Men of Worth Tour Day 4

We departed for Lybster the next day. There was some beautiful scenery on the ride as we rode up the West coast and around the northern tip of Scotland.


We stopped at the Cave of Smoo for sightseeing and lunch. The cave was used by many different people through Scotland's history; including the Picts, Celts, and Vikings. (http://www.smoocave.org/) The first picture is obviously a sign. The second is the view from the top of the cave out to the ocean. The Cave used to go all the way to the ocean. The third is from the cave looking out and the last is the waterfall that is all the way at the back of the cave.



Every afternoon there was a serving of whiskey and snacks as we rode around. James did the pouring and everyone passed around the tasty treats they had picked up while shopping. Just another benefit of touring with the Men of Worth.


We stayed at the Portland Arms hotel in Lybster. It is a nice looking place and the drink prices were the best we had all trip. I didn't dig the beds though. We sleep on a queen size at home and Carol and I had to snuggle up on a double. It was a rough couple of nights trying to adjust. I found that several shots of Famous Grouse Scotch, allowed me to sleep just fine. Actually writing about it now makes me wish I had brought a bottle of Grouse back with me.

Dinner was fun, as it usually is. We drank alot of wine at our table.

The boys played after dinner and another night on tour was complete.

The Men of Worth Tour Days 1-3

We met up with the tour group on Thursday June 17. We connected with Carol's Grandpa Smith and her cousin Chris Day who were on the tour with us. It was early so we went into Glasgow to look around some more and kill some time. We rode the "Hop on, hop off" tour bus around the city and saw a lot of things that Carol and I had not seen on our pedestrian tour. The pics are Grandpa and Chris on the bus, the fountain at The People's Palace, and our afternoon pint stop at the Grant Arms pub.
We met with the rest of the tour group that evening and had a Welcome Drink and dinner. Carol, Chris, and I were the youngest people on the tour. The tour is usually driven by a group of people that are interested in Celtic and folk music. This makes it fairly easy to start up conversations with people. We were very fortunate to have around 10 musicians with the tour other than Donnie and James of the band. There was going to be several nights of music on the trip.

The next day we went way up the east coast of Scotland. We made a lunch stop in Pitlochry where we had a pint and Carol got a Clan Anderson tartan cap.

From here we continued to Ullapool on Loch Broom. (http://tinyurl.com/265dojn) We stayed at the Royal Hotel which was very nicely appointed. The scenery along the way was spectacular. We saw many lochs, glens, and fields.


The next day we went to the Inverewe Gardens, just a short trip from Ullapool, and walked around.
We spent the rest of the day walking around Ullapool. There was live music both nights we were there including a guest bagpiper named Allistair Curry and the Ullapool Celtic Choir.

We stayed up late both nights and hung out in the bar with some of the other tour members and Jomes and Donnie from the band. The sun didn't set until around 10:30p the whole time we were there. Makes for a nice view at night.

Days Have Passed...

It has been over a week since we last updated this. We have had very limited access to Internet in the places we have been. Just after the last post we resumed our tour of Edinburgh. We walked down the Royal Mile to the parliament building and the Palace at Holyrood House. Here is wiki link to info about Old Town which is where we spent our time. (http://www.edinburgholdtown.org.uk/edinburgh-old-town/)

After that we walked the volcanic ridge left from the formation of the island however many million years ago. The top of it is called Arthur's Seat and we got some spectacular pictures from there.




We used our guidebook to take a walking tour of the city after the climb and we ended up at Edinburgh Castle after a refreshment stop in the Grassmarket area. There is a memorial in the Grassmarket commemorating the hundreds that were hung during the Protestant Reformation. We stood on the site where the gallows used to be. We toured the castle in about 90 minutes which is far from a complete tour, but it was near closing. It was worth the time spent to hike to Arthur's Seat so we didn't mind the limited time in the castle.

We pursued dinner after that and had a couple of pints and food on the second floor of a very nice Irish pub. After dinner we took another underground tour of the storage tunnels under South Bridge. This tour was led by a PhD in history, named Ian and was very thorough and interesting. After the underground we went to see the graveyard at Greyfriar's Kirk. We stood in and heard the history of Scotland's largest plague graveyard. Hundred's of thousands were buried there during the years that the bubonic plague swept through Britain. The bodies were often sledge-hammered flat and rolled up or stacked very deep and burned to save space. We also saw the Covenanters' Prison, located in in the churchyard, which is the first recorded concentration camp. Catholic dissenters were held here by the Presbytarian government during the Reformation. The people imprisoned here were brutally tortured and killed. The first photo is just a shot of a row of tombs and graves. The next is our guide, Ian, at the gates of the Covenanters' Prison, the third is the tomb of the MacKenzie family. Sir George MacKenzie was the overseer of the Prison and was responsible for the deaths of over 18,000 people there. The tomb is said to be a hotspot for poltergeist activity.

The three pics that follow are taken of the inside of the MacKenzie tomb. The third picture has little blobs of light that the first two do not. According to our guide, those little blobs are the manifestations of the MacKenzie poltergeist. Several people on our tour took similar pictures and had those little blobs show up as well.



In the graveyard there is also a remnant of the Flodden Wall. This is the wall that used to surround Edinburgh. It would have marked the border of the city in the 17th Century. After the tour we headed back to the train station and back to Glasgow. We didn't get home until after midnight. It was a long, but very rewarding day.

Scotland Day 3. First trip to Edinburgh.

The public transportation here is amazing. In the span of 90 minutes we went from our hotel room in Glasgow to standing on top of the train station in Edinburgh with an incredible view of Old Town.

From there we hopped on another bus and made our way to Rosslyn Chapel. It is in the process of being restored so the outside pictures were not great. Here is one with the scaffolding around it.
Rosslyn is magnificent. Nearly every inch is covered in carvings and Bas-Reliefs. There are so many thematic elements that it is hard to separate them all. There are signposts all around to give you information, but it is really just guesswork for the most part. Pictures are not allowed inside the chapel, so we had to settle for pictures of the of the signs around the outside.

We ate lunch afterward at The Grail restaurant and then had a pint at the place across the street since it was closer to the bus stop. We rode back to Edinburgh and got off a little before our stop. We walked through the Princes Street Garden. It's a very nice park and there were a lot of people there for a Tuesday afternoon. There were humongous seagulls there; so big that could have been served for Thanksgiving.

We walked a good bit uphill to get to the Royal Mile.

The Royal Mile is the mile long street that is a shopping and tourist areas these days. In the 17th century the Royal Mile was Edinburgh. For a long time the city was one mile by one-quarter mile with a wall around it. That was it. The castle was at one end and the Holyrood Palace was at the other end. As we walked we ran into a street magician performing and commanding a growing crowd of people. He was funny and got the crowd involved. He juggled knives, swallowed a sword, and the had a guy stand on him while he laid on a bed of nails and ate fire. Does that qualify as a triple threat?

I had picked up a flier earlier detailing a tour of the underground chambers under South Bridge. We found the stand for the tour and hung about for a few minutes until our guide showed up. The tour was mostly centered around ghosts, but the guide did give us some details on the history of the place and the thousands of people that lived in the darkness and squalor under South Bridge in the 17th century. The woman in the cloak is our guide. The picture of the ring of stones was set up by a Wiccan priest who stayed the night in the room by himself a decade ago. He swears that some malevolent force attacked him and that he left the stone circle in place to keep it contained. While I don't have any belief in that sort of thing, the place is very creepy.

Afterward we headed back to the train station to get to Glasgow.

The train ride between the cities is very nice. It passes through some very scenic areas. The Queen Street Station is were we got out and we stopped at a bar on the corner called Europa. The were offering a pizza and pitcher special during the World Cup game that sounded too good to pass up. They gave us a huge pitcher. It was supposed to hold 4 pints, but I think we squeezed right around 5 out of it. Of course, Carol drank most of it. ;)