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Visiting SCOTLAND!

Hello friends,

So over the long Easter weekend we decided to pack up the car and head North for a relaxing break in Scotland - we had a couple of nights in Edinburgh and then planned a day in Loch Ness before heading back South on Sunday. Well that was the plan. We inadvertently had to spend an extra night in Inverness, but I will explain more later!

I have visited Edinburgh a few times before, but always with work - I have walked around the old city, but not really had the time to meander around and take all the sights in. Also, as we decided to drive it gave us the opportunity to stop off at Hadrian's Wall on the way, a landmark I have wanted to visit for a while. Our final destination Loch Ness was my other half's  idea - he wanted to go hunting monsters.

The drive from home to Hadrian's wall was a long one - we got stuck in the normal bank holiday traffic, and it was a little cold when we got to the wall but it was worth the visit. We went to Housesteads Roman  Fort (link to English heritage website here - http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/housesteads-roman-fort-hadrians-wall/).

We explored the ruins of the fort and touched the wall,  as well as having a good stretch of our legs:




 This was the commanders house in the centre of the town


This is one of the biggest stretches of remaining wall - pretty impressive!

After spending an hour at the wall we jumped back into the car and headed North - at the boarder there was a chance to pull over and take a photo of the welcome to Scotland sign:


Whilst in Edinburgh we stayed at The Caledonian, which is part of the Waldorf Astoria Hilton chain. This was located at the foot of the old town, with great views up to the castle. The hotel was stunning, and we even had a Nespresso machine in our room - I would definitely recommend checking it out!

We had one full day of exploring the city, and spent most of it in the old town - first stop on our itinerary was the castle - we walked the hill up and it was crowded so didn't go inside but took a couple of mandatory tourist pictures. After that we walked the Royal Mile and stopped in a lot of the little tourist shops (every holiday we go on we buy a fridge magnet as a memento!).




A new experience for me was climbing the Scott Monument (below right photo). This is 200ft high, and has a number of viewing platforms which you can stop and look out of - the highest of these is 287 steps up through the spiralling pillars and when I got to the top I felt incredibly high, but the views were awesome. Coming down was an interesting experience - if you meet anyone in coming in the opposite direction you have to climb around them in the narrow spiral stairways!


 There are so many different places to eat in Edinburgh, there are all of the normal big chains such as Wagamamas (we ate here night 1) but also lots of unique pubs and different cuisines. We tried to get into an awesome looking Mexican for lunch, but they were full, but for dinner we found a beautiful Italian on George Street called Amarone. I had a fabulous pizza here, then it was time for bed, resting up before the long drive to Loch Ness.

It took about three and a half hours to get from Edinburgh to Loch Ness and the scenery was truly stunning - we drove through snow capped mountains and forests and eventually arrived at lunch time at a pub we researched called The Dores Inn - this was on the North bank of the river and had more great views. We had a lovely lunch here and then explored the Lake.








 We even found a Loch Ness monster!

After we had taken our photos and had some time at the Loch we started the drive home however disaster stuck 10 minutes in - we got a double puncture after driving through a very narrow road with lots of potholes. This happened in a bad area with no signal on our mobiles, but luckily we stopped next to a holiday cottage where a lovely couple let us use their payphone, gave us map to see where we were and cups of tea and shortbread. We managed to get the AA called out, but all of the tyre shops were closed. This meant we had to be towed up to Inverness and spend an extra unscheduled night there.

The next morning Kwikfit fitted two new (expensive) tyres and we were on the road at 9.30 for the 480 miles drive home.

Overall, this was a great trip despite the ending - Scotland is an amazing place to visit, very beautiful and everyone we experienced was super friendly. I think we were lucky with the weather, as the rain would have dampened our spirits slightly, and the sun shining just made everything more beautiful.


  

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