Scotland Day 2 - Royal yacht Brittania, Military Tattoo.

The Royal Yacht Brittania (retired)

Today was a busy day. On the bus by 9am for a bit of a city tour, then a stop for a tour of the Royal Yacht Brittania. 

The retired Royal Yacht was both larger than we expected, and less opulent. It's been well looked after since retirement, and gives some sense of what it would have been like for royal tours.

Here is a link if you'd like to see more of the ship: <Brittania Link>

 

 

The bedrooms seemed especially modest:

A small bed in the Queen's suite

Likewise for Prince Phillip's spartan adjoining room

The largest bed (a full double) was in the guest suite

Lots of immaculate woodwork:

Provision for some formal dining:

OK, which glass gets used first...

 

A cosier room, normally for casual entertainment, family games etc, but could be fancied up for guests as needed:

Sleeping facilities for military support personnel:

There was provision for a small well-equipped hospital, in case it was needed in wartime. It was never used for that though:

They could even carry a runabout or limo for queenly use:

Easy to fit the Landrover in the parking spot

Harder to fit the Rolls when it was taken instead

There was even a large laundry room, with one day per week reserved exclusively for the Royal laundry.

 

After the Brittania tour it was back to the bus for a bit more city touring, then a stopover at George St square for a non-guided walk and lunch. We found a good lunch at an Indian restaurant and really enjoyed it:

2 different curries, and Naan bread

Then back to the hotel for a rest, and prepare for the evening at the Military Tattoo. We were going to the 9:30 pm performance, so a really late night by our standards. Luckily for us 9:30 Scotland time is only 4:30 Ontario time, and we didn't need any dinner after that large lunch we had.

The bus got us close to the Tattoo grounds, which are in the shadow of Edinburgh Castle. Then we had to walk, joining lots of other people swimming upstream against the thousands leaving the earlier show: 

That's the base of part of Edinburgh Castle

Those stadium seats up there are for part of the Tattoo audience

A fairly orderly crowd

The Tattoo area is a field surrounded by tiered seating. The seating is all disassembled after the Tattoo, and rebuilt starting next spring. Since the area is part of the Castle grounds, no permanent structure is allowed, so this assembly/disassembly happens every year.

A small sampling of the bands:

If you'd like to see videos, go to Youtube and search for "Military Tattoo 2024".  

The show was well worth attending. It's one thing to see the videos, and quite another to be there and feel the performances. We thoroughly enjoyed it, in spite of the windy cold night.

 

Scotland Day 1 - Kelpies, Falkirk Wheel, Edinburgh hotel

The Kelpies and the Forth & Clyde Canal

We arrived in Glasgow right on time, through baggage and security and on to the bus by 8am. A bit groggy, but not bad considering the long night.

Approaching Glasgow

We back-half passengers got to exit to the rear of the plane, rain and all

The "upper class" front got to exit via the covered walkway :))

 

The official tour was to head right from Glasgow to our Edinburgh hotel. As a sign of things to come though, our driver made a couple of interesting stops along the way.

"The Kelpies are two giant steel horse heads that are easily visible from a distance while driving the M9 motorway. Standing nearly 100 feet (30 metres) high over the Forth & Clyde Canal, these are actually the largest pair of equine sculptures in the world. In Scottish folklore, kelpies are shape-shifting, horse-like water spirits said to have the strength and endurance of 100 horses. Scottish artist Andy Scott designed these sculptures as a tribute to Scotland’s engineering progress and the Falkirk area’s industrial heritage."

The Forth & Clyde canal runs near the Kelpies exhibit. We follow several Youtube nomads that travel the British canal system via narrowboats, so it was interesting for us to see some of these canals live:

A canal lock, for elevation changes

A more local tour bus

 

Not far away from the Kelpies is the Falkirk Wheel. This is a very creative type of canal lock, making a major elevation change of 79 feet in one step.  <Wiki link click here>

These statues were made of wires, formed and wrapped

View over the canal to the nearby areas

Our tour bus, and Cathie in awe

The Wheel visitor centre also had a very nice cafe where we had tea and a bite to eat.

Carrying on, we made our way into Edinburgh to the Best Western Kings Manor Hotel:

Gord and Art chatting in front of the hotel

Enjoying a beverage at the buffet Welcome dinner in the hotel

 

Getaway Day *Start* of Scotland trip

Seniors Discovery offered a transit option, to pick us up at home to start and deliver us back home at the end of the trip. It's a 2+ hour drive to the Toronto Pearson airport from here, if no traffic delays. The option was well worth it to us, to avoid driving and maybe parking.

Pickup was scheduled for 1:30 pm, and the van was right on time. A couple more pickups along the way then some traffic backups on Hwy 401 meant the drive was over 3 hours today. We were still at the airport in plenty of time though.

Once at the airport we found the Air Transat check-in, and went through that. We were travelling with only a carry-on bag each, so no checked baggage. One checked bag each was included for us in the tour package, but we decided to try to go light. It turns out our tour guide Margaret was watching for people like us at the check-in but we missed each other there, connecting later in the departure lounge.

Just before the flight loaded, the gatekeepers offered to check any carry-on luggage. Carry-on storage is usually at a premium, and apparently this option is not uncommon. We decided to check our carry-on bags then, as checking them at this point is more reliable than doing it at check-in. We had needed to repack some items after going through security too, so that all worked out well. 

Our flight took off pretty much at the scheduled 7:30 pm. A 6+ hour flight plus a 5 hour time change meant we would land in Glasgow about 6:30 am Glasgow time.

 

Neither of us really slept on the flight, but luckily did doze a lot. And thus the night passed.

 

A different sort of trip for us

 

Over the past couple of years with our van, we've started wondering how much longer we can do our usual van-based travel, and thinking about alternatives. Our June trip to southern British Columbia did go well; not as easy as in years gone by but we can still do it. 

We do want to consider alternatives though, and decided to try a guided trip to Scotland, a kind of trip we've never done before. Cathie really wanted to get to Scotland one more time, and I didn't think we could do a self-tour like our last visit there 34 years ago. We coped then with DIY flights, rental car, train trips and B&B accommodations, but it was 34 years ago! On the positive side this trip timing would include our 55th anniversary, and a birthday for me. 

So we signed up for a 16-day trip with a tour group called Seniors Discovery. Several people we know have taken trips with that company and recommended them. 

As I'm writing this we have taken the trip and are back home. Doing a daily blog was not feasible for this type of trip, but I'm going to do our normal kind of trip series, backdating to the actual dates. As usual we're partly doing this for our own benefit for future reference, to help our aging memories. We do like looking over our blogs of past trips and hope others enjoy them too.   

At the end of the series I will describe the pros and cons of the trip for us. In summary though, while we really enjoyed the trip and the tour management was very good, there are several things we'd want to change if we took a trip similar to this again. Meanwhile we really missed our van, and would LOVE to have had it with us for touring northern Scotland!