Week in the UK

We flew into Aberdeen last Friday on June 19th and stayed the night at Dad's place. Aberdeen is quite a nice town but COLD for summer! All the buildings are granite, everything is clean and fairly old, and there are quite a few trees. The knock against Aberdeen is that the weather often is not good (which is true of all of Scotland, but, in particular, Aberdeen), but we have been lucky as the weather has been sunny everywhere we ventured to over the past week. Very unusual.

The next day, we headed to Edinburgh to pick up Tessa. On the way, we stopped by a quaint town just on the coast called Stonehaven. It was very quiet, and we sat, watching some fishermen about to start their day on the boats. Just south of Stonehaven is a castle called Dunnottar, and is situated atop steep cliffs overlooking the water. Just stunning - the water was so bright, and one can hear the waves crashing on the cliffs below. Moving onward to Edinburgh... we stayed there both Saturday and Sunday nights. Very nice city - again lots of old granite buildings. We went to Edinburgh Castle, the Edinburgh Botanical Gardens (very nice), and a tour of Mary King's Close. A lot of the current city was built on top of the old structures (as opposed to tearing down the buildings). This tour is underground and basically shows you what the city used to look like a couple of hundred years ago. We only spent a couple of nights in Edinburgh, but it is someplace you could easily spend three full days.

Perhaps my most lasting memory of Edinburgh was eating at an Indian restaurant down the road from our B&B. Everyone said they enjoyed spicy food, so I ordered lamb vindaloo (something I often order in NYC). About five minutes into eating our food, Doug's face is tomato red, and another minute later he had tears in his eyes that were beginning to run down his face. To his credit, he kept eating and finished what was on his plate. He's been made fun of ever since.

From Edinburgh, we drove about 4-5 hours to the Lake District in northern England. It was so green and quite mountainous. Many of our scenic photos were taken during this drive. En route to the Lake District, we saw Hadrian's Wall (wall across England that was built by the Romans). Not much to view, but it was neat to see, as I had read about Emperor Hadrian when I was reading up on our trip to Italy earlier this year. It took about three stops to figure out if we were indeed at the wall or not. You'd think it would be obvious, but throughout Scotland and England, the land is mapped in stone walls to entrain the sheep. So, we were unsure if this was just another wall or actually Hadrian's, but we soon realized that the wall began where all the tourists were parking cars and taking pictures.

The Lake District is one of the prettiest places I have been too. Again, we were fortunate to have good weather. From what I gather, the weather is very unpredictable and you need to come to the region with the expectation that it may rain the whole time. We stayed a couple of nights in a B&B in a town called Ambleside. Throughout the region, there are lots of little villages, cottages, B&B's, etc. - similar to Tuscany with the towns scattered all over. Both Kate and I compared the region to Tuscany, but actually preferred the scenery better here. The English do a lot of "hill walking" (as opposed to hiking), and the Lake District is the prime place to do it - lots of grassy mountains with stone walls, sheep, a few trees, streams, lakes, cottages, etc. Kate and I did a 7-mile hike from Ambleside to a nearby village (Troutbeck) and back that went up and over one of the mountains nearby. On the way, a couple of British Spitfire WWII planes flew by (kind of cool and made you wonder if that was what it was like during WWII). The views were amazing. Best of all, you can typically get a beer mid-way through your hike, should your hike take you through a village with a pub (we were good - we refrained!).

We spent two nights in the Lake District, and on the day out, we drove to Glenridding (also in the Lake District) and did a 5.5-mile hike along Lake Ullswater. This took us from Glenridding to How Town (made me think of the Bob Willis song "Cow Town", so I sang that song half the way). The hike was recommended by a friend back in Houston who's from the area, and also from two hikers from the day prior. It just gave the best and closest views of the lakes...the fact that there was not a cloud in the sky didn't hurt the scenery either! Once we reached How Town, we took a ferry back to Glenridding.



After lunch, we started our drive back into Scotland and up the west coast. The drive went through Glasgow, quite a dark industrial city, and so was fairly unspectacular. North of Glasgow, we did drive by several large lochs (Gaelic for lake) that were pretty. We ended in Oban, which is a town on the western coast. Oban was a little run down, and was not quite what we expected it to be, but we did see a pretty sunset - at 10 pm if you can imagine! Something that's been so different here is the huge amount of sunlight that they have in the summers. It doesn't get completely dark here until about midnight, and by about 3 am, the sun's up again!


The next day, we thought about taking a ferry out west to the Isle of Mull, but given that it would have cost around $150 to do so, we decided to just make our way back to Aberdeen (on the east coast). The drive back to Aberdeen took us to Fort William (nice town that sits on a big lock, south of Loch Ness), and from there we drove southeast through the Scottish Highlands. The area was arid, but very pretty. Not only in the highlands but throughout Scotland and England, the land has been logged so there's often just a bunch of mountains covered in grass and heather, as opposed to trees. Sheep are plentiful!! I could see staying at a lodge there for a few days if the fishing/hunting was good. Here, we visited the queen's estate in Balmoral. It's a huge castle that sits on 11,000 acres of land, all of which is well managed and still pristine. Visitors are allowed to stroll along her estate, through thick forests, along the River Dee, and view her gorgeous horses from a distance.

From Balmoral, we headed east to Aberdeen. About 30 miles from Aberdeen, we stopped at a town called Banchory and had a drink at a hotel at which Doug had previously stayed. The hotel is on its own grounds (more like a country club) and offers views of the River Dee. There were a couple of people fly fishing behind the hotel. It was fun watching them; they use two-handed spey rods - named after the Spey River in Scotland. I was highly tempted to inquire about guide rates. But one of the things that stinks about the fishing here is that people/lodges own the fishing rights for a particular stretch of river (e.g., about 300 feet of river), and you can only fish that stretch of the river. While it would be nice to catch salmon in Scotland and partake in the history, pagentry, etc., I do not want to spend $300-$400 to stand in one spot of the river all day casting to the same spots.

Now that we are back in Aberdeen, I think we are just going to take day trips from here. The area nearby offers a couple of castles, a beach along the east coast, and various whiskey distilleries, etc.

We'll be updating our blog soon! Missing everyone so much!! - Kate and Keith