Stirling

Today we went to Stirling. First to the Castle, where we were able to park close to the Castle itself. Walking towards the castle is the impressive sight of a statue of Robert the Bruce, to the left a view over Stirling itself and of course the Wallace Monument.

Everyone enjoyed the castle, it was well preserved, the kids liked the Lions Den (internal courtyard) and had fun "spooking" themselves as they explored the passageways beneath the palace. We checked out the Museum of the Argyle and Sutherland Highlanders. There were unicorns all over the castle and we tried to count them, but there were too many. In one part of the castle they are recreating tapestries of unicorns that would have been there in the 16th Century.

One of the best things we saw at Stirling Castle was the demonstration of the use of medieval weapons - mostly swords. Two guys had mock battles, discussed tactics and mucked about. They were very entertaining and funny. We talked to them afterwards and the kids got to hold some of the swords. The guy we spoke to was 23 from NZ and had been living in Scotland since he was 17, he would like to go back to NZ, but did not think it would be any time soon.


Stirling Castle towers over some of the most important battlefields in Scottish history. It was at Stirling Bridge that William Wallace defeated the English in 1297 and at Bannockburn where Robert the Bruce delivered another defeat in 1314.


Late in the afternoon we drove to the Wallace Monument

Took a picture of everyone with the statue of William Wallace, who looks remarkably like Mel Gibson. We bought our tickets and then boarded the minibus up the hill. Once at the tower we climbed the 246 steps, through the three different galleries, for the magnificent view from the top. The Wallace Monument is a fantastic building, if a bit windswept.

We had afternoon tea in the cafe and checked the visitors book. Imagine our surprise when we found that the Wallace family we had travelled across Europe with on the bus, had been at the Wallace Monument at the same time as we were at Stirling Castle.

Drove back to Edinburgh for our final evening meal. We found a nice restaurant opposite the Scott Monument. The Scott Monument is 200 ft. 6in high and 55ft square at the base; the highest gallery is reached by climbing a total of 287 steps. It was a step sort of day, although this time we chose to look at it, not climb it, food was much more interesting.

Mondo

Thornton, Fife

Today we drove out of Edinburgh and into the countryside north of the Firth. We crossed the magnificent Forth of Firth bridge.





It took about 2 hours to get to Thornton and it was an easy drive once we crossed the river. We are of course the first relatives ever to visit Thornton, to get lost. We spent half a hour driving down every street we could find, two phone calls to Helen and Alex, and still we could not find them. In the end we spotted Helen standing on a courner and we managed to get to their house. We had afternoon tea and Helen and Alex looked after us well. Alison and James (Helen and Alex's kids), their partners and another couple soon came over to share afternoon tea and stories. Lindsey took a picture of us.

We then went over to Alison and Lindsey's place, they live two doors away. The kids got to ride on the Harley and rev the engine, both of them caused it to backfire. The neighbours started twitching the curtains. At about 6.30pm and all six of us went down to the local chippo. I had red pudding!!! Kids had macaroni cheese and J had fish and chips. The people who ran the place were lovely and gave the kids a great scottish children's book "The broons and oor Willie". We gave them some little keepsakes of Australia. There was a lot of discussion about how the Aussie's were out of the soccer and how well they thought the French might do - no interest in what the English were doing!!!

Edinburgh

Today I had chinese acupuncture to fix my neck. So nice to be able to move again. Then we went to Edinburgh Castle. Wow. We got to go in the fast lane for entry as we have british heritage membership.
Here is the entrance to the Castle.

Edinburgh Castle sits on top of what was, at one time, a volcano - a 437 feet high plug of basalt rock. It has been used as a fortification for over 2,000 years - there was a hill fort there in the time of the Romans.

The first record of the castle being used as a royal residence occurs in the 11th century when Margaret, wife of Malcolm III died there after hearing of her husband's death at Alnwick in 1093. "Saint Margaret" (she was later canonised) was Saxon-English, a refugee from the conquest of England by the Normans under William the Conqueror. The chapel which bears her name was probably not built until the 12th century.


Saint Margaret's Chapel

It is also the home of the Scottish Crown Jewels, the oldest Royal Regalia in Britain. A major exhibition of these symbols of sovereignty uses colourful tableaux, music and models to tell their tale, including how they were buried not once, but twice.


We loved the crown jewels - this was the only place we found on the whole trip, where you stood on a moving walkway to view the display. I am sure I was told this happened a lot now, to keep the crowds moving.

While here the kids were teasing each other and suddenly found one of the Guards joining in their game, much to all our amusement. We all went outside and talked to the Guard for about half an hour, while we all ate ice creams. He was very nice.

We also saw the Stone of Destiny which was used by all the ancient Scottish Kings when they were crowned. It has a colourful history. First it was "acquired" by the English and located in Westminster for 700 years until the 1930's when it was stolen by some Scottish Noblemen. It was then "found" and returned to Westminster, when our current Queen returned it to the Scots on the 30th of November 1996.

We had a great lunch at the Red Coats Cafe.



J tried "Heather Ale" which is a made from a 4,000 year old recipe.

We walked from the Castle down the "Royal Mile" and into the centre of Edinburgh. We passed busking pipers, lots of shops selling tartan items of every description, all sorts of Scottish "tat".

As we made our way round Edinburgh we saw lots of cow statues. The cows were an art exhibition with a difference. All sorts of people had made and decorated these cows and they were on display on the street, on buildings and over streets. There was almost nowhere in Edinburgh that you did not see a cow. They were to be auctioned in September to raise money for charity. In the meantime they provided a lot of fun and interest.

We had afternoon tea in Jim Brodies Cafe, supposedly haunted by Brody, a local rogue.


Had a tour of Mary Kings Close, fantastic.We actually walked a real close from 300 years ago, coverd over during redevelopment of the area, only uncovered in the 1970's. We learned how the youngest one in the household got the job of throwing out the toilet bucket first thing in the morning and again in the evening, into the street below. MLR was not impressed. We learned that all the effluent flowed down the close into Loch Norr. The loch was were all the folk from Mary King's close got their drinking water. The buildings got closer as they rose higher, the light at street level was minimal except at noon.

We had Italian for tea, unfortunately the Vegetarian restaurant was full.

Connel to Edinburgh via Glen Coe

These will be the last photo's of the sunset over Loch Etvie I promise!!



This morning we went to breakfast to find that there were no tables available. We came back half an hour later and squished onto a small table. Then we, packed up the car, collected all our things and left for a petrol station to get cash to pay for our accomodation.




We started our drive north through beautiful countryside to Glen Coe. We took a detour to the village of Kinlochleven which we had never heard of. It was so beautiful, we wished we could stay longer. We took a walk to through the woods to Grey Mare's Waterfall. The scenery was stunning.

We drove back to the Glencoe Visitors Centre for an ordinary lunch. Learned a lot more about the Massacre of Glencoe, when Campbells massacred the McDonalds in their beds. Bought a beautiful map of the old clans of Scotland (including J's clan). From here on we were travelling south and for me it felt a bit like we were starting to go home! I was still ready to travel much further north, but time was against us. We are saving Inverness and Wick for next time. We crossed the country to Edinburgh and found our B&B, Alexander Guest House fairly easily after directions from the manager at McDonald's. There was plenty of room, we all had proper beds and best of all it was on the first floor. We walked to the local shopping centre, Cameron Toll, to see if we could get some physio for my neck (see earlier post Sunny Scotland for details of this part of the trip). Later that evening we had a wonderful Indian meal, just across the road from the B&B.

Scotland West Coast

Here is the B&B that we stayed in at Connel, Greenacre

Straight across the road was the beautiful Loch Etvie.



We went to Kilmartin. A town with a lot of Celtic history, Saxon, Pics, Vikings all were here at some point. We visited Kilmartin House Museum. Here the kids ground wheat into flour, played ancient musical instruments, and lots of press button interactive activities. There are many ancient sites in the Kilmartin valley and in the Museum there is a map that will show you where different things are, such as types of buildings or types of burial grounds. You press buttons and lights come on across the valley where these sites are located. There is also a lovely cafe looking out over the valley at one of the burial mounds. We had a snack before going for a walk around the area.

We went to the Kilmartin Graveyard, where we saw pirate graves headstones, kids were impressed. There was also a group of medieval headstones from 11th Century to the 17th Century, propped up in an old stone room with no roof. The details were amazing. Next we walked around the corner to an open park, the kids found a football and kicked it around for a while. Then the local senior soccer team started to turn up, so we headed for the look out over the Kilmartin Valley. We drove to Oban for a late lunch of fish and chips on the front. We watched the boats go in and out to the islands, the car ferry turned up as well and then we fed the remains of our meal to the seagulls.

Views of Oban Harbour


We headed back to Connel for a rest. MLR and I decided to go for drive and check out the playground situation. We were not very successful. We crossed the single lane Connel cantilever bridge across the Falls of Lora. It was built in 1903 for the railway, and is now only for cars.



On the other side of the loch, there is the rest of Connel, it is much more isolated on this side. We found magnificent views across Loch Etvie. We passed someone I had seen at McTavish's the other night. Eventually we found a castle to visit.
Dunstaffnage castle is built on a rock in the 13th century. As it was late MLR and I had to run from place to place. MLR renamed it Bunny Castle as there were thousands of rabbits in the grounds.



Once we got back to the B&B we decided to have tea at the Oyster Inn, just down the road. We ordered our drinks at the table looking out across Loch Etvie. Then J had to collect the drinks from the bar. J and MLR ordered half a dozen oysters each, normally they order a dozen and share, but at the Oyster Inn they offered only a half dozen. When they arrived we knew why, they were the size of small steaks. As J tucked into his second one (au naturelle of course), MLR was tucking into her fifth one. No one can say she is afraid to try!!! If you want to try it too here is a link Oyster Inn, Connel.

Scotland, Scotland, Scotland

Should have written it seven times as that is how many nights we spent in Scotland. I really enjoyed myself in Scotland, mainly because I expected rain and cold and it was warm and dry!. On our way north we stopped off for a feed at a Moto, about five o'clock, somewhere near the Carlisle. As we got out of the car, it became obvious there was a problem here. The whole place smelt like someone had just removed a poohey nappy. We charged into the eatery in the hope that the smell was an outdoors one - but no it was in there as well. Urgh. We then headed for Glasgow, as we wanted to get to the West Coast of Scotland. We were late getting into Glasgow, so we thought we had better stay a night rather than pushing on. Rang Visit Scotland and we were told that there were a lot of concerts on over the next two nights and that accommodation was hard to come by. We ended up at the Lyndhurst Hotel in Johnstone, a western suburb of Glasgow. This has a superb bar and restaurant, the room was large enough to swing two or three cats in. We ate Haggis Wontons in the bar, believe me they were nice. MLR ordered them and we all shared them, except, AJR who is a veggo. J had his first Scottish whiskey of the trip, this proved a daily activity. The next day we drove through the centre of town and then headed out to a large shopping complex near Johnstone. Here the kids got to ice skate on a rink in the shopping centre. I rang Visit Scotland again looking for something near Oban. We eventually got a place at Connell about five miles from Oban. We were just glad of the accommodation. The accommodation was opposite Loch Etvie. The room was very small, in fact once we put the camp bed up for AJR, we could not stand up in the room.

That night we went to McTavishes theatre restaurant. MLR sang and danced the night away on the dance floor. They had a floor show with a guy playing bagpipes, a fiddle player and an accordion player. A woman sang some traditional Scottish songs and a young girl came on three times performing traditional Scottish dancing. MLR got her own round of applause at the end of the night. The guy at the next table was very nice and we got into a conversation about where his sister lived in Victoria, Australia and the fact that he originally came from Fife.

At 10.30pm we took photo's of the sunset over Loch Etvie.






We have about 30 more shots of the sunset so I will put more in tomorrow.

Chester

Arriving in Chester was a little complex, as there are many one way roads and junctions that are not straight forward. The worst was realising that we were driving in a bus lane, we turned left to much tooting of horns. It was then that we realised that we had turned into a one way street, the wrong way! We eventually found the Tesco's car park and parked on the roof.

Chester is a Roman town, complete with Walls and Baths. There is a project in which they are attempting to reconstruct the Roman relics, click here for more information.



MLR,AJR and Me on the Roman Wall, Old Dee Bridge and Weir with new St Mary's Church in the background.

More information on the River Dee.

The main shopping street has covered galleries, known as the Rows. It is an amazing feeling, walking along what is effectively a veranda all the way along the shop fronts. We stopped in the "all you can eat" Chinese restaurant on the corner, which was ordinary, but the kids loved it. How many fried spring rolls and oily prawn toasts can you eat? Lots according to my kids. On the same level we found a shop selling armour, any size you like, along with swords and other medieval memorabilia. Here is a picture of one of the armoured items we bought in Chester.

Wales

We headed for Wales, J's mothers side of the family came from Wales many years ago. Unfortunately we had only a short overnight stop in Wales at a Spa town called Llandrindodd Wells. It was a very quiet town in the middle of nowhere. We checked our B&B guide for somewhere to stay, and finally talked to someone on a mobile in Devon, whose mother was running a B&B which he was sure had vacancies. We were told to park around the back and if we were not greeted through a second storey window, to toot the horn. As it was the lady of the house stuck her head out of the window and told us to come in the front door. The lady was basically stuck on the second floor, she was able to move, but not easily up and down stairs. She asked us if we were American! She was not happy that Andrew was vegetarian, the room was very small. We went out for dinner, driving north through the town and found nothing that was both open and inviting, in fact the place really seemed dead. Driving up round the corner found a little town next door, called Howey that had a jumping pub, that was smoke free and we asked about eating - it was very busy and we were told that it would be about an hour before we would be served. We walked across the road and got the last table at "Drovers Thai Restaurant". It used to be a pub, and it still had a snug for the guests. The food was very thai, Kedsarin, wife of the Roy who was running the place is Thai. I talked to Roy about the place and he told me that this was his semi retirement project. All in all it was an excellent feed. Back to our B&B and sleep. We had arranged a late breakfast the next morning and despite this, had to wait 30 minutes for our bacon with congeeled fat, and eggs that were a bit rubbery - maybe vegetarianism is not such a bad thing!!! Now we are heading to Scotland.

Lake District

For more great pictures of this area click on the link above.

After leaving Somerset we headed north towards the Lake District. We ended up staying at Bowness on Lake Windemere. The place we stayed in had a great family room, with a bunk bed for the kids. Breakfast was delicious and the best for me was that I had access to free Internet. We only stayed one night, but we really enjoyed it. For tea we went to the local Pizza restaurant who gave us great service and great food. While at the B&B we met some Australian's - the only ones I can remember apart from on the bus. They winged and complained about the weather and really wanted to get back home. We were really pleased that they were not staying more than a few more days. Five minutes of their company was enough for us. In the morning we went down to the Lake and talked to the tourist information people about getting a room for another night, however there was a music festival that night and everything was fully booked up. We walked and took pictures and then left the long way round the Lake, heading for Coniston.
The Lake is always serene.

At Coniston, which is across the lake from Bowness, we had lunch in a pub, the food was ordinary. Coniston itself was just beautiful. We also saw lots of walkers and shops with walking equipment.


It was a lot less touristy than Bowness on Windermere.


Donald Campbell is buried in Conniston, he died on the lake trying to set a speed record. Donald Campbell also set records in Australia. J and Andrew went to see if they could find his grave, but it is in the new cemetery, too far away.




Wildlife at Windemere.





Mondo

Somerset

We headed from Kent across country towards Bath. I wanted to check out Wickwar on the edge of the Cotswolds, where I lived for the first two years of my life.



We went through the town twice. If you ever visit we lived at 12 High Street (opposite the pub where my Mum and Dad would go for a drink in the beer garden in the summer, leaving me in a bedroom upstairs asleep).

We had lunch in Chipping Sodbury, in an Indian restaurant, where they were keen to have us leave by 2pm. We stuffed down some very nice curry.

Centre of Chipping Sodbury




Along the way we went past Legoland which was on our list of places to go with the kids. When we arrived we found that it was going to cost £110 for the four of us to enter. We stood outside trying to work out how to tell the kids that it was too expensive to go in!! Then someone had collected free tickets off the back of the corn flakes packet and generously agreed to "sell" them to us for £60. The kids loved it and we all had fun.

Here is USA meets UK with Aussie flavour - which part of the picture is made of Lego?


Having stayed at the worst Travelodge in the world (see Worst Experience ), we headed to Bath to see what accomodation we could find, I wanted a washing machine, space and something nice. We went to the tourist information centre, and they rang 16 places for us, until we found the following place - Greyfield Farm Cottages. We stayed in the one called The Dairy. We really enjoyed this place. We had free fresh farm eggs daily, a seperate spa which we used twice a day, an extensive video/dvd collection, extensive history book collection in the cottage, two bedrooms a lounge room, kitchen, picket fence garden and three TV's, really nice people running the place. I would go back tomorrow. The place is about half way between Bath and Wells. From here we went to lots of different places.

We went to Stonehenge the day before summer solstice:


We went to Wells where we spent time in their public library and then had sandwiches in the grounds of Wells Cathedral.





The statues of famous people that you may be able to see high up on the Cathedral walls were stolen over several centuries. We had a look around inside the Cathedral. The whole of Wells was picturesque, without thousands of people.

We also went to Glastonbury where we looked at a typical kitchen from days gone by, complete with the sort of food that they would serve and the utensils they used.



Next few episodes will include the Lake District, Wales and Chester as we push up to Scotland.





Mondo

ALIA Conference Perth, WA

As it has been two months since I have been on a plane, I thought I would whip over to the other side of the country for a three day conference. If you ever wonder what Librarians do at a conference, click on the link for the outline of the one I am currently attending.

It has been great for meeting colleagues, new and old, near and far. Best catering I can remember at a conference. The conference dinner was no exception. Worst is Dr Click who comes on a regular intervals to remind us of changes to the program and what else might be happening. She is a spanish matador with a spanish accent, castenets and a rose in her mouth, with lots of torreodor music happening. I am over it.

Caught up with MM from my old job. MM now works at Battye Library. You can check out her library here - Battye.

Looking forward now to spending the weekend in Adelaide with S and her daughter Neisha.

Mondo

Fennel Soup

Check out this recipe for Fennel Soup, it really is delicious - I made some last week and the kids and I ate it before J got home from work so I am making it again tonight with double the quantity.

Enjoy!!