Scotland

We will be in Scotland from the 19 May to the morning of the 22 May

21 May

Guess what? Today was wet, wet, wet. We caught the bus to Glencorse and walked to the church which was locked and there were no graves. We then walked to a local estate house, rather large, and a kind man tried to help us find where places we wanted to see might be. This, I might add, was in rain and wind and cold. We then walked to the cemetery but had no luck there either so after 2 hours of walking around, we caught the bus back to Edinburgh. I went across to the Records for a couple of hours and even that was freezing because you can't wear a coat into the reading rooms.

Tomorrow we will be up early and on the train back to London.

20 May

Today Cath and I went on the hop on and off bus around Edinburgh.  This was such a great way to explore this beautiful city.   One thing you notice here is how well the Scots look after their heritage.  After leaving the train station yesterday I said to Cath "Oh my God how beautiful are all the buildings".  I was blown away with the beauty.

Some of major landmarks we saw today on the tour were Edinburgh Castle, the Palace of Holyroodhouse, the Royal Botanic Gardens and the Scottish Parliament building  Seeing Edinburgh Castle was fantastic and is situated on the plug of an extinct volcano. It has been a castle since the 12 century but apparently there has been evidence found of human existence since the first century. It is just fantastic and the views from the city breathtaking.  Another place Cath and I explored was the Palace of Holyroodhouse.  Again just wonderful seeing the castle and its grounds but sadly we were not able to visit the palace itself as it was closed.   All in all it was a great day and very enjoyable.

Cathie

After we did a couple of tours around the city, I went off to the National Archives/Records Scotland which is just next door to our hotel. For the 3 hours or so that I had, I managed to find some records on the Wood family that aren't online, one of which was the Communion Roll for Glencorse Kirk where the family lived for quite some time. Tomorrow we will catch the bus down to Glencorse because I decided that hiring a car was just too fraught with issues, plus it will cost us about $12 as opposed to $250 for the car for one day!!!

We went out for dinner to a very nice pub near the hotel. The waitress was Australian from the Gold Coast who told us that she earnt $13 an hour and the cost of living took about 70% of her pay whereas in Australia, it would have been about 20%. The meal was great but we waddled back to the room. Thank heavens we do a lot of walking.

19 May

Just because we know that at least Col still reads the blog (thank you for your great comments Col) we made sure that we found a hotel with WiFi so that we could write about our most disastrous morning with Hertz hire cars. I had rung Hertz yesterday and booked a car to be collected in Cairnryan in Scotland when we got off the ferry. We caught the ferry from Belfast at 7.30am and had a relatively calm crossing. I understand that the Irish Sea can get very rough. We arrived in Cairnryan (there is nothing else there except for the ferry), went into the terminal to the Hertz desk to be met by a very unkempt, rude woman who couldn't have cared less about us. The conversation about the car didn't go well, because she wanted my credit card to finalise the car but refused to take the Qantas card even though I had used it the day before over the phone with Hertz. Then, even though I had paid for the car (with the Qantas card) she wanted to charge me another 250 POUNDS! This is $500. When I asked why, she said it was in case we didn't return the car with a full tank of fuel! Now we have found that the cost of living is much higher over here, but fuel does not cost that much.

As we had already had some hassles with Avis, I was not about to part with my normal credit card, so after some serious words and other issues which would take too long to write about here, we cancelled the car. This then meant we had to catch a bus into the local village called Stranraer. The bus driver was very sympathetic to our plight and told us that this person was known for her 'attitude'. So because it was now getting late and there were no other car hire places, we made the decision to take a train from Stranraer to Edinburgh which meant changing trains in Glasgow.

The first train (more a rail motor really) went through the loveliest countryside and for much of it travelled along the coast. It was a lovely trip. We then caught the 'slow' train to Edinburgh (not the express but certainly not slow in our eyes). So after leaving Belfast at 7.30am, we arrived in Edinburgh at 5pm, not having eaten, except for some lollies, for almost 24 hours. We then looked for a hotel near the train station as we will leave from there on Friday morning but had major trouble finding a place with a twin room for 3 nights (except for one next to the hotel which had one for the equivalent of $750 a night. However we found this one opposite the expensive one for only $200 a night! We have had pizza for tea and shared a bottle of wine so the world is almost right again.

What this means for us is that we really only have 2 days in Scotland so tomorrow will be spent looking around Edinburgh - more for Maree as I have been here before. We had planned to drive to Oban and the Isle of Skye and Loch Ness but that has all gone by the wayside. I will see about hiring a car from a local company for Thursday so we can at least drive to the places where the Wood family lived - the whole purpose of the trip to Scotland.

The trains and scenery were great today but I will have to do battle with Hertz over this whole debacle.We had to go with them as they are the only car rental place at Cairnryan and there is no other company until Glasgow. I can live with most things but the real issue is that they tie up their fees on our cards for days and by the time it is cleared, we will be home.

Leaving all of that aside, Edinburgh is still one of the loveliest cities to visit. The view up towards the castle and the wonderful old buildings is worth all of the angst today. (Well not really, but you know what I mean.)