York to Colchester is a good 4 hour drive so we were keen to get on the road asap.  A friend in Australia (hi Jenny) had given us some vouchers to get a 15 pound discount at YHAs.  I was determined to use them but when I booked York over the phone I forgot to mention it.  After talking with the manager at York he was happy for us to redeem it in some other way so we were...

With another day in York ahead of us, we packed a picnic and set off along the river to walk into town.  The National Rail Museum was our destination with the largest collection of trains and memorabilia in the world; and it’s a free museum.  As we walked along the river we spotted geese heading south; rowers and canal boats.  At the museum we grabbed our map and set off in...

Cheap cornflakes for breakfast; packed the car and headed out of Cramlington on our way south to York.  Was a quick drive to York and we found a car park overlooking a Castle in the middle of the city.  We headed into the Coppergate Centre to line up for the Jorvik Viking Centre.  I had read about it online and thought the boys would enjoy it, although didn’t really know...

Goodbye Ivy Guest House and we drove 7 miles down the road to the small town of Dalkeith; certainly not a place high on many people’s must see list in Scotland.  Dalkeith was high on Steve’s list because of a strong Baigrie Family history link.  Steve had a small list of places to go in Dalkeith so we set off to find them. First stop, the World War I and II war memorial...

The Gordon Highlanders Museum was on Steve’s list of places to go in Scotland and  thought we would visit the museum when we were in Edinburgh except …

Karina:  Steve, the Gordon Highlanders Museum isn’t in Edinburgh, it’s in Aberdeen.

Steve: No it isn’t.

Karina:  Ahh, yes, it is and Aberdeen is on the opposite side of Scotland to where we are  staying for the week in...

We drove from Appin to Edinburgh after checking out of our cabin.  It was hard to leave after our enjoyable week.  Maybe we should have stayed two!  Anyway, back on the road for our 4 hour journey.  We stopped near Crianlarich for lunch on the run and then off to Stirling.  We drove around Stirling and took in the Old Town, Stirling Castle and Bannockburn Monument from the...

What did we do during our week in Appin?  Steve and Harris had their road trip to Aberdeen; we visited Oban one afternoon and then returned to go to the Oban Highland Games; we went to Fort William one afternoon and then returned another day to catch the Jacobite train; Steve and Patrick went to Ben Nevis and the Caledonian Canal and then the rest of the time we did...

One of the main reasons for staying one week on the west coast of Scotland was so we would be close to Fort William to catch the Jacobite train; made famous in the Harry Potter movies when it is shown going over the Glenfinnan Viaduct.  Harris and I are both Harry Potter fans so it was something we were keen to do, plus the train ride is listed as one of ‘the’ train rides...

Hello Auntie Heather.  We think of you often even though we are slack at keeping in touch!  We have been thinking of you even more whilst in the UK with all the amazing fields of heather everywhere as August is the peak month, that’s all that purple stuff.  Heather is particularly popular in Scotland given the other two photos of this collection.  Love to you both in...

That would be the Oban Highland Games in Oban, west coast of Scotland. When we saw the Oban Highland Games advertised for the 25^th August we were so going to be there.  There was no way that I was going to miss a traditional Scottish games complete with bagpipers, highland dancers, the light and heavy hammer, the light and heavy stone, tug-of-war, track and field and … the...