In November 2008 we were looking forward to organise an exciting holiday for 2009. It did not take us long to find our destination: Yucatan, the Mexican peninsula were the Maya culture once flourished but then mysteriously disappeared, leaving behind massive cities in the jungle. We were going to visit all of the legendary Mayan cities in a 14 day trip in March 2009. Three days before departure we were ready to go. We had read books about the history, I learned some Spanish, got all the necessary vaccinations, a brand new Indiana Jones – like hat and we were counting the days… But then (Wednesday before Saturday departure) the Mexican swine flu exploded around the world and we were strongly advised to change our travel plans. By Wednesday midnight we had rescheduled our trip for April 2010 and booked a last minute trip to Egypt (which turned out great).
On Wednesday 14th April 2010 we were finally completely ready for our Mexico trip. We reread the history of the Maya’s and the Spanish lessons, bought some new walking shoes and our bags were ready for departure. Unfortunately, there was some bad news as dark clouds were appearing over Playa del Carmen. We would probably have to spend the first two days of our trip in always-nice-weather Mexico in the rain… But then more clouds appeared as some volcano continued to erupt in Iceland spreading its ashes over the UK, disrupting all air traffic. Although we now live in France we were supposed to fly from London (as we booked the trip in 2008 before knowing we would move). Still optimistic we took the Eurostar from Paris to London on Friday night to catch our flight Saturday morning. But it only got worse. In the pub on Friday we found out that the British sky was now closed for all air traffic up to mid-day Saturday without signs of improvement. It was sure now: we would not be flying off to Mexico soon. We stayed in London the entire weekend hoping for better news but no, we were doomed. For the second year in a row a very unlikely event completely messed up our Mexico travel plans. But this time it was even worse. We were stuck on the UK island as all Eurostars and ferries were completely filled up with people trying to get to the continent. By Sunday evening we improvised our own last minute holiday. We went online and booked the car for 12 days which would take us to and around Scotland. No hotels or hostels booked, no historic information, no arrangements at all. We would just drive up and enjoy whatever was on our path.
Day 1: London - Kendal
Making the decision to do a road trip was the easy part. On our way we would come across multiple challenges. The first one: getting out of London. The big advantage of living in big cities like London or Paris is that everything is close. You never need to use a car to go anywhere; you should even try to avoid it because driving in such cities is a nightmare apparently. Before departure we were asked if we wanted extra insurance at a cost of £7 a day to cover for any minor scratches (else it could cost us up to £500). Obviously, we said no. It’s just a matter of not scratching the car, no? About 1 minute after having received the keys to the car I saw the potential difficulties. When I looked at the driver’s seat placed in the right side of the car with the stick on the left I realised that it would be a challenging start. When I drove my first couple of meters there was some informative screaming: “you can’t turn right here!”, “stay on the left side of the road!”, “stay on the right side of the lane!”, “there’s a car overtaking on the right!”. Right, we were in England. Which means: driving on the left, going through 5,000 roundabouts and trying not to hit the other thousands of drivers who are not tourists and can’t see that you are because you’re driving an English car. Once we managed to get out of London, things got less hectic. We got organised and decided to buy a road map. It is with that UK map that Louise performed as an absolute brilliant co-pilot for the next 12 days. It gave her something to do and I benefited from the extra pair of eyes trying to find out were to go. Our first stop: Kendal, England.
We chose Kendal because of its convenient location near the M6 and in the Lake District where we previously had a fantastic weekend. Once we parked the car we quickly found the local YHA youth hostel that still had a private room available. They were bunk beds but we were happy to have kicked off our holiday and successfully completed our first day.
Day 2: Kendal - Edinburgh
Soon we realised that the best structure to do our road trip would be 1) breakfast 2) walking/visiting 3) driving 4) search for bed 5) relax. After our (English) breakfast in Kendal we walked up the hill to visit Kendal castle. The weather was great, the castle was in ruins but still pretty cool to walk around in all by ourselves. Next we continued for a walk in typical Lake District style, along the meadows with sheep and their lambs. The walk we did was recommended to us by a YHA employee - who had to call his dad for advice first because he apparently never had a question before about where guests could do a nature walk in Kendal- . On top of ‘Scot Scar’ we were satisfied with the view and decided to move on to our first Scottish destination: Edinburgh.
On our way to Edinburgh we stopped in a little town called Biggar. Not only does the town have a funny name but it also is proud to have won the ‘Toilet of the year 2010’ award for its public toilets. We used them and yes, they are pretty good.
Driving into Edinburgh we realised that our big UK map did not really work anymore once we were in the city centre. After a couple of more “you can’t go left here!”‘s we managed to find a secured parking and a new hostel (with -again- bunk beds!).
Day 3: Edinburgh
The Belushi’s bar (+ hostel) was quite cool, good to have a drink and watch Inter win against Barça in the semi final but it wasn’t the Mexican hotel + pool + sandy beach we were supposed to be in. The next day we decided to upgrade to a hostel that had a double bed and were fortunate enough to get a nice luxurious room with kitchen and bathroom all for ourselves. We moved our stuff and got to the meeting point in front of a Starbucks to start the ‘Free tour’ from Sandeman. This is an organisation that organises all kinds of tours through cities for ‘all budgets’. Seemed interesting (as we had no historic information ourselves) so we signed in for a really enjoyable tour through historic Edinburgh. In an ‘infotaining’ way we learned about Scottish history, Bobby the dog and the ‘Stone of destiny’ through our Canadian guide, Kate, who would rather be Scottish. Edinburgh is a nice city of which many nice stories can be told, definitely worth a visit.
To continue our roadtrip it was imperative for us to buy a CD as we needed a good soundtrack to go with our travels. Finally we went for de soundtrack of ‘500 days of Summer’ (good film, ok music) and Tchaïkovski’s ‘Swane Lake’ (it only cost €1).
Day 4: Edinburgh – Dundee
The next stop in our tour was supposed to be Perth, as I read it was called ‘the fair city’ but as we drove to it we were not as impressed as we hoped we would be and decided on the spot to continue driving towards Dundee. There we managed to quickly find another very nice double bed room. Dundee is a town next to the sea and there we realised that Scotland is not Mexico. As we only packed clothes for tropic heath we were wearing shorts and t-shirts to face the cold northern breeze that was going through the city. We decided to suit up and went on a shopping spree buying pants, sweaters and brand new (fake leather) jackets. A nice steak and chocolaty ice cream in an American-styled restaurant finished a good day.
Day 5: Dundee – Inverurie
Dundee is not really touristy although they do try to do their best. We spent an hour in their MacMannus museum (a museum about everything) and then went for a swim in their fully equipped swimming pool. Unfortunately, the waves and water slides were not in operation at the time. Swallowing away the disappointment with fish and chips we decided on our next stop: Aberdeen.
Getting closer to Aberdeen we realised this was again a larger city, we entered the heavy traffic and then (again) on the spot decided to drive on. We have had enough of city walks, it was time to go into the beautiful countryside of Scotland. And that’s how we found Inverurie. Louise spotted the little town on our map and we went for it. It was already getting around 18h so we knew the tourist information centre would be closed and we still needed to find a place to stay for the night. The first two B&B’s we found on our way were full and closer to the centre we did not find any. It started to drizzle a little bit as the sun started to go down. In a pub that also rented rooms we were offered a bed at €80 by a very dodgy bar tender, not quite within our budget of €50. We went back outside and Louise started to wonder if we ever were going to find a room in this town. Walking up the high street we came across a fancy historic hotel were the local Rotary club meets. We decided to go inside and soon realised that this would probably be out of our league too. When the friendly lady at the reception asked us what kind of room we were looking for I jokingly said “the cheapest room you have”, hoping that there would be something that was not on the published pricelist. ‘Well’, she said, ‘I can give you the €75 room at a reduced rate of €55’. Lady Fortune was on our side that evening. We gladly accepted and after dinner in the hotel restaurant we finished the day by watching the film ‘Hackers’ in our fully equipped luxurious room.
Day 6: Inverurie
The tourist information office in Inverurie is the best we have encountered in our entire Scotland trip. A very friendly American young woman not only showed us to the local options but provided us with information covering all of Scotland. The equally friendly hotel staff offered us an additional night at the same rate so we were set to do our first long walk in the Scottish nature. We drove to nearby Bennachi centre to do the local forest/mountain walks. After five hours of walking we went through the forest, to the top of the hill, into eternal snow and back, to finish off with a quick visit to the ‘Maidenstone’ one of the many ancient stones in the Scottish fields. Afterwards, the local Indian restaurant was too busy to accept guests without reservation so we ended up for a final meal at the hotel. Inverurie has been good.
Day 7: Inverurie – Drumnadrochit
A new day, a new destination. We went up to visit the Loch Ness to find out the truth about that monster that was supposed to live there. On our way we first visited the medieval ‘Tolquhon castle‘, a true hidden gem in the green area near Inverurie. Almost all the walls and floors are still intact so we could really get the impression of what it was like living there. We were again all by ourselves in the castle as we swept through it and found the ‘hidden chamber’ at the end. Our next stop was the whisky distillery of Glendronach. You can’t visit Scotland without tasting its finest single malt whisky so we went for it. After a very informative and enjoyable tour through the distillery we tasted the spirit neither of us actually liked to start with. The inspiration of having seen the brewing process made me appreciate the drink, Louise (equally inspired) couldn’t hide how disgusting she found the taste but managed not to spit it out. Nonetheless, we both enjoyed the visit.
Once we approached the Loch Ness we were amazed by its size. It really isn’t a matter of just having a close look over the water to spot the monster as the lake is many miles long. As we stopped in Drumnadrochit we easily found a B&B of which the lady apologized for not serving a cooked breakfast. I was personally happy to for once not have to eat bacon, eggs and sausages for breakfast. It’s a nice concept but if you do it every day for a week, you really get tired of it.
Day 8: Drumnadrochit – Fort William
We were not really impressed by the very fake ‘Nessie the monster’ information centres so we avoided them and went for a little forest walk instead. We didn’t spend much more time there and went on to our next stop: Fort William. Now we were really driving through ‘the Highlands’. Near a lot of ‘Bens’ (mountains) and ‘Glens’ (valleys) we found a good affordable B&B with a view in the very un- touristy Fort William. For once we decided to chill and stayed in to read a bit, it’s always good to have a break when you’re travelling at the pace like we were.
Day 9: Fort William- Balloch
In the real highlands we didn’t have the ambition to go to the top of the mountains. In stead we walked along the mountains into the valley where we could enjoy the view of waterfalls and impressive flows of water streaming down the mountain. Visiting Glen Nevis, we started our walk passing a sign ‘Danger, fatal accidents have happened’, not really a relaxing thought to start of with. Concentrated we walked the first couple of miles along the mountain and soon we were impressed by the magnificent views around. Going down to the valley we arrived in the scenery typically used for films like ‘Braveheart’. At our destination we crossed the (very narrow and calm) river using a rope bridge, and then crossed back because we didn’t really need to go there. Good fun.
Our next stop was Loch Lomond. I only new this loch from the song we used to sing when drinking as a student ‘I’ll take the high way and you take the low … bonny bonny banks of Loch Lomond’. The most impressive bit of our stay in Balloch was our hostel, based in a pretty castle isolated from the city centre (but still with bunk beds). We went to the local Chinese and watched the film ‘Tristan & Isolde’, which went well with the atmosphere of our journey.
Day 10: Balloch – Euxton
Enjoying yet another walk between the trees with a view over the lake we reached a certain level of satisfaction. After this many beautiful views and walks we were no longer impressed. This feeling was expressed by Louise as she said the famous words: ‘I’m tired of this walking, what’s the fun in just passing by all these trees and all that water?’. I read this as a sign to get out of there as quickly as possible. At one point we were tired of city walks, now we were tired of nature walks. Our Scotland holiday had successfully reached its objectives. We decided to drive back down to England were we could do a final relaxed holiday stroll.
Our goal was Lancaster, for no particular reason, but on our way we came across a Centre Parks complex and we thought it might be cool to spend our last two days with a fun pool and some random entertainment. However, we were stopped and turned around by security even before we reached the reception. Apparently Centre Parks is a little bit more exclusive than we thought and people can’t just visit for a couple of days to go to the pool without reservation. So we continued to Lancaster. Driving into the town it looked perfect. Not too big, plenty of bars and restaurants and even a castle. Helas, two hours later we were already driving away as there were no B&B or hostels in the entire city that still had a room available. Apparently there was an issue with their nuclear power plant and hundreds of technicians were staying over. The guy in the information centre seemed very worried that we wouldn’t be able to find a room anywhere before dark. But we didn’t worry that much, as seasoned travellers now we had managed to sort things out every day and we were sure to do that again. We drove further down, through a little town called Leyland where they only had a four star hotel. Time was going even faster now and it was already after 18h. We decided to go on one step further al the way to Southport which was another fourty-five minutes away. Just as we drove deeper into the unknown we saw a little sign ‘B&B farmhouse’. A lovely retired lady was doing her gardening and showed us to the room. Absolutely brilliant and pretty close to our budget. We stayed there for the night and had a very good dinner in the nearby pub. It was probably the best meat-pie I ever tasted in the UK.
Day 11: Euxton – Southporth – Melksham
After discussing local politics with the friendly B&B owners we went further down in the UK. First we stopped in Southport which seemed to us like it has had its best days although we could still see its old glory. There we finally sent an email to our parents to give them an update to tell them we were still alive after 10 days touring through Scotland. After a walk on the second largest iron peer in England we continued our journey southwards in the direction of Melksham. It was a long difficult drive with rain pouring down, us taking a ‘short-cut’ through Wolverhampton instead of following the M6 and heavy traffic. We wanted to go to Melksham as I have an uncle and aunt living there and we wanted to surprise them. The only issue was that I didn’t have their address but faintly remembered how their house looked like. After driving around for over an hour in Melksham and knocking on doors of similar houses we finally called Belgium on a payphone for an address. One or two wrong turns later we arrived just after 19h at my family’s house who were absolutely surprised to see two strangers with a striking resemblance of their nephew and respective fiancée. We were exhausted and hungry and still hadn’t started looking for a bed. But they welcomed us like family or even better. One freshly squeezed orange juice, tea, spaghetti, wine and apple-pie with ice-cream later they arranged a bed and all was well. As we started to watch the film ‘The Graduate’ Louise soon fell asleep and so did I not much later. We made it.
Day 12: Melksham – London
Our last day of holiday started with a last English breakfast and then we were off to our last stop before returning to London: Stonehenge. For centuries historians have studied this man made circle of stones but in the end they don’t have a clue why it was built. We did the audio tour and listened to the legends and although I didn’t find it that impressive, we were happy to have had our last portion of history on our tour.
From there on it was straight to London to return the car. Again, it was a semi - nightmare to drive to Kings Cross but without screaming this time. We were in full control of the car and we knew where we needed to go. We returned the vehicle with a full tank and without a scratch and took the tube back to Ealing to have a final beer. A solid ending to a solid road trip.
On Wednesday 14th April 2010 we were finally completely ready for our Mexico trip. We reread the history of the Maya’s and the Spanish lessons, bought some new walking shoes and our bags were ready for departure. Unfortunately, there was some bad news as dark clouds were appearing over Playa del Carmen. We would probably have to spend the first two days of our trip in always-nice-weather Mexico in the rain… But then more clouds appeared as some volcano continued to erupt in Iceland spreading its ashes over the UK, disrupting all air traffic. Although we now live in France we were supposed to fly from London (as we booked the trip in 2008 before knowing we would move). Still optimistic we took the Eurostar from Paris to London on Friday night to catch our flight Saturday morning. But it only got worse. In the pub on Friday we found out that the British sky was now closed for all air traffic up to mid-day Saturday without signs of improvement. It was sure now: we would not be flying off to Mexico soon. We stayed in London the entire weekend hoping for better news but no, we were doomed. For the second year in a row a very unlikely event completely messed up our Mexico travel plans. But this time it was even worse. We were stuck on the UK island as all Eurostars and ferries were completely filled up with people trying to get to the continent. By Sunday evening we improvised our own last minute holiday. We went online and booked the car for 12 days which would take us to and around Scotland. No hotels or hostels booked, no historic information, no arrangements at all. We would just drive up and enjoy whatever was on our path.
Day 1: London - Kendal
Making the decision to do a road trip was the easy part. On our way we would come across multiple challenges. The first one: getting out of London. The big advantage of living in big cities like London or Paris is that everything is close. You never need to use a car to go anywhere; you should even try to avoid it because driving in such cities is a nightmare apparently. Before departure we were asked if we wanted extra insurance at a cost of £7 a day to cover for any minor scratches (else it could cost us up to £500). Obviously, we said no. It’s just a matter of not scratching the car, no? About 1 minute after having received the keys to the car I saw the potential difficulties. When I looked at the driver’s seat placed in the right side of the car with the stick on the left I realised that it would be a challenging start. When I drove my first couple of meters there was some informative screaming: “you can’t turn right here!”, “stay on the left side of the road!”, “stay on the right side of the lane!”, “there’s a car overtaking on the right!”. Right, we were in England. Which means: driving on the left, going through 5,000 roundabouts and trying not to hit the other thousands of drivers who are not tourists and can’t see that you are because you’re driving an English car. Once we managed to get out of London, things got less hectic. We got organised and decided to buy a road map. It is with that UK map that Louise performed as an absolute brilliant co-pilot for the next 12 days. It gave her something to do and I benefited from the extra pair of eyes trying to find out were to go. Our first stop: Kendal, England.
We chose Kendal because of its convenient location near the M6 and in the Lake District where we previously had a fantastic weekend. Once we parked the car we quickly found the local YHA youth hostel that still had a private room available. They were bunk beds but we were happy to have kicked off our holiday and successfully completed our first day.
Day 2: Kendal - Edinburgh
Soon we realised that the best structure to do our road trip would be 1) breakfast 2) walking/visiting 3) driving 4) search for bed 5) relax. After our (English) breakfast in Kendal we walked up the hill to visit Kendal castle. The weather was great, the castle was in ruins but still pretty cool to walk around in all by ourselves. Next we continued for a walk in typical Lake District style, along the meadows with sheep and their lambs. The walk we did was recommended to us by a YHA employee - who had to call his dad for advice first because he apparently never had a question before about where guests could do a nature walk in Kendal- . On top of ‘Scot Scar’ we were satisfied with the view and decided to move on to our first Scottish destination: Edinburgh.
On our way to Edinburgh we stopped in a little town called Biggar. Not only does the town have a funny name but it also is proud to have won the ‘Toilet of the year 2010’ award for its public toilets. We used them and yes, they are pretty good.
Driving into Edinburgh we realised that our big UK map did not really work anymore once we were in the city centre. After a couple of more “you can’t go left here!”‘s we managed to find a secured parking and a new hostel (with -again- bunk beds!).
Day 3: Edinburgh
The Belushi’s bar (+ hostel) was quite cool, good to have a drink and watch Inter win against Barça in the semi final but it wasn’t the Mexican hotel + pool + sandy beach we were supposed to be in. The next day we decided to upgrade to a hostel that had a double bed and were fortunate enough to get a nice luxurious room with kitchen and bathroom all for ourselves. We moved our stuff and got to the meeting point in front of a Starbucks to start the ‘Free tour’ from Sandeman. This is an organisation that organises all kinds of tours through cities for ‘all budgets’. Seemed interesting (as we had no historic information ourselves) so we signed in for a really enjoyable tour through historic Edinburgh. In an ‘infotaining’ way we learned about Scottish history, Bobby the dog and the ‘Stone of destiny’ through our Canadian guide, Kate, who would rather be Scottish. Edinburgh is a nice city of which many nice stories can be told, definitely worth a visit.
To continue our roadtrip it was imperative for us to buy a CD as we needed a good soundtrack to go with our travels. Finally we went for de soundtrack of ‘500 days of Summer’ (good film, ok music) and Tchaïkovski’s ‘Swane Lake’ (it only cost €1).
Day 4: Edinburgh – Dundee
The next stop in our tour was supposed to be Perth, as I read it was called ‘the fair city’ but as we drove to it we were not as impressed as we hoped we would be and decided on the spot to continue driving towards Dundee. There we managed to quickly find another very nice double bed room. Dundee is a town next to the sea and there we realised that Scotland is not Mexico. As we only packed clothes for tropic heath we were wearing shorts and t-shirts to face the cold northern breeze that was going through the city. We decided to suit up and went on a shopping spree buying pants, sweaters and brand new (fake leather) jackets. A nice steak and chocolaty ice cream in an American-styled restaurant finished a good day.
Day 5: Dundee – Inverurie
Dundee is not really touristy although they do try to do their best. We spent an hour in their MacMannus museum (a museum about everything) and then went for a swim in their fully equipped swimming pool. Unfortunately, the waves and water slides were not in operation at the time. Swallowing away the disappointment with fish and chips we decided on our next stop: Aberdeen.
Getting closer to Aberdeen we realised this was again a larger city, we entered the heavy traffic and then (again) on the spot decided to drive on. We have had enough of city walks, it was time to go into the beautiful countryside of Scotland. And that’s how we found Inverurie. Louise spotted the little town on our map and we went for it. It was already getting around 18h so we knew the tourist information centre would be closed and we still needed to find a place to stay for the night. The first two B&B’s we found on our way were full and closer to the centre we did not find any. It started to drizzle a little bit as the sun started to go down. In a pub that also rented rooms we were offered a bed at €80 by a very dodgy bar tender, not quite within our budget of €50. We went back outside and Louise started to wonder if we ever were going to find a room in this town. Walking up the high street we came across a fancy historic hotel were the local Rotary club meets. We decided to go inside and soon realised that this would probably be out of our league too. When the friendly lady at the reception asked us what kind of room we were looking for I jokingly said “the cheapest room you have”, hoping that there would be something that was not on the published pricelist. ‘Well’, she said, ‘I can give you the €75 room at a reduced rate of €55’. Lady Fortune was on our side that evening. We gladly accepted and after dinner in the hotel restaurant we finished the day by watching the film ‘Hackers’ in our fully equipped luxurious room.
Day 6: Inverurie
The tourist information office in Inverurie is the best we have encountered in our entire Scotland trip. A very friendly American young woman not only showed us to the local options but provided us with information covering all of Scotland. The equally friendly hotel staff offered us an additional night at the same rate so we were set to do our first long walk in the Scottish nature. We drove to nearby Bennachi centre to do the local forest/mountain walks. After five hours of walking we went through the forest, to the top of the hill, into eternal snow and back, to finish off with a quick visit to the ‘Maidenstone’ one of the many ancient stones in the Scottish fields. Afterwards, the local Indian restaurant was too busy to accept guests without reservation so we ended up for a final meal at the hotel. Inverurie has been good.
Day 7: Inverurie – Drumnadrochit
A new day, a new destination. We went up to visit the Loch Ness to find out the truth about that monster that was supposed to live there. On our way we first visited the medieval ‘Tolquhon castle‘, a true hidden gem in the green area near Inverurie. Almost all the walls and floors are still intact so we could really get the impression of what it was like living there. We were again all by ourselves in the castle as we swept through it and found the ‘hidden chamber’ at the end. Our next stop was the whisky distillery of Glendronach. You can’t visit Scotland without tasting its finest single malt whisky so we went for it. After a very informative and enjoyable tour through the distillery we tasted the spirit neither of us actually liked to start with. The inspiration of having seen the brewing process made me appreciate the drink, Louise (equally inspired) couldn’t hide how disgusting she found the taste but managed not to spit it out. Nonetheless, we both enjoyed the visit.
Once we approached the Loch Ness we were amazed by its size. It really isn’t a matter of just having a close look over the water to spot the monster as the lake is many miles long. As we stopped in Drumnadrochit we easily found a B&B of which the lady apologized for not serving a cooked breakfast. I was personally happy to for once not have to eat bacon, eggs and sausages for breakfast. It’s a nice concept but if you do it every day for a week, you really get tired of it.
Day 8: Drumnadrochit – Fort William
We were not really impressed by the very fake ‘Nessie the monster’ information centres so we avoided them and went for a little forest walk instead. We didn’t spend much more time there and went on to our next stop: Fort William. Now we were really driving through ‘the Highlands’. Near a lot of ‘Bens’ (mountains) and ‘Glens’ (valleys) we found a good affordable B&B with a view in the very un- touristy Fort William. For once we decided to chill and stayed in to read a bit, it’s always good to have a break when you’re travelling at the pace like we were.
Day 9: Fort William- Balloch
In the real highlands we didn’t have the ambition to go to the top of the mountains. In stead we walked along the mountains into the valley where we could enjoy the view of waterfalls and impressive flows of water streaming down the mountain. Visiting Glen Nevis, we started our walk passing a sign ‘Danger, fatal accidents have happened’, not really a relaxing thought to start of with. Concentrated we walked the first couple of miles along the mountain and soon we were impressed by the magnificent views around. Going down to the valley we arrived in the scenery typically used for films like ‘Braveheart’. At our destination we crossed the (very narrow and calm) river using a rope bridge, and then crossed back because we didn’t really need to go there. Good fun.
Our next stop was Loch Lomond. I only new this loch from the song we used to sing when drinking as a student ‘I’ll take the high way and you take the low … bonny bonny banks of Loch Lomond’. The most impressive bit of our stay in Balloch was our hostel, based in a pretty castle isolated from the city centre (but still with bunk beds). We went to the local Chinese and watched the film ‘Tristan & Isolde’, which went well with the atmosphere of our journey.
Day 10: Balloch – Euxton
Enjoying yet another walk between the trees with a view over the lake we reached a certain level of satisfaction. After this many beautiful views and walks we were no longer impressed. This feeling was expressed by Louise as she said the famous words: ‘I’m tired of this walking, what’s the fun in just passing by all these trees and all that water?’. I read this as a sign to get out of there as quickly as possible. At one point we were tired of city walks, now we were tired of nature walks. Our Scotland holiday had successfully reached its objectives. We decided to drive back down to England were we could do a final relaxed holiday stroll.
Our goal was Lancaster, for no particular reason, but on our way we came across a Centre Parks complex and we thought it might be cool to spend our last two days with a fun pool and some random entertainment. However, we were stopped and turned around by security even before we reached the reception. Apparently Centre Parks is a little bit more exclusive than we thought and people can’t just visit for a couple of days to go to the pool without reservation. So we continued to Lancaster. Driving into the town it looked perfect. Not too big, plenty of bars and restaurants and even a castle. Helas, two hours later we were already driving away as there were no B&B or hostels in the entire city that still had a room available. Apparently there was an issue with their nuclear power plant and hundreds of technicians were staying over. The guy in the information centre seemed very worried that we wouldn’t be able to find a room anywhere before dark. But we didn’t worry that much, as seasoned travellers now we had managed to sort things out every day and we were sure to do that again. We drove further down, through a little town called Leyland where they only had a four star hotel. Time was going even faster now and it was already after 18h. We decided to go on one step further al the way to Southport which was another fourty-five minutes away. Just as we drove deeper into the unknown we saw a little sign ‘B&B farmhouse’. A lovely retired lady was doing her gardening and showed us to the room. Absolutely brilliant and pretty close to our budget. We stayed there for the night and had a very good dinner in the nearby pub. It was probably the best meat-pie I ever tasted in the UK.
Day 11: Euxton – Southporth – Melksham
After discussing local politics with the friendly B&B owners we went further down in the UK. First we stopped in Southport which seemed to us like it has had its best days although we could still see its old glory. There we finally sent an email to our parents to give them an update to tell them we were still alive after 10 days touring through Scotland. After a walk on the second largest iron peer in England we continued our journey southwards in the direction of Melksham. It was a long difficult drive with rain pouring down, us taking a ‘short-cut’ through Wolverhampton instead of following the M6 and heavy traffic. We wanted to go to Melksham as I have an uncle and aunt living there and we wanted to surprise them. The only issue was that I didn’t have their address but faintly remembered how their house looked like. After driving around for over an hour in Melksham and knocking on doors of similar houses we finally called Belgium on a payphone for an address. One or two wrong turns later we arrived just after 19h at my family’s house who were absolutely surprised to see two strangers with a striking resemblance of their nephew and respective fiancée. We were exhausted and hungry and still hadn’t started looking for a bed. But they welcomed us like family or even better. One freshly squeezed orange juice, tea, spaghetti, wine and apple-pie with ice-cream later they arranged a bed and all was well. As we started to watch the film ‘The Graduate’ Louise soon fell asleep and so did I not much later. We made it.
Day 12: Melksham – London
Our last day of holiday started with a last English breakfast and then we were off to our last stop before returning to London: Stonehenge. For centuries historians have studied this man made circle of stones but in the end they don’t have a clue why it was built. We did the audio tour and listened to the legends and although I didn’t find it that impressive, we were happy to have had our last portion of history on our tour.
From there on it was straight to London to return the car. Again, it was a semi - nightmare to drive to Kings Cross but without screaming this time. We were in full control of the car and we knew where we needed to go. We returned the vehicle with a full tank and without a scratch and took the tube back to Ealing to have a final beer. A solid ending to a solid road trip.
