Tour of Scotland -- Sept 2011

[Jack Daw]

I may go, if I can get a niece or nephew to commit to go, too. Are you and your wife going, Matt?

[Detroitpete]

WOW! What a trip! And a great way to support the Museum. I think Mrs. Pete and I should start saving our pennies.

[M. A. C. Newsome]

I may go, if I can get a niece or nephew to commit to go, too. Are you and your wife going, Matt?

We'd like to, but with five young kids it may be hard to pull off. A lot will depend upon how weaned our newest is from her mom by then.

[OC Richard]

Gosh, you will need another holiday after all that!

Yes indeed we have a saying "I'll need a vacation to recover from my vacation."

Many Americans take frantic, overly-busy vacations because they're trying to pack as much stuff as possible into less than two weeks.

This tour reminds me somewhat of the trip my wife and I took back in 1986:
We flew into Manchester, hired a car, drove up to York (the museum, the Shambles, etc) then to Jedburgh, the Culloden site, Edinburgh (visiting a pipemaker), Perth, Blairgowrie, Pitlochry (vising The House of Edgar and having lunch with Blair McNaughton and his charming wife), Inverness (where we visited the sporran maker Alexander Robertson near Kiltarlity), Loch Ness/Urquhart Caslte, Eileen Donan Castle, Isle of Skye (back when you had to take the ferry), Boreraig, Dunvegan Castle, Oban, Fort William, Kintyre, Arran, Kilmarnock, Glasgow, then down to the Roman Wall, Chester, driving about northern Wales, Llanfair etc etc, down to Stonehenge before returning to Manchester to fly out.

In ten days.

We did a similarly crazy trip in 2004 where we took in stuff we had missed like Cornwall, Portsmouth's Naval Museum, the World Pipe Band Championships in Glasgow, etc.

Doing that much driving probably sounds crazy to a Brit, but the whole of Britain is probably the size of California, and we Californians don't mind driving.

We were having breakfast at the B&B near Chester back then in 1986 and the charming landlady asked us what we were going to see that day. She was astonished when we said Stonehenge. It was completely inconceivable to her that someone would drive that far as a day trip. To us it was nothing.

I am glad to see that the tour is taking you further north than Inverness, the large chunk of land above it, in my humble opinion, is the best part of Scotland and is so often ignored.

Yes we too didn't go above Inverness. We had intended to go up to John O Groats but we didn't have time for everything.

[Sir William]

Many Americans take frantic, overly-busy vacations because they're trying to pack as much stuff as possible into less than two weeks.

This is why I try to limit my sightseeing and other activities to a relatively small regional area, or perhaps a theme of some sort. If I try to do it all, I'll be exhausted and won't remember much other than being in a constant rush to get from one place to another.

On our last trip to Scotland I built in considerable "down time" so that we could take a leisurely stroll along a river or loch, take a hike or two in the countryside, enjoy a coffee at a cafe, and the like. With little exception we rarely had to be anywhere at any particular time, and I could take as much time as I wanted to see a museum or whatever. On one day I dropped my wife off at the local golf course (I don't play golf) while I went to Culloden (she doesn't do battlefields). We both had a nice day.

[macbheatha]

Gie's a shout when you're about to hit St Andrews...there's more to the toun than gowff!