On Saturday we decided to give Eileen a day off and we caught the bus into Stirling. We walked up the steep streets to the castle which sits on the top of a hill of volcanic rock. Four and a half hours were spent wandering around the various rooms, exhibits, and along the rampart walls. We really liked it, but apparently Queen Victoria preferred Edinburgh Castle….
We strolled back down past many old and interesting buildings to the new shopping area where we ate a very late lunch and had a wee wander around the shops.
We then hopped on another bus for our return journey back to Eileen. The bus stopped at our bus stop opposite the cemetery, but before we jumped off, the driver guessed we weren’t intending to visit any deceased relatives and asked if we were staying at the campsite up the road. After confirming we were, he very kindly drove us to the gate of the campsite. Brilliant, and definitely not a service we would ever get in London, or Sydney!!!
The National Wallace Monument was our first stop on Sunday. It’s a wonderful, freestanding, Scottish baronial style, tower sitting on top of Abbey Craig where William Wallace led his troops to victory against the English at the Battle of Stirling Bridge in 1297. The monument was built in 1860 and stands 220ft (67 metres) high, making it a real feature in the landscape near Stirling. You step inside and climb up a stone spiral staircase which is set to one side of the tower. There are three large halls inside; one on top of the other, each containing interesting exhibits. Inside one of the halls there is a cabinet with William Wallace’s broadsword which is over 5ft (1.53 metres) long, that’s bigger than me; he must have been very tall to swing that around!
When you reach the 246th step it opens out on to the ‘crown’ on top from where you have superb views over Stirling Castle, the Trossachs, the Ochil Hills and the River Forth. Och aye, it’s definitely worth the climb.
When you have smoky bacon for breakfast in a campervan, you get to ‘enjoy’ it all day! Before lunchtime, with the sun shining in, we had to open the windows to try and reduce the scent as it was making us both feel hungry all over again.
Next stop on today’s itinerary was at the Falkirk Wheel; what a contrast to the last stop. It’s the first and only rotating boat lift in the world and is an amazing feat of modern engineering, replacing eleven locks on the canal.
We arrived at midday, just in time to board a boat in the Forth & Clyde Canal basin. The boat then enters the end of the Falkirk Wheel which rotates very slowly and we were swept 115ft (35metres) into the air. When the gate opens at the top, the boat floats out onto the Union Canal. You don’t travel a long distance in the hour, but I couldn’t stop marvelling at the whole structure whilst enjoying the smooth leisurely cruise.
We now knew that we wouldn’t have time to visit Edinburgh, so we skirted the city on the ring road and took the A7 south through Galashiels to the Gibson Park campsite in Melrose. Before dinner, we went for a short wander down the main street and noticed it was nothing like its namesake in Los Angeles…. But it does have a claim to fame in being the place where Rugby Sevens was invented in 1883; there’s a bit of trivia for the next quiz night.
It was a very foggy, mizzly morning on Monday. As we drove south through Hawick and down the endlessly narrow and winding B6399, we couldn’t see anything in the way of scenery, but thankfully we could see far enough to spot the road in front of us. By the time we reached Kershopefoot and farewelled Scotland, the mist had lifted and we could see some of the hills and autumn colours around us.
We then cut across to the B6318 to follow Hadrian’s Wall heading east. We stopped occasionally along the road at Birdoswald, Walltown Crags and Steel Rigg, but by the time we reached Housesteads Fort the constant mizzly rain was getting to us and we opted not to pay to wander around in the mud looking at the small remains of the old roman fort.
Hadrian’s Wall at Birdoswald
We decided to push on and crossed the river at Newcastle singing “Fog On The Tyne”, because there really was a lot of fog on the Tyne.
We were feeling a bit tired from what we call a ‘rather non-day’; it wasn’t particularly productive, exciting, or restful. But just south of Gateshead, we spotted the ‘Angel Of The North’, so we pulled off the motorway for a closer look. It was created by Antony Gormley in 1998 and is Britain’s largest sculpture; at 65ft high (20 metres) with a wingspan of 175ft (53.5 metres) that’s almost as big as a jumbo jet. It is one of the most viewed pieces of art in the world, seen by more than one person every second, at least 90,000 every day, or 33 million every year. That’s a lot of people travelling down the A1 !!!
We finally pulled in to the Grange Caravan site near Durham for an overnight break with our smucks on our feet, before tootling down to Scarborough tomorrow to catch up with our friends David and Wendy.