  York was a very interesting and beautiful city.

Our next plan was to visit Hadrians Wall area.  We decided to base ourselves at Hexham.  Along Hadrians Wall we visited, Birdoswald Roman Fort, Housesteads Roman Fort, Chesters Roman Fort and Tullie House Museum & Carlisle Castle in Carlisle.  In Hexham we visited the Hexham Abbey, Old Gaol and went ten pin bowling.

We had been given a tip that we should visit the Northumberland coast so we decided to base ourselves at Berwick-upon-tweed for 4 nights stopping for a short walk in Newcastle on the way.  On my birthday the 30^th we had planned to go to Dunstanburgh Castle, take a walk along the coast then visit Bamburgh Castle, however the bus ne needed for some reason drove past without coming down to the town we were waiting in so were forced to go in the opposite direction to Alnwick and go to their castle (Where harry potter was filmed), that didn’t mean anything to me as I’ve never seen any of the movies and they have no information about this at the Castle.

Day two went took a boat from Seahouses to Inner Farne island to see the nesting seabirds.  There were Puffins, Guillemots, Razorbills, Arctic Terns, Sandwich Terns, Black-headed Gulls & Eider Ducks.  I will be uploading some very cool videos to youtube soon.  After the seabirds we stopped at Bamburgh to see the Castle from the outside as it was closed by the time we got there.

Our final day in England took us to Holy Island where we visited Lindisfarne Castle and Lindisfarne Priory and we also checked out Berwick including the Berwick Castle ruins.

So we leave England and arrived in Edinburgh on the 3^rd, so far very impressive city but will leave it for later.  Hope to update more regularly so they can be briefer for you in future.

Please do visit http://dalenickyoe.blogspot.com/ where you can link through to photos and videos of things we have done.  So cool seabird videos to come soon.