Scotland Day One - The View

-
"I've had the same jeans on for four days now" - so sang Scottish Indy group the view in their 20XX hit (guess the year.)  Not true in my case, I had put a clean pair of strides on as part of preparation for my trip to Edinburgh.  The trip to Scotland marks the final visit in an arduous series of tours to watch England play Rugby at every away Six Nation venue.  The arduous bit is because every time we make the trip England seem to lose (except against Italy, obvs.)

The day got off to a splendid start at Cambourne's premiere drinking establishment, the Monkey.  Luckily our taxi was running late so there was time to relax and enjoy the finest drinks in all Cambridgeshire. 

A short ride to St Neots saw us arrive in time for an earlier train to Peterborough where we would make our connection to Edinburgh.  However due to some fannying about we missed that one so enjoyed half an hour in the unseasonable sunshine.  The ladies choosing this point to crack open the first bottle of champagne.


At Peterborough I was surprised to notice a branch of Waitrose next to the station, although on reflection my surprise was misplaced, even their football team is posh. 

When the train arrived I was a bit worried to see our allocated carriage (coach K train fact fans.) was a designated 'quiet carriage,' but supposed it was OK as we would not be using our mobile 'phones during the journey.  Due to a technical hitch we were being transported in the spare train, the original one having broken down.  As a result of this all seating reservations were cancelled so our planned table for 8 did not materialise.  Luckily a nice gentleman took one look at us and moved as quickly as he could making space for our group.

Thanks to some canny shopping by Brenda we had first class tickets so were served some really stringy beef curry and quite a few Gins and tonic.  This was the ideal accompaniment to the supplementary booze we had with us.  A highlight of the journey was this lovely view of Durham cathedral.


I have been to Durham once when visiting my now brother in law, in the days before he hoodwinked my sister into marriage.  That visit was notable for i) how cold his house was, ii) a car fire on the way home, iii) being charged money for food during the visit.  Those who have visited my house will realise just how cold it must have been for point i) to even occur to me.

On arrival in Edinburgh we walked to our hotel then headed for dinner.  Lots of interesting and amusing stuff happened but I am now being pressured to go and look at a castle so insert your own amusing hi-jinx here.  We did find some wine named for Patricia......


I will conclude this post with an observation that I have now been in Scotland for over 15 hours and have not had any haggis.  Off out to fix that now.







Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Scotland Day Two - The Proclaimers

-
Image
I have analysed the proclaimers most famous hit in some detail in an earlier blog post so no need to go over old ground, however another of their oeuvre is relevant to today's activities. Today was set aside for seeing the sights of Edinburgh and generally doing tourist stuff.  To prepare for this we went for breakfast in the hotel which some reviewers have described as 'disappointing.'  In particular the coffee was particularly poor. The first thing any tourists have to do in Scotland's capital city is visit the castle, which dominates the city from its hilltop home.  The walk up to the summit provides more questions than answers, specifically: i)  how can it be possible for 400 adjacent cashmere shops to survive and thrive ii) why did Keith agree to pose for the following picture. Keith this morning Other highlights included spotting Fleshmarket close, not much remarkable about this other than it is the title of an Ian Rankin book about detective Rebus. 
Read more

Days One and Two - There's No Limit

-
Image
 Good afternoon everyone and welcome to the next in my somewhat infrequent series of travel blogs.  This time I am on a trip to the Netherlands to do some cycling.   Day one started at home with the family in Northampton and a trip out to a cafe for breakfast, nothing noteworthy about that except the breakfast venue was also the place where Jeyes fluid was invented so we knew that that if anyone dropped a sausage the 5 second rule could easily be extended to 10. Leaving a tearful family behind I set off for Cambourne to meet my usual cycling companions to set off for Holland and the Eleven Cities cycle tour .  For those that could not be bothered to click on the link, the eleven cities is an annual event which has run since 1912.  The event sees up to 15,000 cyclists ride 235km around 11 cities in the North West of Holland.  This year the Bullrush Bike Club (and me) would be among their number. Following a pasta dinner prepared by Dan we met the others and formed a convoy to Harwich an
Read more

Day Six - Inspiral Carpets - Saturn V

-
Image
Today was a sad day, instead of doing group activities I was cast aside like yesterday's garbage (American for trash) to make my own way in the badlands of the Southern USA.  As an eternal optimist I decided to make the most of my situation by planning the most awesome day I could think of, to this end I got up early to make sure the car was mine for the day and headed South for Huntsville Alabama. It is important to start any busy day with a good breakfast, to this end I sought the closest branch of Denny's.  Amazingly there is not a single branch in Nashville so I survived on a diet of hot tamales and luke warm Pepsi Max until I arrived at the Huntsville branch of Denny's some 120 miles away. a coffee cup At this point it was lucky M and E were not with me as Denny's proceeded to deliver the kind of quality and service that they think is the Denny's norm, rather than this terrible exception.  It started with coffee taking ages, then a spillage on my tab
Read more