Some observations about toilets and periods in Scotland:
I’d just sat down to our final group dinner last night in Edinburgh when I got an email from British Airways (BA) telling me they’d cancelled my flight next morning but they’d get me in the next available. Well, the next available was actually 2 hours earlier, so instead of getting a cab at 6:30am, I booked one for 4:30am. Then I got another email from BA at 3:00am to tell me that that flight may delayed too!
And so it was. They’d boarded us all by 7:10am, but then we sat on the tarmac for an hour as London was supposed to get fog and so all flights were being staggered. I don’t think the fog actually happened so we took off around 8:30am, arriving around 10 by the time we got to the gate at Heathrow. After waiting ages for my bag, I had to take it up to departures and go through the check-in and bag drop and security processes there. Why? Because Qantas has this bizarre thing where you can’t add a leg to an existing flight after the initial booking if you PAID for the booking, but if you got the flights on points, you can — go figure!!! And BA wouldn’t check me through to Boston because I was on a separate ticket, so I had to do the whole security thing etc. in London as well as Edinburgh.
Anyhow, I made it to Heathrow and I’m now sitting in the BA lounge awaiting my flight, which leaves from a gate (still in same terminal) you have to take a transit train to get to!
Next stop, with luck, is Boston. Then back to London next week, then back to Perth.
Update: My 7+ hour flight to Boston left more than an hour late, and while US immigration was quick and simple, I can’t say the same for baggage collection. After well over 30 mins since the first bags came through, then the carousel stopping for 10 mins or more, it started again bringing the luggage for at least another 150 people on the plane. The only positive was that the worst of the evening rush hour traffic was over when we left Boston for New Hampshire, where I’m staying with my best friend for a few days.
Update: Google Maps kindly showed me where I’d been in the UK!
We had a totally free last full day today, so many of us slept in. How do I know? Because instead of seeing others in the group having breakfast at 7am, it was more like 9am… even the usually early birds!
I wandered off to the National Museum of Scotland (free entry) where I was especially interested in the neolithic, Roman and Viking artefacts. This is a wonderful museum, and you could spend days there. I decided not to do the animals, natural world, or technology and inventions areas at all (almost half the museum), instead focusing on the fashion and textiles area and the early Scottish history (from prehistoric to medieval times). The Scottish section takes up almost half the museum, as it should. The other reason not to do those areas was the number of primary school groups who were there!!!
I spent nearly 4 hours at the museum. It was beautifully laid out, but the lighting was a bit dim in some areas, no doubt to preserve the integrity of fragile artefacts. The central hall was a thing of beauty with an enormous amount of light streaming in from the glass ceiling, and the support pillars were very clever in how they held the radiators (in use too) that keep the place warm. This museum is well worth a visit if you’re in Edinburgh, and you’re bound to find something there to fascinate you in all the exhibition spaces they have.
After I got back, I repacked everything for my flights tomorrow — my cab to the airport is at zero-dark-hundred, long before breakfast is served in the hotel. We have our final farewell group dinner tonight.
I’ve really enjoyed my time in Scotland, especially. The people are friendly, booze is sold EVERYWHERE and there doesn’t seem to be a restriction on who can sell it or even when (though in one supermarket, it was ‘after 10 am’), and no-one can decide if they should walk on the left or right on the footpath! (In the Tube in London, you have to walk on the right, yet most people walked on the left on the pavement – similar for Scotland). The weather has mostly been fantastic, with occasional rainy days, but equally plenty of days with full sunshine (like today). I needed my coat most of the time as the weather is getting chilly, and when the wind comes in from the North Sea and up the streets of Edinburgh, it’s bitterly cold. But there were certainly some days I could wear a t-shirt without a coat for at least part of the day. And the Scottish scenery everywhere and especially the Highlands is just gorgeous!!!
I especially liked the small-town feel of both Glasgow and Edinburgh (both around half a million residents). Yes, they are very popular tourist towns, but I never felt uneasy or threatened in either place, and unlike London, none of our tour guides warned us about ‘thieves’.
Goodbye, Scotland — it’s been lovely being here.
Our free day in Edinburgh got changed to tomorrow (for reasons), so instead we did what was scheduled for tomorrow, today. Got that? What was scheduled was a ‘creative activity’ and it certainly was. We went to Dovecot Studios where we learned to weave an art tapestry on a small loom, then as a bonus, we were given permission to watch the professional woven tapestry makers create their huge masterpieces.
They have a floor above the workers where you can see them in action. It was an amazing creative space, and the activity was fun too. Probably not something I’d do again, but I enjoyed what I did. I created a shoreline, and the final piece was about 8 x 8 cm.
This evening I helped one of our group discover information about her English grandfather that she never knew before. The power of Ancestry dot com!
Today was a really grey, rainy, and ultimately very windy day, with some delightful patches of sunshine in between — welcome to Scottish weather, our tour guide said! Fortunately, our first part of the day was in a bus going around some of the sites of Edinburgh, seeing the old and new towns (‘new’ started about 1750 or so!), out to the Forth of Firth bridges (there are 3; the most famous one is a rail bridge), through Stockbridge, and then we were dropped near Edinburgh Castle. From there we walked back down the Royal Mile — some went back to the hotel, some went on to lunch, some went shopping.
The next activity was a talk and workshop by a kilt maker, who was French! Just when we’d got our ears attuned to the Scottish accent, now we had to contend with a French one as well. He and his partner make all their kilts by hand and it took them 9 months to learn the techniques. After explaining a lot about when kilts in their modern form were first worn in Scotland (not until about 200 to 300 years ago), and what the highlanders wore before that, he showed us some pleating and answered the heaps of questions we asked. Each kilt (the skirt part only) takes about 8 m of tartan (wool), and is quite heavy, as you’d imagine. But he said once it’s on, you basically don’t feel it because the weight is taken by the hips. And yes, back in the day the rumours were all true, though he thinks most who wear the kilt these days do wear underwear beneath them. Then it was our turn — we each got some yardage of different tartans and had to make pleats based on the patterns. That was much harder than he made it look, but we had a lot of fun doing so.
We didn’t finish until after 5pm, about 30 mins before the next thing – the Real St Marys Close tour.
Unfortunately my feet really started playing up again today (blister on the ball of my right foot in the same place that I had in London) and my left pinky toe being squeezed into its neighbour — I’ve tried various toe separators and I thought the silicon one I bought at Boots yesterday might solve that issue, but no. At lunchtime I came back to the hotel to change shoes and socks, add a blister protector, but that didn’t help either. So I was really hobbling badly when we left the tartan thing. I bailed on the St Marys Close thing as many steps and more walking was involved.
I’m now back in the hotel, and will join the group for dinner when they return, and because dinner is in the hotel, I’ll probably just go in my socked feet, or barefoot (or my Crocs!). It’s amazing how two small things on your feet can cause so much pain and prevent you from doing so much. (yes, I know, First World Problem!)
Update: This pic was taken a couple days later after the blister on the ball of my foot had burst—for the second time on this trip.
Today’s adventure was to Galashiels, in the Borders area, about an hour’s train ride from Edinburgh. It was a magic day — blue skies mostly, warm and balmy, and no rain at all. Why Galashiels? Because it is the home of the Great Tapestry of Scotland, a massive series of 160 panels embroidered by more than 1000 stitchers across Scotland. Each panel represents an aspect of Scotland’s long history. And each was beautifully stitched, with excellent explanatory notes about the event(s) depicted.
The specially built building that houses these panels opened in 2021, right in the middle of COVID, so it’s not super well known yet, but if you’re in the Edinburgh area, allocate a few hours to go and see it – take the train to Tweedbank from Waverley Station in the heart of Edinburgh, and get off at Galashiels.
I could’ve taken heaps more photos than I did, but with the examples here you should get some idea of the technical skill of the artist, the historian and the many many stitchers who contributed to this history of Scotland from 420 million years ago, until the formation of the Scottish Parliament in 1999.
Trying to catch up… SOOO many experiences, so much good food, so many cocktails 🙂
Yesterday (Friday) we travelled from Pitlochry to Edinburgh, but on the way we stopped in for a couple of hours at Stirling Castle (why is the tapestry centre at the very back of the castle, outside the main walls, and down a steep cobbled road [and up again!]), where I saw woven tapestries of unicorns being hunted by medieval knights, thrones and beds where kings and queens sat and lay, and their palatial and HUGE apartments, castle keeps and walls, slits in walls much deeper than 1 metre for shooting arrows through, cannons, etc.
Then it was on the surprise of the day, the Falkirk Wheel. An amazing feat of engineering that replaces 11 locks that took 6+ hours for a canal boat to pass through, with one wheel that takes about 5 to 10 minutes to take a boat from the top level down 35 m to the bottom level.
And lastly, the Kelpies. No, not the working dogs beloved in Australia and NZ, but the mythical sea creatures with horses’ heads and front feet. These beasties are nowhere near as nice as the dogs! The sculptures of the two Kelpies are just massive — the small dots at the base of each are people!
Finally, we made it to Edinburgh and our hotel for the last 5 nights of our tour. This time our hotel is MUCH nicer than the Fawlty Towers hotel of the past 2 nights (Atholl Palace, Pitlochry), thank goodness!
All the food has been good, some great, but last night’s dinner was superb. We had it at the Cannonball Restaurant at the top of the Royal Mile in Edinburgh, and it was super good.
The weather today: grey and cloudy with spots of rain.
Rhonda Bracey: At Random 