Week 126

Friday 31st July 2020 to Thursday 6th August 2020

Woke up in Brora, it was actually dry.

a Highland Coo on the golf course at Brora

a Highland cutie

We travelled further south to Aviemore staying in a pine forest. The woman at reception warned us against letting Cfor out as there were Pine Martins about and they will kill and eat a cat. We compromised and just let him out while it was light.

The weather wan’t too bad

We were looking forward to visiting the Reindeer centre but unbelievably they had no sodding reindeer there. You had to pay £17.50 and walk up a big hill to visit and feed them. Luckily we’d missed their meal time so we went to the natural beach at Loch Morlich.

100s of gingers all getting burnt

Does your average Scotsman really need reminding when the pubs are open?

Saturday we travelled to Edinburgh on the way we stopped at the Kelpies near Falkirk.

impressive

After settling into the camp at Edinburgh I memorised the route into the city centre and set off on Zippy; big mistake. They’ve closed dozens of road because of COVID and I got hopelessly lost. On top of that the roads were shockingly bad, they made Italian roads look good! Sunday we got the bus into town.

We got off the bus on Princess Street and walked to the Royal Mile where they sell a considerable amount of Scottish themed tat.

after a few weeks in Scotland I’m suffering from a bad case of tartan overload.

Edinburgh is a very grey city and it was a very grey day.

Julie wanted to see the statue of Greyfriars Bobby

is that good luck?

Just a stone’s throw away is an eatery…

I wonder if they do a Korean kebab with extra hot woof-woof sauce

We trekked out to Holyrood to see the Scottish Parliament.

It turns out to be a bit of a shithouse architecturally speaking

Edinburgh has some beautiful buildings so it’s hard to imagine anyone ever though this was a good way to spend £414m. Mind you I suppose most of those pound notes were English.

Nicola wasn’t in so I left her a message from all the Daily Mail readers 😀

Joking aside I think Scotland should be an independent country.  It’s amazing to me they passed up on the chance.

Monday we hopped on Zippy and went to see the royal yacht Britannia. Sadly there was no Sunshine on Leith so it was bloody freezing.

We had a tour around the boat/ship/yacht…

Julie sat in the Admiral’s chair

Can you imagine?

The state dining table apparently took 3 hours to set

the state drawing room

We had lunch in the royal deck tea room

Julie had the smoked salmon sandwiches, she was in her element.

10/10 for the paprika sprinkled chips 😀

Back at camp Cfor kept disappearing into the hedge behind our van; God knows what feral things go on in there…

the boy is in there somewhere

Tuesday we headed back into England stopping just across the water from the Holy Island of Lindisfarne..

The view from the causeway to Holy Island; yes it really was this grey.

The island was packed with tourists, I struggled to get away from them…

The cross on St. Cuthbert’s Isle

 

The ruined Priory; at £7.90 was cheaper than Castle Urquhart but still ridiculous price to wander around a pile of old stones.

Lindisfarne Castle; owned by the National Trust & closed for COVID.

Thursday we set off for Whitby stopping off at the Angel of the North

It was a lot lot smaller than I’d imagined

Whitby turned out to be a massive disappointment; the town itself was tacky…

but I suspect that’s how most of the visitors like it

even though it was a Thursday it was overrun with tattooed pie eaters.

Whitby Abbey, supposedly an inspiration for Dracula

Tomorrow’s me burfday, I won’t be spending it in Whitby.

This entry was posted in Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink.