And Now...a Little Holiday Fun

Hooray!  We are back and settled in and, while we miss a lot about Edinburgh, it is nice to be in our own home.  The following posts will be about a few holidays we took toward the end of the school year - well, there is the Easter holiday that wasn't quite so near the end, but let's pretend it was, shall we?


The Easter Holiday - Day One

After ensconcing the hound in his kennel/spa, we enjoyed a short and uneventful flight - the best kind - down to London, where we picked up our rental car and headed to the south of England, a new and exciting landscape for us to explore.  We were given a very nice and very peppy Renault Clio to drive and quite enjoyed it.  Oddly enough, it had no CD player - just a radio and inputs for devices.  In my life now I have gone through cars having radios, 8-track players, cassette decks, CD players and now we are back to radios only.  Ah, the circle of musical life!

Our first stop was Brighton, which was our home for a few days, as it is quite central to some of the things we wanted to see.  It turns out that Brighton isn't necessarily a place one might want to see, as it is, how shall I say this, a tad run-down and tatty.  I hear that about most Victorian Era seaside resorts, so I guess it is just one of the many.  The beach, however, is lovely, if a bit stoney, and we did have a great time walking along looking at all the amusements, vendors and having a stroll on the famous pier.  It's once you get away from the main promenade that you begin to notice the wear and tear on the city.  Still, we found a great restaurant for supper, so all was right with our world.

Brighton train station.  Our hotel was just across the street, so would be a great place to stay if one was travelling by train.  We had to cut through the station to walk down to the beach.

The beach.  As you can see, it is made up of small stones that made walking on it very difficult.  Don't be misled by the people who seem overly clothed for a beach - the weather was lovely and warm.  Maybe being Easter time they all felt it a bit to early to start their sunburning!

A look the other way up the beach.  The boardwalk/arcade is just at the top of the beach, where you can buy candy and ice cream and floaty devices and art and craft and, well, just about anything you might like.  On the upper left is the corner of some horrible brutalist architectural nightmare that someone allowed to be built along the seafront.  Can you tell we don't like it?

The boardwalk/arcade area, which actually doesn't have any boards upon which to walk, now that we think about it.

Every beach should have a lovely old carousel.

The beach end of the pier, complete with ferris wheel to compliment the carousel, I guess. 

The seaward end of the pier where there is an amusement park.  It is hard to get a sense of the scale of this thing, but if you notice that it has two rollercoasters and other rides, you will get an idea.  The red, blue and white ride in the foreground is a Helter Skelter, where when you get to the bottom you go back to the top of the slide, where you stop and turn around and go for a ride, 'til you get to the bottom and...well, you get the picture.  Beatles rock!!

An iconic place!

At a pub on the pier.  Bob enjoys his favourite cider, Bulmers Pear, while soaking up the sunshine.  Rick was having what he thought was his favourite cider, but that was about to change in a few days!  Stay tuned.

On our way to find supper, we passed this rather lovely fountain.  See, not all of Brighton is tacky.

We were lucky to come across this lovely restaurant, where we had a great meal.  Bob had a halloumi burger.  Halloumi, if you don't know, is a very strange cheese that can be grilled without melting and squeeks against your teeth as you eat it.  It is very salty but oh so tasty!

Day 2 - The White Cliffs of Dover


And yet, no bluebirds.  Does anybody here remember Vera Lynn?  Pink Floyd rocks!  We did see some gulls and crows, but I guess they were less melodic.

It was a surprisingly long but scenic drive to Dover, where we got to see where the Chunnel begins (or ends).  Dover itself didn't strike us as much ado, so we carried on through to the cliffs.  We thought that we would be able to walk along the bottom of the cliffs and look up, but you really just walk along the top and look down, which isn't great for those of a fear of heights nature.  My, they are high - and white!  Sometimes things do live up to their name.  We had a great if somewhat hazy view of the ferry harbour, and it is easy to imagine just how impressive these cliffs would look upon first coming into sight.  There was a lot of walking involved along the cliff tops, but it was worth is as the view is stunning.

After managing not falling off the cliffs, we headed to Dover Castle, about which we knew little, only to discover that it is a very interesting castle indeed.  Despite its precarious position along the south coast during the war, it escaped unharmed and is in impressive shape, given its Norman age.  A pleasant afternoon was spent wandering about and chatting with the employees, one of whom told us that royalty used to carry all their belongings - beds, chests, almost all furnishings - with them from one castle to the next as they visited each.  Even all their money was carried from location to location (and we thought not being near an ATM was a bother!).  It must have been quite a spectacle, as it would require a huge entourage to move all that.  If the royal wasn't in residence, the castle was virtually deserted, other than someone to be a caretaker.  Did not know that!

Our first glimpse of the White Cliffs of Dover.

A horse, a harbour and a ferry to Calais (new from CS Lewis!).

Ok, perhaps we lied a bit.  If you are so inclined, and steeply inclined at that, you can hike down this switchback trail to the beach below and look up at the cliffs.  We didn't, as we are not totally stupid.

Someone (not saying who) was not happy with someone else (not saying who) being that close to the edge. 

For a sense of scale, notice the wee folk on top.  To be clear, they are not "wee folk" as in the Irish tales - they are normal sized folk who look wee.  And, to the best of our knowledge, no actual weeing was going on.  Next photo please!!

There are sections where the cliff face is beginning its break away from the land.

Not for the faint of heart or weak of knees.

First glimpse of Dover Castle.

And a much better glimpse of the castle, which really is an outstanding example of Norman era castle architecture - very angular and rigid looking.

A lovely old church within the castle grounds.  It, too, is very angular and rigid looking.  The more "organic" looking structure on the left is the dovecote.  Just how old is that church, you ask??

Well, actually, quite old.

Let's have a wee peek inside the castle, shall we?

Probably one of the best preserved castle keeps we have seen on our journeys.  Go on, guess its age!

You must admit, it looks pretty spiffy considering this date! 

A view of the kitchen, which is very large and probably housed a lot of employees in its running.  And to think, we were annoyed at not having a microwave when we first moved to Scotland.

The other half of the kitchen.  The butchering table was a tad disgusting.

However, those consuming the food had little worry about the kitchen staff.  On a winter's eve, a table in front of the fireplace would be welcome, until you combusted.

The bright colours of the banner are something we are quite used to seeing, but it was the almost gaudy appearance of the furniture, like the chair, that surprised us.  It turns out that wealth needed to be shown (surprise!) so, contrary to what we tend to see in sepia toned films, furniture was painted brightly because the colours used in the paints were rare and expensive.  Bling, you could say.

Who's got a lovely brightly coloured and expensive room, then???  Eh???

Dover from the rooftop of the castle.

Rick once again showing his total conquering of heights!

Bob showing his utter disinterest in heights.

That is about it for now.  There will be more coming soon.  Time for a Guinness!!

Yes, We Are Still Here..

But not for very much longer!  We will be leaving on the 23rd for home and are excited about returning.  It has been a very full and interesting year, but it is time to get back to our stuff.  Dougal will be leaving on the 22nd and will be spending an overnight in London, where we hear he has tickets for "The Lion King" (he is the only one who hasn't seen it), although Brian suggested he go to see "Cats", but one shudders at the thought of his reaction!  In the next couple of days, we will be cleaning, packing, and tidying, all the while trying convince ourselves that we haven't forgotten anything.

Take heart though!  Dispite us heading home, we will be keeping the blog going for a wee while, as we have some lovely holidays that we would like to share with everyone.  So, please stay tuned and check back.

Hugs to everyone.

Dougal vs the Traminator!

Hi everyone.

For some strange reason, Dougal decided, about half-way through this year, to hate the Edinburgh trams and now barks at them every time he sees them.  This brings him in line with most residents of Edinburgh, who view the trams as a £1billion waste of money, as they only go from downtown to the airport, even though they were supposed to run all the way down to the Leith.  So, half the distance built for twice the budget.  I am sure they would like to bark at the trams as well.

On Sunday morning, we decided to take Dougal on the tram, just to see how he would react.  Unsurprisingly, he did bark when it arrived, but once on board he was at least quiet, although he wasn't exactly comfortable and relaxed.  We haven't tested him yet to see if he will still bark at them, now that he knows they take him somewhere, but we are fairly certain that he still will.  After all, you can take a terrier on a tram, but you can't make him less of a terrier, as they say.

A Sterling Day in Stirling - well, almost

Once upon a time, in a land not too far, far away, their existed a magical, mystical place known as Stirling.  One day we decided to search out this fabled land, so we hopped a train and, much to our surprise, it took us right there, which was much less of a fuss than a trip to Hogwarts.

What we found was a lovely town at the base of the castle.  We had been to the castle once before but never to the town.  The first order of business was, of course, food, and we found a very nice Irish place.  What we then did was what we do best - wander.  In Stirling, this involves a lot of uphills that don't seem to balance with the downhills, but it was worth it, as you get lovely views over the surrounding landscape.  We didn't plan to visit the castle again, but seeing that one road climbs to another road and so on, we found ourselves at the gates.  We have Historic Scotland passes, so the temptation proved too great.  In we went, where we enjoyed some falconry, restored halls (under restoration last time), and the general atmosphere of what, to us, is a more interesting castle than Edinburgh, which may be sacrilege seeing as we live in Edinburgh!  The kids at the castle were making cool hats that gave Rick a good idea for a craft if he ever teaches about knights and dragons again.

Leaving the castle is where things went downhill, literally and figuratively.  We stopped in a pub before our train ride home where, so it would appear, Bob bumped into a table and "knocked over" the 3 beers that the lone occupant of the table was drinking.  We hope you have never experience being yelled at by a drunk Scotsman, as a difficult to understand accent becomes undecipherable when old yeller is drunk.  In all honesty, the worst that could have happened was that some of the beer may have sloshed out of his glasses, but that was apparently a crime, for which Bob apologized and offered to buy replacements.  The problem was that we needed to keep asking the fellow what he was saying, which was frustrating him, so he eventually told Bob to go home from where he came and stormed off.  At that moment, going home seemed like a good idea.  Still, can't let a drunk Scotsman ruin what was, overall, a grand day out!!

Why, thank you very much!  I am sure we will enjoy our visit.

Stirling train station.

At the pub for lunch, with the obligatory Guinnesses (Guinnessi??).  Rick checks out what we can do and see in town.

Bob's BLTA (bacon, lettuce, tomato, avocado) that turned out to be heavy on the BACON!!

Gosh, another uphill battle to what was, it would appear, and uphill battle site.

The Beheading Stone, which was used for pretty much what it says on the tin.  Ick.  Still, a lovely, if last, view from up here.

The view across the valley toward the Wallace Monument, where there is a statue that looks suspiciously like Mel Gibson.  Wasn't that an amazing coincidence?!

Looking the other way from up upon high.  As it was early April, there was still snow on the distant hills.

BOOM!!!

Not really sure what this is, but if it is a house, it is very nice indeed.

This seems to be an amalgam of styles, but also shows a bit of the steepness of the streets that we wandered to reach the castle.

Mr. Falconry at the castle.

Who's a pretty bird then??

This area of the castle was being used for all sorts of activities for the kiddies, which made it a fun place to visit.  It looks like some poor dad got to enjoy holding the end of a skipping rope, which probably made his day.

View from the castle.  Location is everything!

The great hall, fully restored and looking lovely.

Crowds inside the great hall, which also had events for kids - drumming this time.

Paper jester hats aren't just for kids anymore!!

Inside the living chambers.

Bas-relief and painted ceilings were all the rage.  Once again this shows that the castles of this era were hardly dreary affairs.

Fit for a king or queen.  It seems to us that Mary, Queen of Scots slept everywhere in Scotland, so it is possible that she slept here.  That poor woman got around.

Just a regular street scene in Stirling.  Gosh, are we becoming blasé??

Rick enjoys the scenic train ride home from our day in Stirling.