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

The Graveyard Shift

We’re way behind on posts, which seems to be par for the course these days. At the moment, we are still enjoying Mom (Lou Ann)’s wonderful visit. We have loads of pictures and stories from our Great Britain Roadtrip and Weekend in Wales coming up.

Before that, though, I had to share one quick story. The weekend was unseasonably warm and sunny, so we went for a walk last night. The closest pretty place to walk is this large cemetery up the road from our flat. When we got there, it was about 5 til 5, and the cemetery closes at 5. I advocated walking around the outside of it, but Nick said, “Oh, live a little and walk through the graveyard!” We had a lovely stroll to the back gate…which was locked. We then had a lovely but nervous stroll to the side gate….which was locked. We then had a much quicker walk to the front gate – also locked! Our only choice was to climb over the wall. The experience of breaking out of the cemetery with my mom will stay with me always!

Birthday Football

We decided we couldn’t live in England and not see a premiership football match, so for Nick’s birthday we got tickets to see our local Birmingham team Aston Villa play London’s Arsenal at home. We got the tickets to go with BJ and Katrina when they were here but, disappointingly, the game was postponed and we couldn't go then. We decided to keep the tickets and use them with our next guests...the advantage of having so many visitors!

At the game we found it hard (though extremely necessary to avoid physical assault) to support Villa too much since we knew they weren’t going to win, and Arsenal plays ‘the most technically accurate and graceful football of any team in England’ (this right out of the home program). In the end, we found the loud chanting and singing from the Villa fans very entertaining, and though we didn’t know what we were singing (which is probably good…) we clapped and mumbled along. It was a really exciting game, and I don’t think you can call live football boring…it was incredible to see the players pretty much run all-out for the whole game and nearly kill each other for the ball. I think much like in American football, the career of these guys can’t be too long.

It was an awesome birthday present and a unique cultural night out, and as you can see from the photos, we had great seats and a great time. We even avoided any threats of physical violence, other then when we came in a bit late. After Arsenal fans, Philadelphia actually does look like a city of brotherly love.

Monumental Mockery

During our travels and sight-seeing with Kevin and Martha we encountered quite a bit of dubious public art. It raised the question for us, what is public art? Why was it put here? Is it serious? Comical? We decided public art is what you make of it, and being comical people, we decided comical was much more interesting than serious. So, throughout our adventures in various cities, we made a point to show that, no matter how serious this art may seem, it’s really pretty darn funny. For proof, I submit exhibit A.

Other than some shameless American tom-foolery, the rest of the Cammarata’s visit was just solid Olde Worlde sightseeing. We posted a couple of photos of walks around Birmingham, as well as a trip to Warwick Castle here. Lauren got a gingerbread man (not a REAL one) from a first-grader in Lancaster, PA, as part of a school project to see where he ended up. As you can see, this lucky gingerbread man got some pretty great photos of being carried around the castle. He has since continued on his journey for St. Patty’s day in Dublin then on to Chicago. Gingerbread people get to do the coolest things.

The fab 4 do Liverpool

A few weeks ago we decided to continue our exploration of this little island and head up to Liverpool with our most recent guests, Kevin and Martha. We took the train there Saturday morning, stayed in a hostel which was the former Venezuelan embassy (!?), then caught the train back Sunday night. Apparently Liverpool has quite the reputation around England, and most people here were pretty surprised we were going, but said it was good we were taking the train so people couldn’t steal our hubcaps. Our friend at the train station ticket counter asked us why planes won’t fly low over Liverpool, and told us it was because they didn’t want their wheels stolen…ha! That great British whit.

Anyway, we risked life and limb to check out this ‘European City of Culture 2008’ and found some fairly nice and pretty ‘dodgy’ parts of the city. Because the city won this European award, there is a ton of development and revitalization work happening there, and it really will be a totally different place in a year or so. We saw a sea of construction cranes and were constantly going around and through various construction sites.

The main tourist area of the city is around Albert Dock, which is a world heritage site that has been totally renovated into an area of shops, restaurants, and museums. One of the odder things we saw was the H&S Customs Museum, where we learned how to smuggle drugs, ivory, or stuffed mongoose-fighting-cobra statues into the country. They had example of some of the things that people tried to sneak into the country, and it is pretty amazing how much contraband they find every year. The Liverpool Tate Museum and the Maritime Museum were two cool ones too.

The city’s obsession with the Beatles is probably justified, since they kind of put it on the map, but the Beatlemania did seem a bit over the top. It’s got to be the #1 industry in modern Liverpool, with tons of tours, pubs, and shops fueling it all. Everyone tries to relate to the Beatles somehow and I guess it ended up seeming a bit sad, and like the city needs to define itself as something other than ‘the place the Beatles came from.’

All in all we had a great time, but it made us happy to live in Birmingham--and some would say that result alone makes the trip worthwhile. Check out some photos of our Liverpool shenanigans here!