Farewell Scotland!

Tuesday 4th October

A quick tour of Glascow, nothing special to report on, so we set off on the freeway M6, heading south passing through the fault line Southern Uplands, high rolling hills and with sheep grazing right to the top. The two main sheep breeds in Scotland are the Cheviot and Scottish Black Face supplying a coarse fleece for clothes and meat. We drove right past the village of Lockerbie where the Pan Am aeroplane was bombed out of the sky. Such a beautiful peaceful green farming area.

Our first stop was at Gretna Green, where people aged sixteen plus who wanted to elope could get married by any of the locals simply by having someone witnessing them saying “I marry you”. As the local blacksmith was the person working most of the time and was most available, he became the focal point. During World War II soldiers from the colonies came to the district for acclimatisation before going to war. They went down to the pub on a Friday night for a few drinks and woke up on Saturday, lying next to their brand new wife! Because of this the Government took away this old custom and now getting married is more formal. The border with England is approximately 100 metres away so we set off for Carlisle in England. Scotland was well worth a visit.

At Carlisle we turned off the freeway and took a winding country road through the middle of the Lakes District stopping at Grasmere for lunch. This is where William Wordsworth lived and is buried with his wife Mary and six of his children. The village was quite quaint and all the buildings and fences were made from stone. This is also where Peter Rabbit lives with all of his friends and his mate Beatrix Potter was a farmer just up the road. The Lakes District is the wettest place in England and is very green. It would be possible to set up camp here and visit the many surrounding sites. We headed south past Windemere and rejoined the M6 motorway, passed Preston and headed to our destination Liverpool. It is strange that the breed of sheep that is most common now that we are in England is the Leicester. The area we covered in England varied from some flat land to rolling hills with very big wide valleys.

Liverpool has a lot of famous features, one being the number of people who emigrated through this busy port. During World War II it was heavily bombed with over seventy raids and consequently old Georgian buildings stand next to new buildings where an area was bombed. We went on a tour of the city with a local guide. There is a massive Protestant Cathedral here, supposedly the largest in the world. It was built between 1904 and 1978 and was designed by a local 21 year old architectural student. It is built in the Gothic style but without any pews, so it can be used for many non religious activities – a true community cathedral.

There is a large university here with 60,000 students who also play a large part in the city. There is also a very old, large Chinese community here.

The city is known for several musical achievements, probably the oldest was of a young captain of a slave ship that was nearly wrecked in a storm. He limped back to Liverpool, resigned his commission, then studied to become a priest. He started writing religious songs, his best known being “Amazing Grace”. A band made up of local lads had some success a little later – they were known as the Beatles. We went down into a mock up of the catacombs named the Cavern where they used to play in the early days before they had success. It was quite claustrophobic and was only partly full at the time. We must be getting old!!

The Protestant Cathedral here was designed by a catholic and the Catholic Cathedral was designed by a Protestant! Religion can be so interesting.