On the Road: The Untamed North

Well, I’m just going to ignore the fact that we’ve let each and every one of you down with like 1 post in the last month and pretend nothing happened. I’m here to tell you about our recent(ish?) adventure taking The Great American Road Trip concept to the dual carriageways of Scotland. Wanting to check out the north of England and Scotland and ready to celebrate Lou Ann’s ankle healing (Lauren’s mom), the three of us set off on what can only be called a highly ambitious tour of the North. As you can see by the Indiana-Jones-style map below, there’s really not much more for us to see here.

We borrowed a sporty little car called a Honda “Jazz” from our very kind friends Ollie and Claire for this 1400 mile adventure. We set off on a sunny Thursday morning and headed north on one of the two main motorways in the country (the M6) which was a joy, let me say. After 3 hours stopped in traffic due to some horrendous accident up ahead, we were ready to go back to our train-hopping lifestyle. Traffic finally cleared though, and by 2 we were on the streets of Windermere, the capital of the Lake District. We drove through several towns that inspired the inventing of the words “picturesque”, “bucolic”, and “idyllic”, and went on a walk to a 4000-year-old circle of stones.

The next day we wound through treacherous mountain passes, (shifting with my left hand) managed to avoid dying and got back to the motorway to head up to Scotland. After Glasgow, Loch Lomond, and Glen Co, we finally arrived late at our B&B in Fort William on the west coast. The next day we rose with the rooster (they raised chickens at the B&B) and headed down the coast to the port-town of Oban, to catch a ferry to Mull. We visited the large island of Mull, and the smaller islands of Staffa and Iona. We finished the day with Fish & Chips back in Oban, then back to sleep.

Sunday was our chance to make it as far north as we could, and we did pretty well, heading along Loch Ness to Inverness, then all the way out to Ullapool for an amazing seafood dinner. Happy that probably only 5% of Brits had been this far north in Scotland, we returned swaggering with Yankee confidence to our last night at the B&B. After an amazing vegetarian “full Scottish breakfast” we hit the road early the next day, all the way across Scotland to the town of Kirkcaldy on the east coast, where Nick’s great, great grandfather emigrated. After spending 2 hours there to get a feel for Nick’s heritage and buy a MacFarlane tartan tie, we headed across the mighty Firth of Forth Bridge into Edinburgh.

In town we saw the castle, walked the Royal Mile, and checked out the strange and exorbitantly expensive (10x the original price) new Scottish parliament building. We had dinner in the Elephant Café, where JK Rowling penned her first Harry Potter novel, and then it was on the road again. We drove back into England and down to Newcastle for the night, to a “dodgy” inn that did not serve the famous Newcastle Brown Ale. Tuesday morning was spent admiring the famous bridges of Newcastle, including the new Millennium “eye” bridge which opens like an eyelid to let ships under. As our last site, we drove due west from the city to a couple of sites along Hadrian’s wall, built by the Romans to keep Scottish barbarians out and define the north-western limit of their empire. We drove most of the 70 mile wall, and hiked some of the most striking sections. At 2pm we turned the Jazz south and made it back to good old Brum that evening, ready to get back to work on Wednesday.

All in all, a pretty relaxing holiday.

Lake District Pics

Scotland Pics