Edinburgh Festival

It’s been really crowded during our visit in Edinburgh.  Our stay happened to be in the middle of their yearly three week long festival called the Fringe.  It’s supposed to be one of the largest festivals in Europe.  This is why it so hard to find a decent apartment or hotel that was reasonably priced in town.

The actual tourists sites were reasonable but there were thousands of people on the sidewalks going to and from the various festival locations downtown.  The most notable site we visited was the Edinburgh Castle.  It’s perched at the top of the hill next to downtown.  We spent half the day at the castle and got soaked by the rain showers on our way home.  We had great weather for the past week so we forgot to pack our rain gear.

Today we went back downtown to tour the National Museum of Scotland.  We then walked to the Museum on the Mound which is in the original Bank of Scotland building and is a museum about their money.  That was a small but enjoyable museum but it didn’t explain why there are different versions of the same paper currency issued either by the Bank of England or three different banks in Scotland.  The crazy part is that some shops in England won’t accept currency issued in Scotland even though it’s worth the same.

We ended the day walking through the one of the Fringe festival sites and watched a few performances bought some souvenirs and did a quick walk through their Scottish National Gallery.

Rental car stress

We made it to Edinburgh which is the final stop of our trip.  We are staying in an apartment that is about 8 blocks from the city center so its pretty busy with limited parking.  We found a spot about two blocks away, unloaded the car and left again to return the car at the rental car agency located at the train station in the city center.

Fortunately I had remembered a TripAdvisor tip about rental car returns being a block away from the train station even though my rental agreement said to return it at the station.  I’m also glad the tip included the location of the garage otherwise we would have been circling around the busiest part of town.

Returning the car was also a new experience.  In the USA, the agent gets the mileage and fuel level and prints your receipt.  This time my rental agent brought out a strong flashlight and began to check over each tire, and looked for scratches on the car.  With some of the narrow highways we travelled I had to dive into the brambles and kissed bushes a few times so that the other bus/truck/car could pass.  Also when I first started driving on the opposite side I had trouble gauging the left side of the car and kissed a few curbs (but didn’t scratch the wheel)

The agent noted a few deep scratches of the lower part of the left door and that the left front tire had a cut in the sidewall.  Fortunately, I had been nice and chatty with the agent when I first arrived and so when I explained how the rental agreement already noted a left front wheel scratch (which was probably not related to the sidewall cut) and shared my story about the original agent not concerned about scratches less than 1cm as he was super busy I didn’t sound defensive or that I making excuses so he let us go without charging us extra.

Next time I rent in Europe I will probably just get the full coverage to minimize the stress of the rental car return damage inspection.  I will also get the diesel option (a free upgrade this time  for being nice to the original agent) as the trip computer showed that we almost averaged 50 mpg for the 2000 miles driven.  I’m also a fan of the 5 door hatchback. We were able to get all of our luggage and a few days groceries for our family of 5 and it was easy to load and a little shorter than the wagons I usually try to get.

Scotland Beauty

Central Scotland and the Highlands has some great terrain.   Rolling hills and mountains make for some challenging roads.  The roads have lots of blind curves,  narrow with single lanes throughout.  It makes for white knuckle experience on the roads especially when the tour buses and trucks blast by going by the other way.  it takes twice as long to travel the same distance when compared to the roads at home.

We were on the road almost three hours to get to our next destination, the Glenfinnan Viaduct.  This is an old curved train bridge that is featured in the Harry Potter movies when the train is going to Hogwarts.  There is also a steam train that runs on this route twice a day each direction so we had to time it so we were there when the steam train went by.

Since our anticipated arrival time would mean about 90 minutes of waiting for the train to go by at the viaduct,  we stopped by the Dalwhinnie Distillery on the way and took a 45 minute tour which included a tasting at the end.  We arrived at the viaduct with enough time to park and make the 15 minutes hike to get close.  After photos of the viaduct and of the train going by, we drove straight back.  We had a few close calls on the road back.  I did have to make a sudden stop before a turn as a tour bus suddenly appeared.  I had to back up to the nearest pull out so that he could go by.

Another castle

I’ve lost track of the number of castles we have visited on this trip.  Whenever we walked through them we always speculate what it must be like to live in one.

For our second night in Scotland we found a castle on Airbnb.  We were having trouble finding a place to stay.  Scotland is obviously a popular destination as most of the reasonable prices hotels and airbnb were booked.  We expanded our search and found this place but it was kinda remote.  It wasn’t that far from where we were visiting but it generally takes twice the time here to cover the same distance at home.

After driving on some single lane highways (no center marking as they are only 1.5 cars wide) we turned off onto a gravel road and crossed the creek on a stone covered bridge and to our castle.

We actually don’t get the entire castle just the servants quarters that were recently remodeled.  It’s ok as we are still in the castle!

Great Wall

After exploring the castles in Wales and Northern England we have learned that the regions have been at conflict even during the time of when the Romans ruled the area 2000 years ago.

We visited the largest remaining section of Hadrian wall.  This wall used to go across northern England which was also the northern limit of the Roman Empire. The wall was over 20 feet high, with a deep ditch in front and small castles every mile or so.  It was in place for hundreds of of years till the fall of the Roman Empire. The wall was then slowly dismantled by the locals and the stones were used to build private residences or small walls to define their property lines.

It's amazing to see life going on next to the remains of this 2000 year old wall.  Cars whiz by as it could be just another stone wall in England and cows and sheep rub against it to scratch an itch.

Bobbins are cool

Most of the sites we have visited have been part of English Heritage are castles and most of the time are in ruins.  Today we visited a working heritage site, Stott Park Bobbin Mill.  It was established around 1830 and made wooden bobbins.  The bobbins were made from the local wood and the machinery/lathes were powered originally by a water wheel, later a steam engine and finally a huge electric motor.

The best part of the visit was that the equipment still worked and the tourguide made some bobbins using the original tools and machinery while talking about the history of location.

Birds of Prey

We stopped at one more castle on our way out of Wales.  At each of these ruins/castles the local British use the grounds like a park/picnic area with the kids playing chase or kicking a ball in the grassy area that’s within the castle walls.  We were there mid week so there were also lots of younger kids in strollers. I guess having a 900 year old historic site is better than a modern play area in the city park that our kids are stuck with at home but the downside is that you have to watch them like a hawk to make sure they don't climb up too high.

It didn’t take long to cross back into England and we stopped to visit the Chester Cathedral.  It’s been there for 1000 years but added onto during the 1400s.the which is its current configuration.  I was amazed at the preservation of the interior with all the details still in place after 600 years. But then I read how controversial it was in the 1800s when during its restoration some folks argued that the work was so extensive that it was basically getting rebuilt.  So that was a little disappointing knowing it was effectively only 200 years old.

What made the stop worthwhile was the Falconry that’s behind the cathedral where raise and train birds of prey.  There had a huge golden eagle,  a few species of falcons, owls and a buzzard on display.  Later we went to an open field where they demonstrated with the bird flying to and from the handler/trainer.  Aidan got to experience holding and feeding baby chick parts to a buzzard.  They had some trouble with the demonstration as a Falcon flew away and the owl flew into a nearby tree and wouldn’t come down.  In both cases the handlers were holding dead mice to entice the birds to return.  We had to leave so we don't know if the Falcon ever returned.

We finally made it to our next destination for the next two night,  Patley Bridge is a small town near the sites we will be visiting and had a nice looking Airbnb for a good price.

Stone castles

Back in the 1200s the English kings were trying to control the folks of Wales so they built these huge stone fortresses.  Many of these are still standing and are great landmarks to explore.

We visited three castles today who’s names I don’t know how to pronounce as the Welsh language is a mystery to me. Caemarfon, Beaumaris, and Conway are the locations we visited. Each had turrets,  perimeter walls,  basements,  etc.  Each level usually required using the original circular stone stairs. Besides being dark and steep,  many of the stones were worn so the steps were uneven.

Personal responsibility is also expected hete.  Those stairs did not have railings, and when walking on top of the perimeter walls about 50 feet up the railings were pretty low and open.  The tops of the turrets which were at least 70 feet off the ground also had little protection.  And to make it more challenging the stone surfaces at the top which you walked on was often uneven.

We made it without injuring ourselves though my ankles are sore from walking on the worn stone surfaces.

Going to Wales

We left our spacious townhouse and headed up north towards North Wales and to visit a few more castles and ruins along the way.   We stopped at Stokesay Castle which was built in the 1200s and still standing with many of it’s original wood timbers supporting the roof and floors.  The interior except for one area were just exposed stone walls as they would have plastered or paneled or hung tapestries back in the day.  One room still had some of the woodwork which was amazing.  All of the wood was quartersawn oak with lots of detailing.

Afterwards we visited Wroxeter a site of a 2000 year old Roman ruins.  There is still a huge wall and the foundations of the original Roman bath and some of the other foundations of the original city are excavated which we walked around.

Finally we headed to Colwyn Bay which is a seaside town in Wales.  It was sunny when we arrived so we walked to the beach but most families were packing up as it was late in the afternoon. The weather is like the Pacific NW so it was cold and breezy outside but there were still folks one the beach in their swimwear. Just like home!

More Ruins!

We visited two more ruins today.  The Witley Court and Gardens and the Kenilworth Castle.  Witley Court was not that old, at around 350 years old. It was a grand mansion on beautiful grounds but was destroyed by fire in the 1930s.  Kenilworth was built 800 years ago.

We are taking advantage of our English Heritage membership and going as many sites as possible.  The membership packet includes a map and a catalog but it’s not really detailed to use to find your way. Most of the sites don’t have actual street addresses but they include the postal code.

In the UK,  you can use the postal code and get pretty close.  Unfortunately the Garmin doesn’t work by entering the postal code and most of these sites are not major enough be in the points of interest database.  Fortunately when we got our free upgrade to a diesel on our rental car it included a built-in navigation system that works with the postal codes.

We have been pretty reliant on the GPS in the car.  The UK is full of roundabouts and the roads not labeled well.  On the downside the GPS will direct you to shortcuts using  roads that are narrower than the alley behind our house but have a speed limit of 50 mph!  Today we ended down a road that got narrower and narrower till it became a rutted gravel driveway which took us to the rear of Witley Court but not the parking lot.  We now leaned to use the GPS to get us near a site and follow the brown colored tourist signs which usually start to appear when you get close to the destination.

Another stone formation?

We spent our day in Avebury. It is the location of another stone circle like Stonehenge.  The stones here are individual tall stones set into the ground over 4000 years ago.  The circumference of the circle is around 3000 feet and you can walk up and touch the stones.  Sheep farmers use the land so we were passing sheep as we were walking around the stone circle.

There are two other heritage sites in the area.  One is Silbury Hill which is a man made Hill that is 120 feet high and 500 feet wide in the middle of a naturally flat area.   The was also a 5000 year old burial site called the West Kennet Long Barrow a little further away.   We walked about a mile from the parking lot to get to the hill and another mile further to the Long Barrow.

The walk was uneven on an unimproved path.  I made it to the Hill and halfway more to the Long Barrow but once I saw the final elevation climb to get to that site,  I stayed behind while everyone else made it to the site.  That was a 20k step day,  my feet hurt!

More Abbeys

I am conflicted about our current hotel.  Our room is super small,  the bathroom seems put together with spare building materials and the steps to get to our room are steep and narrow and on the outside if the building.  However the place e is clean, the owner is super nice and responsive and he makes great breakfasts.  That’s probably why the place has had great reviews on Booking.com.

After our hardy full English breakfast we packed up and  headed out to see the Glastonbury  Abbey. It’s actually the ruins of the former abbey but some of the towers,  portions of the chapel are still standing.  It was ordered to be closed by King Henry Viii and it’s valuables stripped from the site.

The site is also home to the legend that King Arthur was once buried here. Some historians feel that this was a story made up by the monks in the 1200’s to draw attention to their order,  help increase visitors and thus revenue which provided them enough money to build this once great abbey.

After lunch at a fry shop around the corner which had surprisingly good and reasonably priced fish and chips (4.5 in Yelp) we headed towards Wells and the Wells cathedral.  The Wells Cathedral was impressive and well preserved.  It seemed larger than Westminister Abbey in London but the bodies interred there were not as famous. My favorite feature of the Abbey was the original working clock that had Knights jousting on the 15s. It's supposed to be the 2nd oldest working clock in existence.  The architecture is also different that the other buildings with scissor arches in addition to the regular plain Jane arches you see at most of these old cathedrals.

Finally we drove to our new basecamp for the next few days.  Even though it was listed on Booking.com it a three bedroom townhouse with a well equipped kitchen, and the Waitrose grocery store not too far away.  We’ll be eating in or picnicing for the next few days.

Bath

We spent our day in Bath.  Bath is a 2000 year old city established by the Roman’s and is best known for the public baths set up to take advantage of its naturally warmed spring water.  Later the English felt that the waters had medicinal powers and set up hospitals and of course a big church.  We took a two hour walking tour of the city led my a older resident of the city who reminded me of Julia Child.

Afterwards we found a site nearby that was part of English Heritage.  We had purchased the 16 day English Heritage card which provided access to over 100 sites including Stonehenge.  We visited the remains of a castle build in the 1300s by the Hungerford family.   Over time the family hit hard times and sold their castle around 1700 for salvage,  parts which can be found in another castle nearby.

Stonehenge and Downton Abbey

Our first stop out of London was Stonehenge.  It was about 2 hours away with traffic.  There is an admission fee which covers the two mile bus ride from the visitors center. We were able to skip the long line to buy tickets as I had purchased a 16 day English Heritage membership which allows for free entry to over 100 sites around England including Stonehenge. I also reserved our entry time in advance.

From the visitors center it’s about a 2 mile bus ride to the actual site.  Seeing the pictures of Stonehenge doesn’t compare to seeing it for real.  You don’t realize how large it is till you are standing next to it.  The visitor guide was also well organized.  We had downloaded the visitor guide to our smartphones and learned about the history walked around the monument.

Our next stop was Highclere Castle which was the castle used for the filming of Downton Abbey. It was about 30 minutes from Stonehenge.  If we wanted to minimize our driving we should have stopped at Highclere first but I was able to pre order our admission tickets to the castle and the only time available was in the afternoon.  All Spring and Summer these tickets were sold out on their website but I would still check their website daily to see if anything had changed. Then about a month ago their website had a banner that stated that a limited number of tickets had just become available and one of those dates worked perfectly with our schedule.  I could have bought the tickets on site when we arrived but I read how they sometimes sell out or we would have to wait till later in the day to enter.

Unlike Stonehenge,  Highclere was a disappointment when compared to watching it on Downton Abbey.  The outside was fabulous but the inside seemed worn and much smaller than as imagined on TV.  In any case I was still happy we got to tour the castle.

Afterwards we drove to our B&B which is in a small town outside of Bath.  We picked the place based on the high scores and price on Booking.com. The owner of the B&B must have had all of his friends write the reviews on the website as I wouldn’t have rated it so high.

Driving on the Wrong side of the Road

After packing and cleaning our apartment we walked up a few blocks to the car rental facility at the Paddington rail station.  The rental place was an off-site parking garage operated by Europcar a French company.  I went with them as their pickup was the closest to our apartment and their rates were the best.

I wanted a “large” diesel wagon like what we had on our trip last summer but car rental prices were much higher in the UK and the base gasoline powered “large”sedan was 40% cheaper so that’s what I reserved. One thing I learned over my many years of business travel is that being friendly with whoever is behind the counter usually results in better service.  In this case I was able to get upgraded for free to the diesel sedan which is also a higher optioned car.  BTW "large" in the UK is smaller than midsized at home.  Our car is smaller that an Accord/Camry but slightly larger than a Civic/Corolla.

Getting out of London took extra time due to traffic plus I had to get used to driving on the other side of the road.  I had a tendency to position the car too far to the left of the lane.  My backseat driver sitting in the front was pretty tense for most of the day.  I don’t blame her as I’ve ridden as a passenger many times in Japan and is always odd to sit in the “drivers” seat but not have a steering wheel.

Last Day in London

For our last day in London we took the train out of London for a quick trip to the  Hampton Court Palace.  Rail/tube prices in London are based on the distance you travel so I had pre purchased a 7 day 3 zone unlimited ride pass which allowed us to ride the underground/tube or bus to Wimbledon and pretty much everywhere we wanted to go in London.  Hampton Court was out in zone 6 but fortunately the transfer was from a zone 3 station which we could ride to. From.  There I asked the ticketing agent for the best promotional price which was only an extra £18 for the 4 of us round trip.  This was still much cheaper than purchasing a 7 day 6 zone pass.

Hampton Court was a second palace for Henry VIII.  It was a nice castle with huge surrounding ground and a maze.  We went through most of the rooms and the maze of course and headed back to town as had another stop before our evening event.

Our London Pass included 24 hour access to the Thames river boat line.  The boat stops at various places along the river so we got on at the Westminister pier and rode it all the way to Grenwich and back.  That was a long ride but very educational and neat to see the various sites from a different perspective. It was still raining off and on but we sat outside for the best views.
The cruise took a little longer than expected so we didn’t have enough time to get back to our apartment to change before our tickets to Wicked.  We had already seen Wicked in Seattle but we wanted to see a show we knew we would enjoy in London.  Plus we were able to take advantage some special promotions for the boys tickets, aka as free, so it made the show extra enjoyable. Actually I was amazed how much better the performance was in London.  The performers had better voices and/or the acoustics at the Victoria Apollo Theatre were superior or both.

We didn’t get back to the apartment till 11:30p and we still had to pack and find a hotel for our stop the next evening.

Shard or Eye

Went started the morning with a visit to Londons tallest tower which they call the Shard.  We had to decide between the London Eye which is the big Ferris Wheel or this building, both which have  overpriced entry tickets.  We picked the Shard as we could stay at the top for as long as we wanted and to reduce the risk of spending 30 minutes with potentially smelly or rude tourists in a glass cabin.  The Shard is named for its appearance of shards of glass leaning together to make a tower.  Britons are clever at naming their buildings as other building that were within view of our platform are named the Gherkin , Cheesegrater,  and Walkie Talkie.  The view was good but it was an overcast London day. I swear I could feel the building slightly sway but no one else in the family sensed any movement.

Afterwards we got back on the underground to get to Wimbledon.  We had a 90 minute tour of the grounds which took us to the press areas,  players lounges and eventually Centre Court.  We visited the museum afterwards for a complete history of Wimbledon.  It was cool to see the place I watched on TV.  Not sure if the boys enjoyed it as much as me.

Stamford Bridge was on our way back from Wimbledon so we got off the tube for a tour of the stadium where Chelsea FC plays.  We toured the locker rooms,  press rooms,  sat in the benches and shopped.  It was neat to see a stadium design just for soccer. I also noticed that they don’t overcharge for concessions like they do at our stadiums. I think Stamford Bridge holds around 40k people but you are really close to the action.  This stadium is scheduled to be replaced in a few years to increase the capacity to 60k fans.

After dinner at home we ventured back out to check out the Knightsbridge shopping district.  It was raining pretty hard by now but that doesn’t stop us at home.   When we got out of the tube, you could tell we were in the fancier part of London with the high end shops and the Harrods store around the corner.  While we were walking to Harrods,  we passed by a chrome plated mercedes SLR (almost $500k when new) stuck in traffic with Kuwait license plates and a few Lamborghini Aventadors ($400k) also just idling along in the traffic.  These guys probably just dropped off their significant others at the Harrods as I was amazed at the pricey stuff for sale and the people carrying multiple Harrods shopping bags out.

By the time we made it back home my fitness tracker showed over 20k steps.  That was a long day!

Where did the selfie sticks go?

The local papers reported that Brexit has increase the visitors to London by 40%. It hasn’t seem that way as the places we have visited were not that super busy or crowded. Unlike Paris where chances were high you would get pushed out of the way by a Chinese tour guide and have 30 of their group rush by you trying to keep up with the guide with selfies sticks, we had not visited sites that were popular with the private tour groups.

It changed today.  We went to the British museum.  There were no lines to get in this morning and it only slightly busy in the lobby. However upstairs in the Egyptian mummy rooms we hit the jackpot with the privately led tour groups.  The tour guides were just as pushy but there were no selfies sticks like last year in Paris.  These groups did speed through the rooms so I’m not sure what the participants really got to experience.  It took us a few hours just to go through the Egyptian rooms and in the Roman Empire rooms.  We also accidentally discovered a room that held the 1000+ year old Chinese Admonitions Scroll. Its only on display a few weeks each year so we were luckly to have seen it.   As we were about the leave Ian reminded us about the Rosetta Stone display.  It must be pretty famous if I’ve heard about it.  However I was dreading that this display would be like the Mona Lisa at the Louvre where it would be mobbed due to its importance in history. I guess it wasn’t that historical as there were people around the displace but we were eventually above to get to the front and see its inscriptions.

Afterwards we stopped by the Wellington Arch This is a monument to Lord Wellington who was in charge of the battle where his soldiers defeated Napoleon at Waterloo.  Inside the arch had an exhibit that details the Battle at Waterloo.  Everyone was so grateful in England that they erected a beautiful arching his honor and gave him lots of money. It’s not a major attraction but we needed to stop by as it was one of the few places in London were we could get our English Heritage Trust Pass.  This pass will allow us to get into various sites throughout England for free with parking including Stonehenge.

Since Buckingham Palace was  nearby we walked over to see it.  The changing of the guards already occurred earlier in the day so there wasn’t much except to stand at the fence and watch the guards stand and take a photo just to prove we were also there.

Went to the Towers

Today we stopped at the Tower of London, Tower Bridge and the HMS Belfast.  These three sites are all within a few blocks of each other.  We took the underground Circle line to Tower Hill and were only a few blocks from the entrance to the Tower of London.

I always thought the Tower of London was just a tower but it’s actually a 900+ year old castle that used to be the home of the royals.  There are a few significant buildings on site. The white tower is the main building that now houses exhibits about the kings and the weapons used over the centuries.  There was also a building that houses the crown jewels.  These are the crowns, jewels and other decorative items used by the royals during their coronation.  We also walked along the top of  the outer walls which gave use great views of the grounds and the Tower Bridge.

It’s was time for lunch and we were not near anything that was considered good and cheap.  As we have learned, eating out in London is not cheap.   We have been to most of the local grocery chains for dinner and breakfast food and they all have a grab and go area with pre made sandwiches which seems really popular. Tesco was the closest store so we stopped by for sandwiches.  They have a lunch bundle deal for £3 which included a sandwich,  chips/fruit, and a pop.  We took our food to the park next to the river Thames.  £12 for lunch for four was finally the cheap lunch we were looking for.

I also learned that the London Bridge from the childhood song isn’t the same classic designed bridge that you see in all the London photos.   That is called the Tower Bridge. The tour of the bridge include a walk or elevator ride up one of the towers and access to the two suspended walkways between the two Towers.  The walkways have a section with a glass floor so you can see below.  Lots of visitors were laying on this floor taking selfies.

Our last visit was the HMS Belfast.  It’s a decommissioned war ship from WW2.  Everyone enjoyed exploring the ship and leaning about its role during the war.

We finally headed home, ironically we crossed the actual London Bridge which is a nondescript modern concrete bridge.