Scots, Shocks and a Smoky BBQ Part I

Well we headed off on the Tuesday of the Easter break for our Scottish jaunt (jig?).... all 4 of us - Mum, Mal, Me - and - Ruby! (the car)...

On the first day we managed to get as far as Newcastle, spent the night there at a Formule 1. The Formule 1's in England are a step up from their French counterparts in that they actually have sinks in the wc's so you don't have to go back to your room to wash your hands (yay)... There was a Toby Carvery next door, these pubs are awesome, you get a generous serving of meat and then its all you can eat vegies and (most importantly) yorkshire puddings... yum!

The bad thing about the Newcastle Formule 1, like the one in Lille, was that at about 2am some dipstick starts banging on our door. The banging eventually stopped, but by that point I was wide awake, so I got up for the loo, when the next thing I know, I run into the bloke who had been knocking. He was completely off his head, thought our room was the managers room, and kept going on about trying to find his mobile phone. I certainly gave him a piece of my mind!

The next day we continued north to Falkirk, via Hadrian's Wall. Mal, intrepid explorer that she is, walked the wall... well, she walked the bit at Chester's Fort.

It was very interesting there, they have a great little museum of artifacts and Roman remains that they've discovered in the area, plus a model of what the fort would have looked like.

After our visit to Chester's, we continued on north to Scotland, bypassing Glasgow, and saw signs for a more scenic route to Edinburgh, which we took (A701 - very beautiful scenery). This brought us to a great little woollen mill (which actually was a big shop, rather than an actual working mill) in Moffat. Only meant to stop for a few minutes, but there were so many cute things to see (especially things that would fit my niece Marcella) that we were there for a while. Fortunately the cute things stayed on the shelf and the purse stayed in the pocket.... Finally made it to Edinburgh, via some very beautiful scenery. I can safely say (about Edinburgh) that I don't want to go back there. I've been before, and we were really only popping in, rather than doing a full day sight-seeing, but do you think we could find a single road sign that told us how to get to the Castle (let alone park anywhere near the Castle)? No, sir-ee, we did not. And after we finally made it to the rough vicinity of the castle (which by this point was closed as it was coming on for 5pm after driving aimlessly around Edinburgh), had our coffee and a look around, do you think we could find a sign that would lead us to the correct road out of there? Yeah, right.

So we did more aimless driving, getting more and more frustrated - poor Mum and Mal, I didn't envy them as they both had maps and were doing a fantastic job of trying to navigate - but where there are no road signs to where we want to go, this is pretty tricky. We ended up back in the centre of Edinburgh about 3 times, and luckily on the last time managed to see the right sign (by chance, and by looking for it in the rear view mirror) and made it eventually to Falkirk, where we stayed at the Formule 1 there. This time we requested a "do not disturb" sign for the door. Obviously did the trick too, as we managed to avoid any disturbances.

Thursday: we headed off via the scenic route (taking in Stirling Castle, complete with the free tour around the castle - our guide was absolutely excellent) to Tarbert, where we would spend the night in a Castle. We seemed to be driving for ages, but it was well worth it, we had some beautiful views of Loch Lomond and Loch Fyne enroute. Had to hop out of the car a bit for a bit of a paddle in the Loch, and Mal treated us to a demonstration of her stone skimming technique.

Made it to the Stonefield Castle Hotel, this was a gorgeous castle by the side of Loch Fyne. The interior is really nicely decorated and the grounds are beautiful - and it was reasonably priced which was good. The dining room overlooks the lake, gorgeous views, which we were able to enjoy both at dinner that evening and breakfast the next day. I have to say I really liked this place - the grounds were lovely and I enjoyed a couple of nice little wanders around them.

Friday: we decided to have a bit of a rest day. We'd enjoyed the previous evening so much that we decided to stay an extra night in the castle, and then spend the day driving around the peninsula. This, however, was the start of some interesting car issues. See, yesterday I went for a bit of a walk around the grounds and found this cute little bridge over a stream leading down to the Loch. So as we headed off on our drive, I took a detour to show Mum and Mal the bridge - which caused us to go over a bit of a bump. This I negotiated badly, smacking the underside of the car, and setting off a series of strange scraping and dragging like noises as we drove along the windy roads. Great. So we headed into Campelltown Loch, and tried to go to a mechanic there. Do you think we could find one who would have a look at the problem? Unusually these blokes were not the friendly Scots we had encountered throughout our travels, no, these blokes were a bit rude actually and wouldn't even take a quick look. They kept telling us to come back later (or tomorrow), but there is NOTHING TO DO IN CAMPBELLTOWN LOCH!!!! Finally found an ATS and the dude had a bit of a look, reckoned there was nothing wrong, and bent the exhaust down a bit. Drove off, no noise - yay - went round a bend - alas the noise returned. No more mechanics enroute to Stonefield though, so couldn't do anything about it. Went for dinner in a pub in Tarbert - walked out of the pub because the landlord was so rude he couldn't even manage to remember to take our order - found another pub and had a quiet dinner. Except that at that pub, we asked for the bill, the barman forgot to get it and when he finally did, he forgot to include our dessert and drinks. Cheap meal for us, then!

Saturday: Set off with no real plan today other than get as far as Fort William and hope someone can fix the noise in the car. Made it as far as Oban and just happened to see a Kwik Fit. The guy there was sooo nice, he drove around in the car to hear the noise and figure out what was wrong. Put the car up on the ramp, couldn't do anything to change the position of the exhaust but put a piece of tyre rubber in to stop the noise, and then he had a look at the suspension, which he also said was clunky. Now this is where the shocks come in. I had had the shocks replaced the other week, but the blighters had only replaced the drivers side ones - although apparently you're supposed to replace both shocks, not just one. So the Oban dude reckoned that the passenger side might be the reason for another noise - yet they didn't have those shocks in stock (least that's what I thought he said, he had such a broad Scottish brogue. He said it should be ok for the rest of our journey, but gave us the number of Kwik Fit in Stirling because he said that if we made it there we should still get the shocks fixed for he journey back to London. Anyway, his solution for the scraping noise was to stick a bit of tyre rubber in between the muffler and some bar on the underside of the car. As the car sounded good, (AND he didn't charge anything for it) we were pretty happy and pressed on, past more breathtaking scenery, to Eilean Donan castle, dubbed Scotlands most Romantic castle.

We got there just before closing time - so we were lucky to be able to go in for a quick visit. This was very interesting, the castle is owned by the MacRae clan, and what I really liked about it was that inside the castle, there were lots of family photographs of different generations of the family, which made it feel a little more homey, somehow.

The castle is on the main road to Kyle of Lochalsh, and from there its a hop, skip and jump to Skye, across the bridge. We decided, after some deliberation, to take the plunge and go speed bonny Ruby, like a bird on the wing... over the sea to Skye... where we found a wonderful B&B for the night.

Watched the sun set over Skye...

Mum tries haggis....