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Scotland part 1
31 July 2016 18:40


Well, if a few years ago someone told me I would be going on holiday with three teenagers I’d have said “yeah, right”. If they then added that I would enjoy it I’d have thought they were mad. But this year I did and did. CGF and I have just got back from a week in Scotland with the three CS’s. We had some reasonable weather – only one afternoon of rain, and two really bright and sunny days at the end of the week. We did lots of outdoor stuff, sometimes pushing the CS’s a bit beyond their comfort zone, and played board and card games (Phase 10 mostly) in the evenings. Sometimes the CS’s actually ended up really enjoying something they’d originally said they weren’t too keen on doing. All in all, I think everyone had a good time – after a couple of days, CS3 said she wants to go to university in Scotland because it’s such a lovely place.

We had a good journey up north – well, as far as Manchester, anyway. There were then four hold-ups in the next 90 miles, which was a little excessive – three from accidents and one from roadworks. But seeing the delays on people trying to get to Dover that weekend, I feel we can’t really complain about a couple of hours on the M6.

We stumbled on a novel solution to the “how do you keep teenagers entertained on a six-hour car journey”. They spent over an hour (I kid you not) looking through the road atlas to find strange place names. They started soon after Manchester; when she finally looked up, CS3 was amazed to discover that we were now driving through the wonderful scenery of Cumbria. We also narrowly avoided a melt-down when we let out the secret we’ve been keeping for the last few months – there’s no Wi-Fi at the campsite. Actually there was, but it wasn’t very fast or reliable (bliss, as far as I’m concerned).

We stopped twice. First at the services on the M6 Toll, which is a very strange place. Considering that there is so little traffic on the toll road, the services were packed. It came as a bit of a shock; having been cocooned in our own little space for three hours, we suddenly found ourselves in the midst of crowds and queues. The service station is solely focused on serving food to lots of people as quickly as possible extracting as much money as quickly as possible.

Our second stop was at Tebay – because a stop at Tebay Services is pretty much mandatory when driving on the M6 through Cumbria. Have you been there? You really should. It has real food - no golden arches or unlucky fried kitten outlets - and a farm shop (I mean a shop selling farm produce, not a shop selling farms). And we got change from a fiver for two pots of tea, which is not bad for a motorway service area. Speaking of rip-offs, petrol at the M6 Toll services was £1.35 a litre – a bit of a mark-up compared with the typical £1.10 high street price. Money grabbing bastards.

We stayed in Carlisle overnight, close to the centre and in an area with lots of small restaurants to choose from. We chose Greek and had a great meal in a tastefully decorated restaurant. I would definitely recommend it to anyone visiting the city.

Saturday morning, cos we are keen and fit, we did the Carlisle parkrun. One of the great things about parkrun (and there are many) is that there are so many places where you can do it – just turn up and run. Then, after returning to the hotel for a shower, hit the road to continue our journey to Scotland. To be fair, it is only ten miles from Carlisle to Scotland but we were going a bit further than the border – about two hours’ drive.

Our first destination was Callander to stock up with food at Tesco. We couldn’t find the store I could clearly remember from a previous visit – on the left hand side of the road, by a junction and with the car park entrance off the side road and in ... er ... Pitlochery, 60 miles to the north east.

We stayed at the camp site CGF and I used a couple of years ago. We had a static caravan again – though slightly larger than before, because we had three teenagers to accommodate. The van was comfortable and well appointed, and the site was nicely kept. A nice touch was the box of coffee, tea and milk sachets – just what we needed for days out (we took thermos flasks every day – on the basis that you don’t get much change from £20 for five drinks at Costa Bucks coffee. Oh, and that they don’t have many coffee shops halfway up mountains). The campsite also had a friendly (well sybaritic) cat.

Sunday morning we hired bicycles and spent a couple of hours cycling along the side of Lock Katrine. Great idea for an activity, and the CS’s really enjoyed it. Wonderful scenery and it doesn’t take long to cycle away from the pier and car park where the crowds congregate (most people won’t walk more than 500 yards from the car). It was beautifully silent out there – just the sounds of birdsong with no human-made noise at all.

After the cycle ride we drove to Doune Castle. Modern TV viewers will know this from Game of Thrones. Slightly older people will know it from Monty Python’s Holy Grail (“your mother was a hamster and your father smelled of elderberries”).

The audio community was given by Terry Jones and included a few excerpts from the film. It was good (even without the Monty Python excerpts) – the clips were not overlong, but gave the essential in information without overload leading to boredom.

The castle looks like a ruin at first, but there are a lot of indoor areas – it was a bit like the Tardis: bigger on the inside than the outside. By the time we finished, the rain was coming down steadily, so we gave the walk to the river a miss.

Anyway, that was the first couple of days. The rest of the holiday will follow later.

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