Sunny Edinburgh!

Friday 30th September

Slept in until 6.30am today which was nice! Then we were onto the bus for a tour of the city with a local Scottish Guide. The city was named after an English king, Edwin. It was called Edwin Town (burgh) and eventually became called Edinburgh. We saw the Holyrood Palace where the Queen stays when she is in Scotland and also the church where Princess Anne’s daughter got married a couple of months ago. The city is divided into the new and old city, although the new city is already 250 years old. We also drove past a coffee shop where a young single mother used to sit drinking coffee and writing a book. This book could only have been written in Scotland by a Scottish woman – and the story she wrote could only happen in Scotland where there are such things as goblins and fairies, as any good Scotsman will vouch for – the book was of course Harry Potter.

Next we headed for Edinburgh Castle. This is the largest and most impressive castle we have seen so far. It is built on a cliff face and looks impenetrable but has been overrun on several occasions, changing from Scottish to English and back, but ultimately ending up Scottish. It is a huge structure still with some original armaments. We saw a small chapel named for Margaret, mother of one of the monarchs and flower are put in this chapel each day by someone called Margaret. The Royal Scots originated in this castle. We saw a banquet room where the King used to ply noblemen with liquor then retire supposedly to go to bed, but he instead went into a secret chamber and eavesdropped on the inebriated noblemen as liquor was known to loosen some lips and secrets sometimes came out This castle dominates everything as it is situated on a high volcanic cliff overlooking the old and new city. They were in the process of dismantling the stands erected for the annual Military Tattoo, so we got to see where the Tattoo is actually held.

Next we went off to tour the royal yacht Brittannia. We went from the wheel house on top, through to the crew’s quarters (200men), the kitchen, the banquet room where the Queen entertained and then into the bedrooms and saw where the Queen slept, the Duke slept and the Royal honeymooners or VIP guests slept and also into the lounge area where they relaxed. We wished we could have stayed longer exploring this very interesting yacht, but we did go and have lunch up on the sun deck so can say we had lunch on the Brittannia!! The Queen loved this yacht and was very disappointed when it was de-commissioned. We only just made it back to the bus before it left to return to the city centre! We then decided to get off and walk a bit around the city and make our own way back to the hotel. On the way we passed the Pub where Student doctors in the olden days and bodysnatchers would come by to sell freshly dug up corpses for them to practice on at the current day price of 300 pounds for a good quality body. The gravediggers once dug up the body of a young girl who was mistakenly buried alive. She sat up when they opened the coffin and the bodysnatchers are possibly still running away in fright!! This girl got married and emigrated to America.

Something that has surprised me has been the number of sayings and words and also the names of towns in Australia that have originated from Scotland. We often use sayings without understanding their origins and I hope whilst I’m in Scotland I can get some more information on this.

Tonight we are going to a Scottish banquet so expect to see dancing and Scottish music.

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York to Edinburgh

Thursday 29th September – Happy birthday Shaun!!!

We started the day early with a walk around York, starting at St. Peters, a cathedral built by the Romans on the site of an old Saxon temple, begun in 1220 and completed in 1475 . It was a Catholic cathedral but changed to Protestant with Henry VIII’s Reformation and then changed backwards and forwards as different monarchs followed different religions. Coincidentally Guy Fawkes was born and christened just next door. He was born Catholic therefore he was part of the suppressed population at the time. There were two legions of Roman soldiers based here, the 6th Legion and the 9th Legion. The 9th Legion marched through York one day setting out on a exploratory journey to explore the north. They marched north and disappeared never to be seen nor heard of again. Close by, the shops still retain the features of the 13th Century . We walked down one street called The Shambles, which is where all butchers were situated in the old days. All the shops still had hooks in the shopfronts where the butchers hung their meat in the windows and the shambles were shelves protruding from the windows upon which the cut up meat was placed on display. These are now up to 1600 years old.

We had time to walk around this old part of town – we spent it looking for a new pair of sunglasses for Jill who had misplaced her old ones!!! Being close to the end of summer here, it was very difficult finding a shop that still had any as they send their stocks back to the manufacturer during the winter season! Luckily however we did manage to find a cheap pair, as it has been so sunny Jill really needed them on the bus.

We left York and crossed over to the A1M which is Freeway that follows the old Roman road from London to the north. We travelled north and just by passed Newcastle-on-Tyne which we could see was a very industrialised city. Just past there we stopped for lunch at Heddon-on-the-Wall. This was just a small village with a Pub and an old Celtic church dating back to 650 AD and it also had some of the remains of Hadrian’s Wall. This amazing wall was originally 15 feet tall and between 8 and 10 feet wide and approximately 70 miles long, though only the remnants of it remain as the stonework was raided over many years for use on roads in the area. Even by today’s standards it was quite a feat to build. This area is called the Northumbria and was a separate kingdom in the time of the Celts.

After lunch we started travelling through the Northumberland moors where the vegetation turned to grasslands and the farms were for grazing only. From Newcastle onwards the terrain became more undulating and windy – and Jill started to turn a bit green and pale!! But we pushed on and came to Jedburgh where several monasteries were destroyed by fire when one of the English Monarchs was refused the hand if a Scottish maiden. It wasn’t a good idea to upset the monarch in those days. Next stop was at Melrose where Mary Queen if Scots stayed for some time and we had afternoon tea. Finally we made it to Edinburgh arriving in time for the evening rush, but getting to our hotel by 5 o’clock. That night we went out for a getting to know you dinner then retired for the night.

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