Leaving London: The Road to Bath

We arrived in London late Saturday evening August 17. Picked up our Peugeot automatic transmission with (awful) GPS at the Heathrow rental desk and drove to our hotel to crash for the night. Sunday morning found us on the road for our first full day in the United Kingdom heading toward Bath, making a few stops along the way at Highclere Castle (a.k.a. Downton Abbey) and Stonehenge.

Bath, England

Figured the stops at Highclere and Stonehenge on the first day following travel day, Bath, England was far enough of a drive for one day. It's a relatively small, quiet town, and probably the most relaxing of all the places we visited on the trip. I'd definately recommend stopping here if you're ever in the neighborhood.

Manchester, England

Leaving Bath we still had quite a hike on our hands to get up to Scotland, so to break the mileage in half (or so), we made a stop in Manchester for a night.

Jen and I walked around town a little bit on our one night exploring a bit of town around our hotel, which seemed to be Chinatown, Gay Manchester, and the city central all within a mile or so of each other.

Seemed like a nice town, nicer than I expected it to be. But the main attraction for me was a visit to Old Trafford, the home to the Manchester United football club. Unfortunately no match was scheduled for the time we were there, but I did take a tour of the stadium.

Glasgow, Scotland

First stop in Scotland was in Glasgow. To be honest I knew very little about the city beforehand, so we jumped on a hop-on hop-off bus for a quick tour. We stayed in a serviced apartment for two nights, which while there wasn't much organization as to help at the front desk, the apartment itself was incredibly spacious. Two bedroom, two baths, living room and kitchenette with laundry, this living space beat any hotel we stayed at as far as not feeling on top of each other at all times.

Glasgow itself, not sure about it. The West End looked a bit more lively than the east end & city center. The Necropolis was interesting walking through there and up the hill the graves rested on. But overall, I just felt there was something lacking here and I can't put my finger on it.

Inverness, SCOTLAND

When Lois decided she wanted to go to Scotland I asked her what she wanted to see. The first thing she said was "The Loch Ness Monster." So I made it a point to stay near Loch Ness.

The drive between Glasgow and Inverness through Loch Lomond National Park, the Glen Coe and Fort William, and along the western shore of Loch Ness was by far my favorite part of the 1,500 mile drive we did on the trip. The views of the Scottish Highlands were amazing, even though I was driving most of this leg of the tour and white-knuckle gripping the steering wheel along narrow, winding, ridiculously-high speed limit roads. I did manage a somewhat out of the way stop for lunch at the Castle Stalker View Cafe, overlooking the Castle Stalker. More on that in the gallery.

Inverness itself was another rather small town (comparitively to the others we visited on the trip). Jen and I wandered the city center one night, I managed a Loch Ness boat tour one morning, and we even took a drive out of the city to a farm and watched a border collie sheep-herding demonstration. One of my favorite stops on the trip.

Edinburgh, SCOTLAND

Edinburgh was probably my most anticipated stop on the vacation, and it didn't disappoint for me. Jen and I managed to hike up to the top of Arthur's Seat, tour the city by hop-on hop-off bus again, walk around Edinburgh Castle, and we even visited the emergency room (I won't get into detail here, but do you know that when vacationing in Scotland you get one free visit to the ER?). There was even a wedding being held in the hotel we stayed at, bagpipers, Groom & Groomsmen in kilts, the whole nine yards.

We were here on a Bank Holiday weekend and the end of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, so the town was quite crowded. Two nights was not enough here. I'd love to come back some day.

York, ENGLAND

York was the midway stop back to London much like Manchester was a midway stop up to Scotland at the beginning of the trip. Unfortunately, this is when the sickness bug caught up to all of us. We arrived into York and found our hotel, ordered food in, and never left the room all night. Which was a shame, because from the looks of the streets of the walled city as we arrived, it looked like it could be a nice little town to walk around. Perhaps next time.

The next morning was some room service breakfast, and then departed for the last road trip of the vacation back to London.

Sorry, York. Hope to see you more again sometime.

London

It's probably a good thing we ended the trip here in London. All of us had been here before, so we're familiar with the town. And unfortunately the sick bug hadn't left us yet. The many miles of the vacation had caught up with us, and our bodies were a bit worn down at this point.

We arrived in London, dropped Lois off at the hotel, returned the Peugeot to the rental company, crashed for the night and did one more day of hop-on hop-off buses, but it just wasn't happening for any of us. It was time to call it a vacation and go home.