Scotland2016

A collection of 79 posts

Scotland2016

Sun - one more sleep

It's raining heavily this morning. Liz's foot was very painful walking back from town yesterday. Looks like we are staying in the van today! Most people are off today anyway. About 30 or so of the 50 vans bid their fond farewells. Glen displayed the results of his moth trapping

Scotland2016

Sat - an albino Zebra

Light drizzle to start the day. Not a good omen, but then again this site is on the banks of the Severn so a hot day may be full of insects. In fact the river is only about 20m from where we are pitched and provides a pleasant 20 min

Scotland2016

Thur - Black Books and Girl Guides

Wherever you think of sporting universities I doubt Aberystwyth is foremost. Yet it must breed the fittest students in the UK, having its buildings atop a steep hill on the northern edge of the town (I don't think Aber is a city). Of course our campsite is in the valley

Scotland2016

Weds - another country

I did warn you the blog might get a bit sporadic. It's all about when time permits. Unlike proper writers I don't have the luxury of waiting for the muse to inspire byt have to shoot from the hip when time permits. Monday and Tuesday are spent visiting my sister

Scotland2016

Sun eve - it's hot

Well the festival has just finished. Eddi Reader comes to the end of her 90 minute set, looks at the clock and says ”I'm supposed to be off in 5 minutes, but I can't be bothered with all that going off and coming back on stuff ", she consults her set

Scotland2016

Sun - by popular demand

It rained yesterday, whilst we were in the concert. First time in a while and the petrichor was wonderful. There, it's not everyday you learn a new word from Ralph McTell, is it? In fact the last week we have been treated to delightful weather and my phone is predicting

Scotland2016

Fri etc - Coming to the end

Not the holiday which has another week to run but this blog is slowly winding down. This weekend we are at Wirral Folk Festival all weekend and days will all be similar: mooch around and listen to music. The more curious amongst you can use Google to see who we've

Scotland2016

Thurs - going the back Waze

Even though we are back in England it's still well over 300 miles to home and about 150 to our next destination, the Wirral Folk Festival just outside Ellesmere Port. An early awakening this morning. About 5:30am there is a rapid tapping noise on the van. This is a

Scotland2016

Wed eve- England, my England

8 weeks ago we visited the Spinners Arms just a mile from the campsite and so it was our port of call again tonight. Walking the 3/4 mile from the bus stop we skirted the Pirelli works and as the sun set low in the sky we hear the

Scotland2016

Wed - crossing the border

Driving the scenic route back to England. We should stop and look round Dumfries but we are hoping to see Carlisle instead. So, Dumfries is confined to a quick trip to an out of town shopping precinct. Whilst in Oban we stumbled across Sue Reid Sexton's book Writing On The

Scotland2016

Tues - the flavour is orange

The Castle Douglas campsite is council owned and part of a larger municipal park alongside the loch. It is mainly for long term, seasonal caravanners and pitches are quite cramped. We elect for one on hard-standing, i.e. one end of a tarmaced place that at one time might have

Scotland2016

Mon - The Curse of Arran

OK this is getting stupid, we may have to run to England to escape the curse we are currently under. I'm getting ahead of myself again, first things first. It's time to move on from Muirkirk and after yesterday's unsuccessful Sunday lunch forage we decide to go to a town

Scotland2016

Sun - ensuring harmony

Orkney was great, NW Scotland is a very special place, Mull was a disappointment although the weather didn't help, Islay was wonderful and as friendly a place as we've ever been too. The universe needs to maintain a balance. We didn't like Arran and only seemed to meet it's less

Scotland2016

Sat - a discourse on cotton

Emily and Lucy may recall that 22 years ago, on the way to North Uist we stopped in at New Lanark, the mill village set up by Robert Owen in the early 1800s. Certainly walking down the steep slope from the car park with its panoramic views brought much of

Scotland2016

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!!!!

I've just spent well in excess of an hour writing part of today's blog when the Nexus tablet shut down on me because it ran out of power. No warning, no chance to save work. It was plugged into a 2A PSU at the time so goodness knows what background

Scotland2016

Fri - A rant about Arran

Well we are eating cereal not porridge for breakfast! Actually at some stage after 10pm last night another van turned up and parked next to us. The problem is, of course, bank holiday and school half term next week. We had assumed that planning would be easy whilst travelling but

Scotland2016

Thurs - No room at the inn

Ferry day today, two ferries to be precise, one to Bute/Kintyre, a quick drive across and a second ferry to Arran. We are up early - actually later than our original 7am alarm, set so we could phone Lucy on her birthday. Plenty of time before the ferry so

Scotland2016

Wed - a party at a brewery, and they invited a distillery

Today is Islay Brewery's open day and the weather is set to be good so the plan is to sun ourselves and have the occasional pint whilst listening to the music. For a complete change this holiday Liz has agreed to drive so this afternoon I can enjoy a pint

Scotland2016

Tues - the eagle is landed

We've been members of the RSGB probably for a couple of decades or more. We enjoy watching birds and the charity is a driving force behind all forms of wildlife conservation in the UK. We discovered that there are a couple of guided walks on this week, but the Thursday

Scotland2016

Mon - finding the plot

Decisions, decisions - do we carry on with Feis events and go over to the Caol Ila distillery for their open day or do we do our own thing. The deciding factor is actually tomorrow's plan. Tomorrow we hope to get up early enough to go down the bottom of

Scotland2016

Sunday - a party in a distillery

It's Feis here on Islay. A week long whisky and music festival, although the emphasis seems to be on the whisky! This means the island is busy with campervans. Note, I said "campervans" rather than "motorhomes". Whereas these were relatively rare on Mull and Westeros compared to motorhomes, particularly the

Scotland2016

Sat - avec mois le deluge

Last night's choice of car park to overnight in was excellent. Despite being close to the train line it was quiet enough as few trains use the line. Wi-Fi was available via CalMac whose ferry terminal was just over the line or BT Fon. A decent night's sleep too.Rather

Scotland2016

Friday, this is the life

Back to the mainland (briefly) today, with the midday ferry to Oban. Nothing to report of the morning, just the usual routine of breaking camp: showers, empty the loo, ready the van, check for tyre damage after yesterday's "thump".Let's just finish last night first. We wandered across the road

Scotland2016

Wed/Thurs–out and about

The idea was to pop over to Staffa today to see Fingal’s Cave. But it was so horribly yesterday, the boat is open and we might be sitting for 45 minutes in cold wind or even rain to get there and again on the return trip. Given that it

Scotland2016

Tuesday–confined to barracks

OK – no complaints. It’s been cold but we’ve had little rain since Edinburgh so were due some. And it’s good if it all comes at once. It started raining heavily at 10am this morning and stopped at 5pm. Raining sufficiently heavily that it was just too wet