Big Ben's Travelogue Blog

Today's artiste choice is in honour of the chap we sat near on the train who had clearly had a similar experience to Lulu and someone had made him want to shout.  This was clear by how loudly he conducted his mobile telephone call. Sorry should have put a spoiler alert before the previous paragraph, but then again it could have been a train to the hire car place or the airport.  It wasn't, it was the train home.  Yesterday a decision was taken to book a place on a train early-ish in the morning.  Most of the group went for a later train as first class was quite cheap, sadly Patricia and I were on a deadline so a 10:00 departure it was. Before I detail the train journey I have a few further things to raise from yesterday's tourism.  The first item is summarised by the caption below the picture. WTF The second is a picture I took of the Balmoral hotel on the walk home from dinner last night.  The clock on the Balmoral hotel is relevant to today's sh...

It turned out that the spot of bad weather we had experienced the day before was in fact rather worse than it seemed, the entire country was indeed Wet Wet Wet.  Despite that we woke and met for our usual healthy hotel breakfast, at which I was granted an extra sausage by the lovely serving lady, perhaps as deferred compensation for the coffee the day before being utterly vile. The resident pilot in our group had used his industry contacts to confirm our flight was all good this was backed up by the Easyjet web site.  Thirty minutes later this proved not to be the case and all flights were cancelled.  This was great news as far as I was concerned as it offered the chance to drive a minibus, possibly on two wheels at some points. Minibus hire arranged and paid for through the Holidayautos web site Keith, Chris and I set off for the airport to collect the vehicle before returning to the hotel to collect the rest of the gang and our luggage.  Luckily the hotel bar w...

Today was the reason we had made the journey.  Scotland would play England for the Calcutta cup and Six Nations glory.  For whoever lost it would feel like walking on broken glass, as Annie Lennox once said. Not a bad start to the day with a full English  British breakfast which was fairly well presented with the sausages well positioned to form a breakwater between the beans and the rest of the meal.  Only let down by the hotel coffee being vile.. The chaps left the hotel at 12:00 with a view to being somewhere near the stadium well in advance of kick off so being able to find a table in a pub and have a relaxing afternoon. What we had forgotten was we were in Scotland, land of the brave and home of the perma-thirsty.  From 12:01 onwards every pub we visited was rammed. Thanks to some local knowledge gained on a stag do 15 years ago I was able to take the group easily the most direct route to the stadium.  In common with all mavericks it took some ti...

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 Rebu...

"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 crac...

Today was the last day of our trip and we had not really made any firm plans, other than we had to definitely get up early to watch a couple of episodes of the office before we left.  I decided to take charge of breakfast to make sure we didn't end up in a vegetarian tofu bar or whatever fruit salad based dirge the others would pick.  We loaded up the Yukon and headed for the German Town district of Nashville where Trip Advisor assured me we would find Nashville's fourth best breakfast (never go top three, they get complacent). The restaurant in question was Monells and promised good old fashioned Southern Fayre, it did not disappoint.  On arrival we were told there would be a 45 minute wait for a table, in absentia anything else to do we decided to wait and sat on the terrace enjoying a coffee in the sun.  In actuality it was about ten minutes before we were called in to our table.  By our table I mean the table for 14 we were to share with several other grou...

We had no plans but it was the penultimate day of our holiday so it was vital we got off to a strong start.  This strong start mainly involved watching a good few episodes of "The Office - An American Workplace."  For those who are unfamiliar with this series it is the US version of "The Office" but can be considered inspired by rather than a remake of.  It's great. Once we managed to stop we set off for a local shopping mall to pick up a few items.  In my case new pants and jeans.  The latter being particularly important as I was down to a single pair.  I also enjoyed looking for some new shoes and spotted the following, but sadly they didn't have a pair in my size.: high fashion Nashville Style Once again Nashville was a total let down when it came to breakfast, despite arriving well before the normal breakfast curfew of 11:00AM not one of the many restaurants was able to serve breakfast.  This was a terrible situation only made better by the...