Cassie and Jimmy met us at Newcastle station in their red car, packed to the rim! So after a clean out and a reshuffle Lindsay and I hopped in and we drove full speed ahead towards Scotland! The country whose national animal is the Unicorn! Proof of the countries epic awesomeness!
As we crossed the border (at 9.30pm) Jimmy honked the horn in glee! More in celebration about leaving England than entering Scotland? (am I right Jimmy?)
After a few false starts we found a camp ground with one site left because the people who booked it had not rocked up. We were so happy. We had entertained the thought of sleeping in the car and realised that would have sucked pretty hard. We climbed out of the car and set up the tents. We had had a dinner of home made lamingtons and lemon cake in the car so all hoped into our beds for a nice long sleep. Scotland gave us a nice deceptively pleasant first night, providing us with a false sense of security and dryness.
The next morning we packed up
and drove further north towards Edinburgh, it was very different to the last time we had been there!
The Edinburgh festival was on! There were people everywhere. There were people handing out leaflets about shows, people dressed up crazily, street performers, people singing and people doing handstands from a ladder…
We considered seeing a show at this place
but needed to keep going so we could find a camp site before it got dark.
We drove over the Forth Bridge, with Bruce leading the way
Cassie and Jimmy developed a system of feeding Jimmy while he drove
We found a nice big and empty campsite first try in a place called Alvie. There was a sign outside the camp ground which said “Alvie Meat” on first glance Cassie and I read “Alive Meat” and freaked out just a little bit.
We set up the tents
I had a wander around
the site was really nicely set out, with loads of privacy. But about a 15 minute walk from the bathrooms…which meant we had to go alfresco. But that was cool, Cassie and I are ex-girl guides and Lindsay & Jimmy are boys. So no problems there!
For dinner Jimmy cooked sausages and drowned in smoke on the cheap, rubbish, single use Tesco BBQ
when the sausages were half cooked it started to sprinkle. We sat in the rain pretending there was no problem. Then the rain got heavier and heavier. It started to poor. So Cassie and I moved into her tent leaving the boys to deal with cooking the food in the rain.
After eating our dinner we sat around in the tent waiting for the rain to die down enough for Lindsay and I to go to our own tent. But the rain just got heavier and heavier. Then the floor started to leak. The tent felt like it was floating…because it sort of was. We were all crouching around the centre pole trying not to get wet when the rain finally stopped. We all climbed out of the tent and realised we had set up camp in a ditch, so all the water was collecting under our tents. So we moved the tents to somewhere less sloppy and tried to get some sleep.
I woke up the next morning, dry and cold…but most importantly dry. I climbed into the car to wait for everyone else to wake up. Cassie then climbed out of her tent wearing a skirt of jumpers. Poor Cassie and Jimmy had gotten completely soaked and all their bags of clothes were full of water because they had been in a puddle inside the tent. We packed up the dripping went tents and had a breakfast of cereal and bread in the middle of the camping ground.
We drove that day to Loch Ness to take a quick look
There were no monsters to be seen.
We kept driving north and happened upon this castle.
Cassie made up a story about the Dunrobin family and the money they made in the car industry! It took us only a few seconds to realise she was making it all up.
We followed a trail through the woods and found these old stones covered in Moss.
We even found a weird Australian fairy
It was time for Cassie to take a bath…but she refused.
A few fours later we reached the end of the world…actually the very tip of mainland England, a place called John O’Groats.
We set up the tents and let them dry in the beautiful warm sunshine.
from our camp site we could see the Orkney Isles
For dinner we had pasta
cooked over our new single flame gas stove thingy!
We watched the sun set into the Sea
Then quickly hopped into our tents because the midgies (sandflies) were out and it was starting to rain again.