Two Drifters

Scotland2016

A busy Saturday

Busy, not us but Kirkwall. Take a small town with narrow streets serving a population of 9000 and then add 4500 tourist incomers from two cruise ships and suddenly the sleepy streets are a bit chocker.So no museums for us today then. But we do get to the Farmers'

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Friday: Cardinal Fang ... the comfy chair!

Slightly warmer overnight, only down as low as 2 degrees and the wind was blowing onto the side of the van without a vent, so no draft. What a huge difference those 2 degrees make!Forecast for today is mixed but our handy Orkney walks book has a nice 6.

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Over the seas

Orkney today! And a nice looking day too. Bright blue skies as we look up from our beds through the roof light. Bright blue skies that is, made out of focus by the ice that has formed on the roof light overnight. I thought it seemed cold.To start the

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The end of the road

A quick explore of the site. Not much has changed since the 60 staff worked here in the eighties, still the open round metal conduit terminated in metal light switches, the short with a little spherical blob on the end of a tiny shaft. And it is warmer here, not

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Tuesday - Dah-di-dah-dah

The wind is coming in from Greenland. That means, here on Speyside, it passes over the high Grampians (such as Ben Nevis) driving it upwards to become even colder and forcing it to deposit it's moisture as hail or snow. Going further north means a less uplifted airstream which should

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Monday - a taste of Scotland

As a local poet once put it "The best laid schemes o' mice an' men gang aft agley. The idea behind choosing this campsite was a lovely walk along the bank of the Spey to the distillery at the far end of Aberlour, cross the river and back on the

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An aside - Weather

The van has a huge skylight. It is positioned so that lying abed you get a view of a decent chunk of the sky, ideal for weather watching or star gazing.So as we listened to the rain hammering on the roof we drew back the skylight's blind to a

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Sunday, Highland and Ospreys

Plan was to go up to Aberdeen today but we've had more than enough retail therapy so decided to give the granite city a miss and head inland to the Cairngorm National Park. But first things first, it's Sunday, and Sunday means Car Boot. A quick trip into Stonehaven before

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Saturday, hurry up and eat your ice cream

Before it freezes!!Let's get this over with now. There will be a recurrent theme in today's entry featuring the cold. It is cold, the wind is very cold, it is unpleasantly cold. And before you think this is some neish southerner whinging about the Scottish weather, bear in mind

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Friday - I do like to be beside the seaside

Visitors (yes, visitors) to the van reduced blogging time yesterday so a double dose today - here's part 1Friday: Glenrothes to Stonehaven, via Perth, Dundee, Arbroath, Montrose, an outdoor clothing factory shop and a phone box library. Stop one, the Keela outdoor factory shop in Glenrothes. A proper factory shop,

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Thursday - meeting the Provost!!

Today's plan has always been simple: walk from the campsite to Glenrothes, wander around for a bit, go to the Kingdom Of Fife Beer Festival, stagger home. Walking to town was nice, it's two miles or so from the campsite and some horribly busy roads. Fortunately if you wander through

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Wednesday, a new van, perhaps?

Travelling day today. On into the peninsula of Fife. It's not too far from Stirling to Glenrothes (where we are spending the next two nights) so we have decided to go the scenic route along the coastline of the Forth estuary (the Firth of Forth). This means taking in sights

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Tuesday - ADYAC (AAD) (AABT)

Another day, yet another castle (and a distillery) (and a brewery too)To begin at the beginning, as Dylan once wrote. The bus pricing just didn't make sense so we decided to drive the few miles up to Doune/Deanston (same place really, just either side of the river Teith)

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Monday, another day, another castle

Stirling this time. Firstly let's cover some other themes of this holiday. Weather, lying in bed at 7 am this morning listening to the light rain in the van roof, promoted thoughts of "here we go again". But actually it turned out to be a sunny day much of the

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Sunday, avoiding conflict

We've deviated slightly from our vague itinerary. Originally we'd planned to pop down to New Lanark to revisit Robert Owen's socially experimental mill. Revisit, because we went there on our family trip to North Uist some 20 odd years ago. Anyway we got dates wrong and booked the Glasgow campsite

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Saturday, tea with Mackintosh

OK, when did I last have a rant? Must be time for another one! Glasgow buses quite rightly protect the driver by insisting on exact fare and so the driver carries no cash nor has access to the safe box into which your ticket fares are deposited. Great idea. Well

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Friday - the school of architecture

Ok, so it's not raining this morning. But the forecast isn't good so let's take waterproofs, just to be sure, eh! Glasgow's a bit flatter than Edinburgh so walking is much easier. Of course, walking is a better option when it isn't raining. So we bought combined train and subway

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Thursday - travelling

Not much to say about today - we left Edinburgh and went to Glasgow. Full Stop. Well, we went the scenic route at least, avoiding the network of motorways that seem to connect the various parts of both cities. A quick look in a couple of outdoor clothing suppliers en

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Wednesday - the Edinburgh tourist bit - at last

Well the forecast yesterday was for heavy rain today, but this morning it suggested light rain with, wait for it, the possibility of not rain for some of the afternoon. Perfect Scottish site-seeing weather (well as good as it gets anyway). First stop - Greyfriars churchyard. Remember those days when

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If it was nae for yur wellies

Just one of the following statements is true: We had a lovely tour of Edinburgh Castle We took in all the sites, including Greyfriars Bobby We had a wonderful shopping experience in Edinburgh's boutique shops It slashed it down with rain all day and we trudged round best we couldNow

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Tom Hanks and the Knights Templar

It's mid-April and the wind is bitter still. Enough is enough, let's have some warmth. No, the forecast suggests even colder nights to come before the daytime temperatures eventually reach double figures.Before we leave Berwick, like Basil Fawlty, I feel I must mention the war. There is a rumour

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Sunday, to Alnwick, maybe not.

Plan A: catch the bus to Alnwick and visit the Castle, famous Physic Gardens and bookshop. So yesterday we checked with Berwick Tourist Info about bus prices, something that Arriva seemed to deliberately hide online, apart from student pricing. Perhaps they assume the only folk smart enough to figure out

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Holy island

In memoriam, Alan Hull, founder of Lindisfarne. Today's early, early alarm call 07:00 meant we were at the bus stop well in plenty of time to catch the bus out to the island, about a 12 mile or so journey. We could have taken the van but would have

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Friday - just out and about

OK, chores day. We will be getting short of underwear and socks soon, so Liz has to spend a little time in the launderette. This site was deliberately chosen because it has such facilities. Whilst she organises that Brian has the task of emptying the van's chemical toilet. As we

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Life in the van #1 - Space (the final frontier)

I thought it might be interesting to depict what living in the van is like. Let's start with the physical stuff - space. The van splits into two separate spaces, the driving bit and the living bit. Unlike many vans these really are separate, you can't access the cab from