2013 travel - England and Scotland.



A bagpiper near Edinburgh Castle

Place : England and Scotland

Skye Bridge





Place we stayed at:  

    London:            At my brother-in-law, Prashant 's place.

    Edinburgh:       PearlView, Lorriane's place.

    Isle of Skye:     Hillcrest, Chrissie's place in Broadford.

      

     People are very friendly in Scotland. You will have very limited hotel options in Scotland. So it is advisable to stay in homely environment where you can enjoy the culture and real traditional food they eat and cook for you too :). Below 2 links always come handy for booking accommodation, especially when you yourself are planning the trip. We used both of it heavily.

https://www.airbnb.com/

www.tripadvisor.com

Note: If Scotland is in your itinerary then you will need to start booking the accommodation very early, specially if you are planning for Isle of Skye/Lochalsh. Out of 20 queries we made, we got availability in only 2 places. Fortunately the one we booked turned out to be excellent stay with an amazing view. 

  

Travel Dates : 29 Mar - 12th April, 2013



Lunch @Rockville

Food : The real fun of travelling outside country is to try the native food. So, we tried all kind of dishes we could read from menu. :)

Weather: Cold weather. Temp between -6C to 6C during entire stay. Did not see sun half of the time. Very windy at times. It was unusual for UK during this month.

What did we do? :)
      This trip would be the most planned trip we had so far. We booked tickets 3 months in advance, just a few days after we got Tatva's Passport. We started searching for accommodation in Feb and found that we were really late for it. Fortunately, we found really good B&Bs.

With Deepa/Ashima @London

London:      A few days before our departure, Tatva fell sick with cough and fever. We asked his doctor if it is OK to travel in a cold country. She said that he will get fine as soon as he reaches there as the air is very fresh and unpolluted in those countries - and it turned out to be true. Our little one was fine and healthy by the evening we landed in London. Prashant had come to the airport to pick us up. Cooked up nice meal for us for the evening. Next day, we visited Amber's college friend Deepak and his wife Ashima - had a great evening together. Prashant will accompany us on the Scotland trip for next 9 days.




Edinburgh:    We departed for Edinburgh on Mar 31st morning, took the train

(which got cancelled due to technical issues, had to run for the next one where we did not have reservation :(, but we got seats after a while). We reached Edinburgh, Waverley station by noon. You get the spectacular view of Scott Monument as soon as you step out of station and you feel awed. We took some pictures, spent sometime to figure out which bus will go to PearlView (Lorraine's B&B) and we all were pretty starved by the time we reached there. We went to Rockville restaurant which is a walking distance on the Portebello beach. What an awesome restaurant (will feel like floating in the sea) and awesome food they serve. 


Next day, we went for city tour. Took a bus to city-center, it was chilly and very windy outside. We took hopon/hopoff City sightseeing bus tour. Details at http://edinburghtour.com/tours/city-sightseeing-tour. Our first stop was Edinburgh castle where we spent a few hours and had lunch nearby.



On the roof of city tour bus

The sun came out for a while and we fully got soaked into it. Dinner that day was another adventure, we had decided to have it at Lorraine's helper place (was an Indian) and we had very tough time finding her place and to make it worse Tatva was crying because of hunger and it had got very chilly. However, we could make to the place and were served with really good food. She also lent us with a stroller which came handy when we went to Alnwick Castle.


Driving along Arctic Sea

Next day, we just chilled out, rented a car for next 7 days, had lunch at Rockville restaurant, drove around Edinburgh for few hours, had pizza for dinner.



inside the castle

 Alnwick Castle: Day after, we drove to Alnwick castle (the famous harry potter castle, where first 2 parts were shot, it is in England) which is ~140km from Edinburgh. It was "an experience". You really get to live some parts of the movie with people dressed as Hagrid/Harry there. Fortunately, it was a sunny day but very windy.



Alnwick Castle

with hagrid

On the way to Isle of Skye

 Isle of Skye: (While planning for the trip) After a lot of search on which part of Scotland should we spend next 4 nights in, we zeroed in on Isle of Skye and it proved to be a very good decision. We started for Isle of Skye at around 10:30AM in the morning (with Tatva and a long drive ahead, we made sure he was well fed before we started). The 400km drive is very scenic, you drive through rugged mountains, along the snowy peaks and numerous lakes (or lochs as they call in Gaelic which is local language).


We could not resist getting down every now and then, pose for pictures and it took us 7 hours (we had planned for 5 hours) to reach our destination. We had late lunch and then spent rest of the evening in leisurely walks. Our hostess Chrissie gave us a small booklet on best walks in Scotland and in next 3 days, we did 3 of those.

Scorrybreac Circuit Walk

Next day, we headed to Portree which is 80 km from Broadford. We did a

Old Man of Storr

splendid walk of Scorrybreac circuit. Tatva enjoyed crawling on the grass, for rest of the walk, he was happily sleeping in the baby carrier in his Chachu's lap. After lunch, headed towards old man of Storr. Prashant did that trek alone while we headed west towards Neist point.

@Portree

Day after, we went to the south of Broadford to Elgol. We took a boat trip to Soay Island, which had magnificent lake surrounded by mountains in it. During

Seals Everywhere

this trip we had our first encounter with hundreds of seals and we thoroughly loved it. It was evening by the time we came back and spent rest of evening playing with Tatva.

@Soay Island

 Next day, we went to Tokavaig, did a small walking trek to Dunscaith castle which is a ruined castle on west of Sleat peninsula. Just another awesome place. From there, we went to Clan Donald Skye Center for lunch, then headed to Eilean Donan castle which was closed due to ongoing renovation work.

Eilean Donan Castle



Our hostess Chrissie @Skye

Next day, we headed back for Edinburgh, there was nice breezy snowfall on the mountains, we reached Edinburgh by 5:00PM. Took the train back to London. We had booked in first class for the return journey and it was an amazing experience with complementary food and drinks.




Snowfall on way back to Edinburgh

London:  It was past midnight by the
time we came back to London. Spent whole of next day sleeping, while Prashant went for his Europe Visa application. We went for national museum the day after. On 11th, we went to Prashant's college, had lunch nearby, came back for packing and headed to airport in the evening.

We just had spent 2 best weeks our life and did not want to go back. But then, "paapi pet ka sawaal hai" :P
More Photos:



Romance @Dunscaith Castle :)



Posing Sheep



Dunscaith Castle 

We just had spent 2 best weeks our life and did not want to go back. But then, "paapi pet ka sawaal hai" :P