Northern Europe

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The castle

Edinburgh’s most obvious attraction is its castle located on the hilltop towering over the city.  We paid our visit there in the morning.  They run a free but short guided tour which gave a brief insight into the history.  Otherwise it would be like any other castle with its collection of furniture, portraits, ceramics, swords […]

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To the capital

It was an easy one hour drive to Scotland’s capital and second largest city. We dropped our bags off at the Tune Hotel, expecting to have to pay for the brief storage and sure enough, it cost us GBP2 per piece. We returned the car to the airport and bused back into town for lunch […]

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Meet up with cuzzie

Above:  Glasgow “Cathedral” from the necropolis. We had most of the day to fill or kill today. We started with a drive into downtown Glasgow which was easy being a Sunday; parking was easy too. We popped into the Cathedral and the necropolis behind. Interestingly, the Cathedral isn’t technically one at all. It is an […]

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The big city

Above:  Stirling Castle from a distance. The original plan was to have a short drive from Fort William into Glasgow and take in some of the sights of the big city. However, Kim had relatives that he wanted to look up in Kirkmichael, near Blairgowie even though he had trouble contacting them directly. We did […]

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Leaving the Highlands

We left the hostel on Skye and drove towards Fort William. It is only about 2 hour away but because of our plan for tomorrow, we took in some sights further afield at Oban before returning to Fort William for the night. We feel that we’ve had a good dose of the Scottish Highlands and […]

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Around Skye

The weather cleared and we had blue sky for most of the day with patches of rain. The down side is that Scotland’s infamous midgies were out in full force first thing in the morning, giving us a taste of their power to annoy. We drove Dunvegan Castle about an hour away. While the scenery […]

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Back on Skye

After a nice cooked breakfast, we got ourselves ready leisurely and left the B&B around 1030. The weather was very wet and miserable. As we circumambulated the island to get back to Tarbert, the scenery changed from the weird moonscape rock/tussock/water near the B&B, to soft peaty earth further along and some beautiful white beaches […]

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Harris & Lewis

Breakfast at the hotel starts at 0730 but we were let in for the Continental selection at 0715 so we could set off in time for the ferry for the Isles of Harris & Lewis. We had beautiful canned grapefruit and mandarins to go with muesli, plus ham and cheese to go on our toast. […]

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The Scottish Highlands

Above:  Eilean Donan castle on our drive approaching Skye. Leaving Istanbul It is my birthday today and I’m flying to Edinburgh to meet Kim. The airport shuttle collected me at 0600; I had to check it was going to Ataturk Airport rather than Sabiha Gokcen just to be safe! I like Ataturk because is much closer, […]

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Jetting across the globe

Above:  Flying near the Tibetan Plateau, 40,000 feet doesn’t seem so high. It was a 0440 wake up for the 0830 Air New Zealand flight from Hong Kong to London Heathrow. I caught the last “Night Bus” to the airport at 0510 but I should have slept for 15 minutes longer and caught the 0530 […]

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