FLASHBACK #56: Bonny Scotland (Part 3)

Day 6 – Friday 30th July
Edinburgh (20ºC)

By 10.30am, we had eaten a hearty breakfast and were standing on Waverley Bridge, waiting to board the City Sightseeing Bus; we had bought tickets that were valid for 24 hours and you could hop on and off the bus as many times as you wanted.

We went on the tour, hopping off at the end of Royal Mile, just beneath the towering Mound. We walked in the direction of the Castle and, upon arrival, were greeted with four queues, each stretching more than 50 metres long. We jumped the queue, however, because I was a 'Friend of Historic Scotland'.

We entered the castle via the huge gates where staff stood, clad in traditional Scottish regalia. We collected an audio guide for ourselves and worked our way through the castle and its mass of history.

The views of Edinburgh were great from the upper levels of the Castle. Unfortunately, we learned that the One O'Clock Bang – the daily firing of cannonballs from the Castle - had been cancelled.

We grabbed some soup from the restaurant and left the Castle about 3pm. The weather was great, our first decent bit of sunshine in Scotland!

We walked along the Royal Mile, then waited for another City bus to continue our tour. On Prince's Street, Bree grabbed a coffee from Starbucks and, after a bit of souvenir shopping, we headed down to the park.

We relaxed for over an hour, watching kids play and couples walking by hand-in-hand! Aaw! The place had a buzz to it and wasn't mobbed like London's Royal Parks tend to be.

By 6pm, we were in the pool at the hotel. In fact, we were 'pool-running', a new fad that has caught on in Finland. After a number of times in the sauna and steam room, we showered off and returned to our room to write out postcards while downing Bacardi with Iron Bru, a Scottish soft drink.

We found an Italian restaurant not far from the hotel and I ordered Spaghetti Bolognese while Bree ordered pizza. We washed this down with a bottle of dry Rosé. Yummy! We went to a number of bars, but I wasn't overly impressed with the nightlife. Maybe I just wasn't in the mood, the tiredness finally catching up with me. We were in bed by 1.30am.

Day 7 – Saturday 31st July
Edinburgh – Manchester (23ºC)

For some reason, breakfast was not included in the cost of our overnight stay, but when you've consumed as many cooked breakfasts as we had in the last week, you wouldn't have been bothered to give breakfast a miss!

Instead, we popped into a nearby Costa Cafe and grabbed a sandwich and coffee while we wrote the remainder of our postcards. When we returned to the hotel, we checked out and requested that the Concierge collect our vehicle from the parking house.

We left the hotel at mid-day and headed towards the Port of Leith, where we planned to visit the Royal Yacht Britannia.

For over forty years, Britannia served the Royal Family, travelling over one million miles between 1953 and 1997. During that time, Britannia carried The Queen and the Royal Family on 968 official voyages, from the remotest regions of the South Seas to the deepest divides of Antarctica.

It was very interesting to learn about the yacht itself, it's various voyages, it's administration etc. One thing that amazed me was the modesty of the Queen and Duke's bedrooms, complete with single beds!

There was an exhibiton followed by the tour onboard with a headset providing all the information. Onboard was a shop where Bree bought Royal fudge costing £2.30 per 100gms! He liked it, but it proved too rich for his stomach as he late complained of stomach ache.

Once the tour ended, we visited the gift shop – I bought the Royal Yacht Visitors Guide and Bree took a shine to the Scottish kilts on sale, parading in one for a laugh! God, I can't take him anywhere!

We left, bound for Manchester. It took ages for us to get out of Edinburgh due to road works. We took the Ring Road, then the A702 to Abbington. From there, we joined the M74.

Before long, we were passing Carlisle, a sure sign that much progress had been made already. I sped all the way to the M6 and we passed the hills of the lake district one last time – the region reminded me of a classic poem I had been taught when I was at school, written by Auden. I have reproduced the poem below.

NIGHT MAIL by W. H. Auden (1936)

This is the Night Mail crossing the Border,
Bringing the cheque and the postal order,
Letters for the rich, letters for the poor,
The shop at the corner, the girl next door,
Pulling up Beattock, a steady climb:
The gradient’s against her, but she’s on time,
Past cotton-grass and moorland boulder,
Shovelling white steam over her shoulder,
Snorting noisily, she passes
Silent miles of wind-bent grasses.
Birds turn their heads as she approaches,
Stare from the bushes at her blank-faced coaches.
Sheep-dogs cannot turn her course;
They slumber on with paws across.
In the farm she passes no one wakes,
But a jug in the bedroom gently shakes.
Letters of thanks, letters from banks,
Letters of joy from girl and boy,
Receipted bills and invitations
To inspect new stock or to visit relations,
And applications for situations,
And timid lovers’ declarations,
And gossip, gossip from all the nations,
News circumstantial, news financial,
Letters with holiday snaps to enlarge in,
Letters for uncles, cousins, and aunts,
Letters to Scotland from the South of France,
Letters of condolence to Highlands and Lowlands,
Notes from overseas to the Hebrides;
Written on paper of every hue,
The pink, the violet, the white and the blue,
The chatty, the catty, the boring, adoring
The cold and official and the heart's outpouring,
Clever, stupid, short and long,
The typed and the printed and the spelt all wrong.

Kendal came and went as I cruised by at 100 miles per hour. By 7pm, we were in out hotel, The Princess on Portland, in the centre of Manchester. The great thing was that we had managed to get on-street parking nearby which was free after 6pm on Saturdays and all day on Sunday!

The hotel was very nice, our room converted somehow into a huge room with two double beds, a bathtub with a separate shower area.

We went straight for a buffet Chinese meal which I knew existed nearby which was lovely. Over a bottle of wine, I got a bit tipsy and made a face crushing gesture while my mouth was still full of wine – the wine spluttered in Bree's direction. So embarrassing.

We headed back to the hotel where I showered and shave, in preparation for our night out. We drank what was left of the Bacardi and checked out the local bars. By 1am, we had visited, drank and danced in four bars and were ready for our beds after what had been another long day.

Day 8 – Sunday 1st August
Manchester – Helsinki (26ºC)

When I woke up at 9:30am, the sun was shining outside the window. I couldn't believe that this was the last day and that we were heading back to Helsinki later in the day!

We went for breakfast and I met my friend, Sweetpea, at Manchester Piccadilly train station at 10:30am. We walked back to the hotel where Bree was waiting for us.

We had a cup of tea in the hotel room while we caught up – Sweetpea had met Bree one year earlier when she came to visit us in Helsinki with our mutual friend Jo, a year earlier.

We checked out of the hotel, loaded the car, then headed to Urbis on foot. Sweetpea had heard about this exhibition that celebrated Urban Life. As we walked through the city, it was surprisingly hot and especially busy for a Sunday. We found Urbis eventually. It was very educational and insightful, explaining the mass expansion of urban life and the formation of megacities.

Afterwards, we went for lunch in an outdoor pub. Lovely! It took a while to get served, but we soaked up the suns rays in the outdoor garden while we waited.

As we walked back to where we had left the car, we saw a store which Bree recognised from the BBC comedy, Absolutely Fabulous. You guessed it – Harvey Nichols! We went into Harvey Nichols and the two of us, with Sweetpea in tow, lauched into Patsy and Eddie mode. "What shall we buy, sweetie?!" I said. Bree replied: "Where's the art, darling?!" We giggled like girls!

The only thing Bree bought from Harvey Nichols' was a jar of jam and a jar of lemon curd, which I recommended that Bree try because you can't buy lemon curd in Finland. We left the store, located the car, then said our goodbyes to Sweetpea at the railway station. It was great to see her again. We set off in the direction of Manchester for our 5.30pm flight.

SUMMARY

Visiting Scotland with Bree was great. I hadn't realised just how diverse Scotland was until this trip. Bree summed it up by saying that "Scotland is a tremendous place, very much like Norway, but instead of a church in every town there's a pub!" I don't know if that's a good thing, but that statement kind of implies that Scotland has a drinking problem!

Anyway, we had a good laugh and after all that driving and seeing wonderful places, it wasn't long before the next trip was being planned! So, keep your eyes open until next time! And in the meantime, get out there and explore the world!