Posts for September, 2015

We spent much of the morning on one of those hop on hop off bus tours of the city and confirmed that London traffic is indeed very slow. We complemented this with a lot of walking, a boat ride on the Thames and completed the day buying Nina a new rain jacket at one of London's Northface stores.

Better weather today and a new range of sights. Without doubt the highlights of the day were the Cabinet war rooms, and the changing of the Buckingham Palace Guards.

Our return bus journey was scheduled for 4:30 this afternoon which meant we had almost an entire day to us for sightseeing. We devoted this time to Westminster Abbey and the Imperial War Museum.

We spent the weekend at the annual gathering of an organization called the Silk Route Motorcaravan network. The name is a bit misleading (at least from an Australian/US point of view) as the group is really about overlanding and collectively the group has vast experience traveling exotic (and not so exotic) parts of the world in all kinds of vehicle. I have known about this group for a number of years and have poured over their website, trip reports and forum in search of wisdom about vehicles and routes. So it was a great pleasure to finally meet the people behind the organization. It was an informative and inspirational weekend.

We spent the Monday following our SRMN weekend getting ready for the next chapter of our travels, and finishing up conversations from the weekend with members that stayed around over Sunday night. Oh, and did I mention, that Nina went on a journey of discovery via local bus to the near by town of Malvern to have her nails done.

A day of contrast. We started out the day on the M6, one of England's main motorways, heading towards Birmingham and finished the day in Snowdonia, Wales in lush forest, with narrow roads bordered by stone walls.

A great sunny day, and a real treat for our quick trip through Snowdonia. We spent the morning in the forests around betws-y-coed, then up into the highlands of Snowdonia with its open moorland. The roads continued to be interesting, very narrow and bordered on each side by stone walls, leaving us only a few inches to squeeze past other traffic.

The day dawned bright and sunny so Nina insisted that we get going early to make the best of (what the weather report identified as) a limited window of good weather before un-ending rain sets in.

Today was a bit of a rest day. A nice camp ground, a sunny day and a few chores to do so we decided to hang around in Balloch for the day.

As it turned out we spent a couple of rest days at the Balloch camp ground, but I guess that is OK because this is not supposed to be work - right. We had a nice drive along the famous Loch Lomond before turning off through Rest and be Thankful passto Loch Fyne and the town of Inveraray. As we would later discover there are a number of passes called "Rest and Be Thankful". In the days of stage coaches these passes required that 2nd and 3rd class passengers to get out and push the coach (with 1st class passengers still inside).

Today we did a self guided tour to the islands of Mull and Iona. A 45 minute ferry ride from Oban to Mull, a 1 and 1/2 hour bus ride across Mull followed by a short ferry ride to Iona. This is such a very common tourist excursion that you can buy all the required tickets (and return) in a single package at almost every shop in the town of Oban.

We traveled only a short distance today along Loch Linnhe to the famous village of Glencoe. Why famous? Firstly for a famous massacre. In 1692 a group of British Red Coats and members of the Campbell clan arrived in the valley and were sheltered by the local Macdonald clan for 12 days. At the end of their stay the Campbell's and Red Coats killed 38 of their hosts.

As you can see from todays photos, it was quite picturesque at the campground this morning, sunny, glass smooth water, and birds on the Loch. The good weather encouraged us to stay around Glencoe until almost noon and thus gave Nina a chance for a short hike to a local man made lake and a visit to the local cultural museum. We were both interested to see the old curling stone and see how modern machining has changed that particular toy. The old (apparently hand made) clothes pegs were pretty interesting also.

This morning after driving for 20 miles or so we realized we had made a bit of a research mistake and so had to retrace our steps back to For William. The mistake was to do with the location of the West Highlands Railway. A section of track that still runs steam engines on some trains and the train that was used in the Harry Potter series as the Hogwarts Express. We had mistakenly thought that this railway line was on the Ilse of Skye but this morning we discovered that it runs from Fort William to the ferry port of Mallaig.

Today was a fabulous day, one of the most visually stunning days of our travels. We spent it circumnavigating the Trotternish Peninsula on the Ilse of Skye and while the scenery was picturesque the light (for some reason) had a special quality that made every view stunning.

Today we followed some of the Ross Coastal Trail, a single track road that runs through the coastal moors of the Western Ross region. There were long stretches of what felt like wilderness but in fact the road was quite popular with numbers of sport car and motorcycle enthusiasts out experiencing the exhilarating driving of the narrow road. For us and our yellow truck the travel was slow as the pavement was generally only just wide enough to get all 4 wheels on it at the same time. How I would have loved to have been on a motorcycle, they were zipping along at 2-3 times our speed.

The center point of todays travel was to be a "backroad" from Ullapool to Lochinver that we learned about at the SRMN meeting in Blackmore. It was described to us as "picturesque". And indeed it was. Like the single track roads of the past few days it was quite outside our experience elsewhere in the world. Usually wilderness roads are gravel and dirt, and often with pot holes, washboards and dust or mud. But this wilderness road was paved, though narrow - usually only 8-9 feet wide, except for the regular passing places. The reason for the pavement though is pretty obvious as the surrounding country side is mostly moor or peat bog so without the pavement the road would probably not survive.

We started the day with overcast sky, drizzle and biting insects and finished it camped beside Loch Eriboll, in bright sunshine, a gentle breeze and no bities. In between we traveled slowly along single track roads across the northwest corner of Scotland to the remote and sparsely inhabited north coast, really a pretty drive.

We made it to the little town of Thurso on the north coast of Scotland this afternoon, quite a cute little town, but not so cute weather. We had expected to catch a ferry from this place to Orkney tomorrow morning and spend a day or so there seeing some of the archeological sites. But on finding out that the ferry ride would cost us something like $400 we decided on a one day bus tour (from the town of John O'Groats) as a better alternative.

This morning after checking out the tourist information center, a display on the local nuclear power station, getting some money and other such chores we headed along the north coast towards the town of John O'Groats.

We spent a day sightseeing around the area. Since the weather was not bad we started our day with a walk along the sea cliffs at the nearby Duncansby Head and lighthouse.

Today we took the Maxi Bus Tour of Orkney. A bus tour is not something we do often but this one turned out to be quite successful. Showing us a lot of things in a single day. As it turned out there was a lot to learn about Orkney.

We departed the North coast of Scotland today heading towards a nice seaside campground a little north of the city of Inverness. It probably was a nice campground too as when we got there it was full, no space for us, so we had to go find ourselves a roadside pull off for the night.

We spent today driving along the road beside Loch Ness. We had been told that the best view of the loch was to be had by driving the road North to South and so thats what we did, from Inverness to Fort Augustus and then back again. However in truth the view was not great in either direction as trees block the view from the road for almost all of the drive.

We did a bit of sightseeing today. The battle field of Culloden is close to Nairn so that is where we went first. I had already mentioned the events associated with this place when we were on the Isle of Skye as this is where the battle took place that Bonnie Prince Charlie had to escape from.

We followed along the coast from Nairn today, with some great coastal scenes and quaint villages alternating with pastoral areas of golden grain and rich brown newly plowed fields. All of this in glorious sunshine and one of the warmest days we have experienced in Britain.

Before getting underway today there was a little chore to do, replacing the water filter in the campers water system. I have not done this in a long time and it is well over due. The process requires emptying all the "stuff" we have stored in the locker under the bed. Thus the exercise turned in to a bit of a spring clean, even though it is autumn.