Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/5/84; site mnetor.UUCP Path: utzoo!utcs!mnetor!clewis From: clewis@mnetor.UUCP (Chris Lewis) Newsgroups: net.travel Subject: Re: nfo on Scotland neededd Message-ID: <1949@mnetor.UUCP> Date: Tue, 3-Sep-85 08:56:38 EDT Article-I.D.: mnetor.1949 Posted: Tue Sep 3 08:56:38 1985 Date-Received: Tue, 3-Sep-85 10:15:42 EDT References: <15500002@datacube.UUCP> <758@mcnc.mcnc.UUCP> <253@bcsaic.UUCP> Reply-To: clewis@mnetor.UUCP (Chris Lewis) Organization: Computer X (CANADA) Ltd., Toronto, Ontario, Canada Lines: 67 Summary: In article <253@bcsaic.UUCP> pamp@bcsaic.UUCP (pam pincha) writes: >I'm in the middle of planning our honeymoon to Britian >the end of September.We are staying in London first, >then taking the train to Inverness,Scotland.We are picking >up a car there and would like to drive to what we can >in three days. Too bad you didn't arrange to pick up your car a little bit farther south and have some more time. We did approximately the same thing for our honeymoon, last Oct., that you are going to do, except that we took the train to Chester and had 3 weeks to drive around. Anybody want to see our itinerary? We got an awful lot in (Wales, southern/central England, and Scotland). >Any suggestions as to what is a good route and what sites >might be of interest? (We prefer country activities to >big cities.Castles and such are also of interest.) This is what we did, you could reverse the direction. We circled from Edinburgh up to Inverness via a easterly route - Craigievar castle, Braemar, the Cairn Gorms Mountain range - is quite nice to drive thru - had snow when we were there, stayed the night in Inverness then west along Loch Ness (we saw Nessie at least three times! :-) (AVOID the Loch Ness museums!) and south - another mountain range, Ben Nevis, Pitlochry (old town and dam. The Blair Athol Palace is quite a spectacular hotel), Blair Castle, Balmoral, Firth bridge, Edinburgh, Edinburgh Castle, the Edinburgh Crystal factory (really neat! They have tours every day), and the following day - Sterling Castle. It took us 3 days or so. Check ahead of time at some of the Castles. Some are likely to be closed after Sept 15. If you had some more time, there's lots more interesting things to see around the Edinburgh area - Tantallon Castle (one of the most spectacular of the 25 or so that we saw), Jedburgh Abbey, and York/Yorkminster (sigh...) - though somewhat farther away etc. etc. etc. (BTW: Edinburgh Castle has Mons Meg, the 18 inch canon used on Tantallon - made quite a mess, but the defenders still managed to hold out until many years later and Cromwell). Make sure that you start early each day. Night falls early that time of year and it's not too terribly exciting to see such things in the dark. Next time we go, we're going to go farther north than Inverness. But it's going to be in the summer not October! Actually, my wife and I rather disliked Inverness for several reasons. One of which were their traffic signs. We arrived late, and were kinda tired and looking for a place to stay. "Hey, there's a Hilton sign! Let's follow them." Half an hour later, the signs led us to a hospital. The following day we were trying to see a couple of things before leaving, and a Forest Ranger (we were trying to find an Iron-age hill fort from a Inverness-published map, and we asked him where it was. He had never heard or seen of it (in spite of the fact that he was based within the black dot that was supposed to be it) told us to go take a look at Craig Phedraig - another Iron-age hill fort. So, like the naive tourists we were, we thought the "Craig Phedraig" signs led the way to it. Nope. Another hospital - another two hours wasted. I could make a snarky remark about the Scots being too cheap to put an extra word on their signs but I won't. :-) No, because my wife and I really loved the rest of Scotland AND the people. We wished we had more time. -- Chris Lewis, UUCP: {allegra, linus, ihnp4}!utzoo!mnetor!clewis BELL: (416)-475-8980 ext. 321