Sunday 2 September - Day 12 - Best of Britain Coach Tour continues to the Lake District

This is the first day since we arrived in the UK that it didn't rain at all - beautiful weather!
Started off the day in Glasgow with a nice breakfast at the hotel.  Getting out of town was interesting - there was some sort of bike race on today, and so a number of roads were closed.  But of course, the driver's GPS didn't know about that, so it kept trying to take him down those roads.  He and the Tour Director had an interesting time getting us out of town.
We're aware of course that a lot of places in Australia are named after places in the UK, but we were surprised by one today - there's a Kelvingrove in Glasgow, named after the scientist of course.
Finally made our way out of town and headed off to our first stop, at Gretna Green.  This is on the border between England and Scotland, and was famous as the quickest place a young English couple could go to get married under Scottish law (which allowed for marriage without parental consent at an earlier age than English law).

Pretty much just a tourist trap but we both found some nice gloves in one of the shops.  And, when we went to get our morning tea, we found that the shop was selling one of our favourite soft-drinks - imported Bundaberg Diet Ginger Beer from Queensland!  I suspect a few of the people on the bus thought we might have been breaking the 'no alcohol on the bus' rule, but I don't care, it was really nice to be reminded of home.
On the way to Gretna Green, we were reminded of the sad story of Lockerbie - the main road goes right past the town.
After leaving Gretna Green we went back into England and drove into the Lake District - first stop was for lunch in a little town called Grasmere.  Two interesting things about this place.  Just before we got into town the Tour Director pointed out what he said was a WWII pillbox - I was a bit surprised that they'd have set up defences in a place like that, but it certainly looked like a pillbox.

The second interesting thing was that this is obviously a tourist resort - there were at least twenty cafes where we could have had lunch, there were all the usual souvenir places, and obviously people were staying in or near the town - however, there was not a single ATM to be found.  This was a bit of a pain as we had almost completely run out of cash at this point (there was an ATM at Gretna Green but it 'couldn't contact' either of our banks).
Anyway, they have no problem with credit cards, so we had a nice lunch and bought some souvenirs, then headed off to the next town - Bowness - which is actually where we're staying for the night.  However, before going to the hotel we went for a cruise on Lake Windermere, and then a steam train ride.  Some nice scenery, and at the end of the ride, a man was fund-raising for 'Wise Owl World' by showing off some of his owls.

Once we got to the hotel, we understood why the Tour Director had been saying somewhat dire things about it.  It's certainly not bad, but it's definitely not up to the standard of the other hotels so far.  No air conditioning (on the warmest day we've had so far) and no refrigerator in the room, which is a bit of a pain since of course we're carrying Paul's insulin around.  We also - for the second night in a row - have twin beds instead of a double.  Apparently people whose travel agent requested doubles for them got first preference over people who "only" requested them via the Insight website.  This is a bit of a pain actually, and I'm going to talk to the travel agent about it. The room also has an interesting 'step up' arrangement - quite tricky to drag your suitcases into the room when you only get to take about two steps into the room and then have to go up three stairs to the main part of the room.  The bathroom is on the lower level, so I'm really hoping neither of us forgets during the night  as the fall could be nasty :-(
There are some redeeming features - the outside appearance of the hotel is classic Victorian, and it does have a nice view over the lake (although not from our room).  Dinner at the hotel was 'included' tonight and although the choices were limited the food was quite nice and the service was very efficient.  Still, I'll be glad to get to the new hotel tomorrow night.

Saturday 1 September - Day 11 - Best of Britain Coach tour continues

Left the hotel fairly late this morning - 9am - because we didn't have a long way to drive today.
Our tour director is a former actor and a fairly accomplished pianist, and since the hotel lobby had a piano we got a small impromptu concert before we left.
First stop was Stirling Castle - we spent a couple of hours there and needless to say it had already started raining by the time we got there  :-)
The castle is seriously impressive - it's built high on an extinct volcano (just as is Edinburgh Castle actually) at the first place where an invading army could easily cross the River Forth.  It's a brilliant spot for a castle - you can see miles in all directions - but even so it has been besieged quite a few times (at least 16 times, Wikepedia tells me), and some of those sieges were successful.

 Above is the Great Hall - it has been carefully rebuilt to show what it would have been like originally - apparently the colour is quite authentic.

An example of the work they've done inside the royal palace part of the castle - this is in the Queen's bedchamber.

 It must have been quite a challenge to besiege a place like this!

 View of the town looking down over one of the many guns.

Paul outside of the great hall - as you can see there aren't many other tourists, but this had changed fairly dramatically by the time we left.


After we left the castle we drove a few miles up the road to a small town called Callendar.  It's a tourist town - people go there during the summer to be close to the lochs and mountains - so there were plenty of places to get food and a few things to see.  On the way there, we saw the castle that was used for Camelot in Monty Python and the Holy Grail!
Next part of the trip was a drive through the Trossachs (literally it means something like 'wild bristly place') - sort of the introduction to the Highlands but not so hard to get to.  We also saw Loch Lomond.

 View across Loch Lomond - it was a pity about the clouds and mist because it would have been even more beautiful in the sunshine I'd think.

 Paul has bought his second new hat - this time a tam in the Stirling Tartan.

 Random view across the Trossachs - but if you click and enlarge it you might be able to see the wind farm in the distance.  Unlike home, they don't save the wind farms for only the ugly / already spoiled places here.

Another view of the Trossachs.

Final part of the trip was into Glasgow.  By the time we got here it was quite miserable with rain, and although we went out for a little walk it didn't last long; we just came back inside and ordered room service.  Most of the hotels we've stayed in so far have been in the city centre but this one isn't; apparently it's too hard to get to the real city centre hotels here.  So instead, our hotel is in an old dockyards area that has gradually been converted to a business area - lots of office buildings and some hotels, a couple of restaurants, but no shopping facilities.  Just up the road there's a new arena going up - the Scottish National Arena - which is going to be a venue for the 2014 Commonwealth Games.  We took a couple of pictures around the area:

 Conference centre - I wonder where they got the inspiration for the shape???

 Another conference centre, I think.  Paul dubbed this one the silver haggis; not a bad name but to me it just looks like a big slug.  Not an attractive building at all.

 Bridge across the Clyde.

This crane doesn't work any more- it has been left here as a sort of memorial of the huge amount of ship-building and other heavy industry that used to happen in this area.

Friday 31 August - Day 10 - Best of Britain Coach tour - Edinburgh

Started the day with breakfast at the hotel, then we were taken for a tour of Edinburgh.  We drove around while a local tour guide showed us place after place where famous people lived or worked - I can't even begin to remember all of them to be honest.
We then finished the tour at Edinburgh Castle where - unlike last night - we could actually go in  :-)

The tour guide took us around and showed us where the various parts of the castle are and explained things we should look at, then we basically had the rest of the day free.  We could have gone on to look at the Royal Yacht Brittanica but it didn't really appeal all that much.
One interesting thing about the castle was the Scottish National War Memorial:

It fits in so cleanly that you'd imagine it was built in the 1600s with the rest of the castle, but in fact it was designed and built in the 1920s - although from stones saved from an earlier demolition.

This is Mons Meg - a supergun of its day (in the 1400's):

After we finished at the castle we went back to the hotel.  Lunch was from a chain called the Baguette Place - similar concept to Subway but with lovely baguettes instead of soft rolls.  Yum.  And, while we're on the subject of food, I continue to be amazed at the standard of supermarket food here.  It's very easy to get simple, fresh pre-prepared meals from supermarkets here, with a far better range than you'd find at any supermarket at home.  And, the value is excellent but even better, the quality leaves anything you'd find at home for dead.  Case in point - a fruit salad I just ate.  170 grams for £1 (about $1.50) which I'll guarantee you is half what I'd pay at home.  And, at home, if I was lucky the contents would be almost totally made up of three different sorts of melon, some completely flavourless pineapple, and maybe a grape or a strawberry.  The one I just ate had at least three strawberries, some absolutely delicious pineapple, and some lovely fresh apple.  No idea how it can be easy for a store in Edinburgh to getter better tasting pineapple than a store in Canberra....

Anyway, by this time it was raining, but we needed to go and find a laundromat.  We could possibly have gotten our clothes laundered at the hotel, but my best estimate of the price is that it would have cost more than £100!!!  For example, £5 for a shirt, £2.50 for a pair of undies.  So, we hopped into a taxi and went to a fairly rough looking part of town and did the whole lot for less than £20 - and that includes £8 in taxi fares!

Last thing for the night was a 'Scottish show' - an optional extra on the tour where they feed you a fairly bland meal and then entertain you with a whole bunch of scottish singing / dancing / bagpipes etc.

The food was nice, although quite standardised, ie choice of two entrees and two main meals, one dessert.  But, at intermission in the show, they served some haggis.  I'll let the pictures tell the rest of the story.

This is Paul's haggis once he'd had enough:

And this is mine  :-)

Yum!

Thursday 30 August - Day 9 - Best of Britain coach tour York to Edinburgh

Weather forecast was fairly promising - overcast with 30% chance of rain.  However, I was assuming that this would be a 'Canberra' 30% chance - basically, just a vague chance that somewhere a bit of rain might fall.
Wow, was I mistaken.  It poured.  And poured.  And then rained some more.
And of course the worst thing about these tours is that if the plan says that you'll get off the coach and explore the York Cathedral then you'll get off the coach and explore the cathedral - rain, hail, shine, earthquake, tornado......
Actually, York looked like it was probably a lovely old city, but I only saw the vast majority of it peering out from underneath the hood of my raincoat.  A surprising number of us took refuge in a nice big warm Marks and Spencer store before too long....
After we left York we headed out to a nice pub in the country which is right by the only easily accessible (to coaches) piece of Hadrian's Wall.  Some of the Americans had a learning experience in the pub - we'd had to choose our meal the previous day - soup, or soup and sandwiches, or carvery.  Only three people chose the carvery and it turns out that in part this is because it's not a word generally used in America.  So, now they know  :-)
Anyway, after that we strolled around to have a look at the wall.  Lots of it is gone now of course - much has been taken and used to build houses and farm buildings over the centuries - but it used to stretch for 80 miles from coast to coast.

As you can see, it had finally stopped raining by this time.  Paul picked up his hat at a street market in York!

We then headed off to Edinburgh, with quick stops along the way to see the ruins of Jedburgh Abbey (Henry VIII has a lot to answer for!) and at the England / Scotland border.

Once we got to the hotel we had free time, and we (stupidly as it turns out) walked up to Edinburgh Castle - stupidly because (1) we couldn't go in (2) it's a long hobble uphill for someone with a sore ankle and an even longer hobble downhill and (3) a formal tour there is on our agenda for tomorrow!  Anyway, we saw lots of shops and pubs and cafes and old buildings of all sorts.  By the time we got back we decided just to have dinner at the hotel - not cheap but the best fish and chips I have ever eaten!

Oh, and by the way, if you look at the photos of me and think that I'm wearing the same clothes over and over - it's not quite that bad - I have three identical tops and three plain black skirts  :-)

Wednesday 29 August - day 8 - Best of Britain coach tour starts

Woke up today feeling very sore and sorry for myself.  However, we managed to get our suitcases ready and have breakfast in time for the start of the tour.
Fortunately for us, the tour isn't fully booked and there are a number of free seats.  Paul and I ended up near the back of the bus, but the whole row right across the back was free, and I spent most of the day (while we were travelling at least) in the back seat with my shoe off and my foot up on the seat.
First stop was Stratford on Avon - we saw the church where William Shakespeare is buried (free to go into the church but £2 each to actually see the grave) and the house he was born in.  Unfortunately this was all done through teaming rain - I was very glad to get back onto the bus, and that pattern continued all day.  Although there were times that it wasn't raining - and even a few brief moments of sunshine - any time we left the bus it bucketed down.  Not fun at the best of times, and most definitely not fun when you're staggering around on crutches!
Next stop was Coventry - the old and new cathedrals.  The old one of course is in ruins, pretty much as they were left after the bombing raid that destroyed much of it in November 1940.  I found it to be a really moving experience, even in the dismal rain.
Then we basically travelled to York, with only a rest stop on the way.  Yep, it rained there too, and we had to stay out of the bus for the full 30 minutes because of the rules around rest periods for the driver.  Then it fined up again but on the way in to York it came down heavier than ever - the tour guide said that normally they'd take us on a quick trip around York before going to the hotel, but there was just no value in it today.
Tonight we're sleeping in the biggest bed we've ever had - I think they've joined a double and a single together - those are all full-size pillows!.

Paul is already sound asleep - my accident was really stressful for him and he's also not 100% well - both of us invariably catch a cold or flu early in a trip like this and I think he's getting his now  :-(
The tour promises to be really good though - the coaches are deliberately set up with less seats and therefore more room (Paul couldn't actually reach the footrest!).  The people all seem quite friendly, although I'm quite surprised at the national breakdowns -7 Australians, 4 Canadians, and 15 Americans.  The surprise is the number of Americans - these tours are usually far more biased towards Australians and New Zealanders.  Anyway, we had our introductory dinner this evening, and it was all very friendly.  The Tour Director seems like a nice guy as well, so it's all looking good. Hopefully tomorrow I'll feel a little more like taking photos and the blog won't just be my boring ramblings again.....

Tuesday 28 August, Day 7, travel to London and disaster

Got up nice and early and got ready for our trip to London.  Turns out the bus is pretty much a commuter bus - we didn't get to sit together until quite close to the end of the trip.  Not too bad a ride though, and I've realised that the law that says that passengers must wear seat belts on the bus is obeyed about as much as the law that limits the motorway speed limit to 70 miles per hour - ie, not much!
Anyway, we got to London and got a taxi to our hotel, the Thistle Marble Arch.  We didn't get to pick this hotel - it's the start and finish hotel for all Insight tours from London.  After reading the Tripadvisor reviews I was a bit concerned - it gets a broad range of reviews from poor to excellent, which often means that some of their rooms are very ordinary.  However, they were happy to check us in early, and our room was quite good, apart from a malfunctioning toilet which we didn't report actually due to the drama of the rest of the day.
We checked in with the Insight Tours lady onsite, then went out to look around London.  It was a beautiful day - we started by looking at Marble Arch then wandered past Hyde Park and down to Buckingham Palace.  We then started walking around St James Park when disaster struck - I turned around to look at something, and I was standing right on the edge of a pathway.  I twisted my ankle and immediately fell down.
I dragged myself over to a park bench and took stock of the damage - I've taken skin off both my hands and have huge scratches all over my left leg, but the worst is my ankle which immediately swelled up to around double its usual size.  And, the worst thing is that with all the barriers up for the start of the Paralympics, there was no way to hail a taxi.
I was so impressed by the helpfulness and concern of other people - a nice French man rescued my glasses which had fallen off (and I doubt that I'd have noticed otherwise) and at least three other people stopped to ask if I was ok at various times.  I wasn't really, but there wasn't anything they could do.  I basically kept on staggering until we got to Whitehall, where Paul managed to hail a taxi and we went back to the hotel.  The hotel people suggested either going to the hospital (but we'd have to find our own way there) or they could call in a private doctor.  The private doctor was hellishly expensive, but I couldn't bear the thought of going out again, let alone going and waiting in a queue at a hospital - so, private doctor it was.  He eventually came and prescribed some anti-inflammatories and antibiotics.  Quite a good idea really, because I realised later that the scrapes and cuts are full of dirt from the fall.
Anyway, Insight organised a wheelchair in case I needed it; Paul managed to buy a pair of crutches for me in case I could manage that way, and I spent the night trying not to move too much.  Not the way we wanted to start the trip.
Only one bit of (possibly) good news - I hadn't mentioned to this point but in the drama of our arrival in Cambridge, the remote control for Paul's hearing aids went missing.  We were fairly sure it had fallen off in the storm and was floating down a river miles away, but we contacted the bus company on the off chance that it had fallen off in the bus.  Good news - it had.  Bad news - it's at their lost property office in Bedford, and we have absolutely no chance of getting back there without changing flights etc etc.   I've asked them to send it to the hotel in London where we're staying again for a night at the end of the tour, but I haven't heard yet whether they'll agree to do this.

Monday 27 August, Day 6, IWM Duxford and some thoughts about Cambridge

We're still in Cambridge, but today we went to the Imperial War Museum at Duxford.
I think we walked approximately 1000 miles each, but it was well worth the aching feet and sore knees.
We got there on the shuttle bus which is astounding badly advertised.  It's obviously meant to be a money-making venture - it's run by the company that does the local hop-on, hop-off tours - but there were only four passengers on the way out there, and only the two of us on the way back.  More on this later, but for now, some of the best sights at the IWM.

Concorde - I'm so sad that I'll never get a chance to fly in it, but at least I got to step on-board one:

Nose to nose with a B52 bomber:

1940 Operations Room, still set up as it was then:

Messerschmitt Bf 109E

A Pickett-Hamilton Fort, aka Canberra Bus Shelter  :-)

Tiger Moth coming in to land - it's an operating airfield and you can go for flights in a number of old planes:

Paul took LOTS of photos and I expect he'll be posting them separately.


Now, back to Cambridge - I have reached the conclusion that they don't really want tourists here.  It was almost impossible to get details about the shuttle, and what we could find was contradictory.  For example, we caught the 9:22 shuttle to Duxford - quite definitely mentioned as the first shuttle of the day on their website, quite definitely NOT on the list of upcoming departures at the bus stop. There's also this very 'Canberra-like' set of assumptions at work - that you can just mention the name of a place and people will know where it is.  The bus from Milton Keynes the other day came into 'Parker's Pierce' - that's the sum total of the information provided - but Parker's Pierce is a huge open field with streets all around.  Same when we leave tomorrow - no information at all about where the coach leaves from.   The shuttle this morning - left from 'Silver Street' - with no indication of where in the street we needed to be.  The other people who caught the shuttle this morning were waiting at the railway station and no-one in the station could tell them anything about where to wait for the shuttle even though they knew the bus stop number.  As I said, they don't want tourists here. It's a nice place and I don't really regret coming here, but we won't be coming back.