Northern England, Scotland, and The Edinburgh Tattoo: 12th August 2001 to 17th August 2001


For this holiday I joined my sister Angela. I call it the 'Scotland' holiday but in actual fact we spent very little time in Scotland. I refer to it as this because the whole focus of this package tour was to see the Edinburgh Tattoo, a military parade/show held at Edinburgh castle.
My memory is terrible, which is why I keep journals of my holidays, and unfortunately this journal only consists of two days worth of entries. Hence I can't really remember much. But I did take a number of photo's, so I'll just show a few of those instead.


12th August 2001

Woke up at 1:30. Far too early. Went to sleep again.

Woke up at 5:00. Or rather, I was forcible awoken by Radio 1, the bastards. Accepting my fate, I got up.

After about a gazillion checks of the house, the 27,012,768th of which revealed I'd nearly forgotten my camera, I went round Mum & Dad's, or more relevantly Angela's. (Note to self: Look up the word 'relevantly' and see if it exists.)

The Coach

By 6:30 we were at the bus station and, contrary to all known logic in the universe, headed south for Edinburgh.

Actually Newcastle first. By way of Thurrock and South Mimms. And Newark.

Newark was at least in the right direction. It was here that we stopped for food. If only somebody had told Newark we were coming. It was dead. There was some sort of market, or race, or frankly it could have been bingo going on, we honestly couldn't tell. The only place that seemed to sell food, and indeed the only place that seemed to be open, was a pub / restaurant. Unfortunately, it seemed the entire coach party found it before us and had ordered first, leaving us waiting 45 minutes for a toasted sandwich. Which, by my definition, wasn't a toasted sandwich at all. The cheese and ham filling was cold. So in fact it was a sandwich, but with toast instead of bread. 45 minutes for toast!

Anyway, enough ranting. We made it back to the coach with plenty of time to spare. Well, I thought 2 minutes was plenty. Angela disagreed, especially when I took time out to buy a Rob Grant book from about the only other open store on the way.

It was this book that kept my mind off the rest of the journey. 160 pages so far.

So, here we are in Newcastle. The rooms are a touch on the small side, but adequate. We have channels 1 - 4, Sky One, and Cartoon Network, which'll do me.

Phoned mum, before watching the Simpsons and Futurama and going down for tea.

We were sat with one person a generation above us, and 3 people a generation above that, but they were nice people and we got on OK.

I was tempted by the Lasagne, but the sight of the roast beef tempted me, and I'm glad it did. It was steak-like in its succulence and tenderness. Erm.. I mean, It were alright and stuff.

Everyone had finished desert before my apple crumble had arrived. I think it bodes well that I've been kept waiting for both meals today.

After coffee, which our elderly companions convinced themselves was never coming, we went back to our rooms. I had to ring home again after I discovered I still had dad's garage keys in my pocket, but it was OK, he had a set.

I sit here writing loads of pages about a day where nothing much has happened, and I realize how much I've missed writing my journals. It's fun in some weird way.

That's enough for today though. More tomorrow.



13th August 2001

Got woken up by a very annoying alarm clock; Angela. And she was set far too early. I'd have reached over and hit her snooze button, but when she told me the time I realized I'd set my alarm to the wrong time and had to force myself up.

We went down for brekkie at 7:30, a buffet selection of cereal, toast and various other fried things. Shortly after we headed to High Force, the highest waterfall in England.

It took quite a while to get there, during which time I read some more of my book.

Once there we paid our 50p admission fee and started walking down the path to get to the 'fall itself.
There were some nice views around the walk, and some nice woody countryside.

I got a bit worried that our ultimate destination wasn't all that impressive when we saw quite a few of our coach party heading back whilst we were still going there, but I needn't have worried because it was actually quite good.
Of all the waterfalls I've seen this rates #3. Admittedly two of them were Niagra, and #4 was the trickle at Swallow Falls, but who's counting.

After a few photos, and a bit of jiggling around of the digital photos cause I ran out of memory space, we headed back up the path.

There was a little gift shop at the top, which was far too small for the sudden influx of people, in which I got a postcard to send home.

Outside the shop was a large cottage, which had a sign saying 'Beware Of The Dog'. The dog in question was the largest albino labrador-type thing you'll ever see, but the warning sign was a little unjustified as he (Yes, it was largely obvious it was a he) was quite happy to pose for photos through the gate.

Hexham

Then we were to head to Hexham along side Hadrian's Wall.
We stopped off in a little village called Brampton, which must have been shocked to see 3 coach loads of people all turn up at once, and whose facilities were largely inadequate to cope with the sudden amount of stomachs that needed filling.
We managed to get seats in a cafe, and the owner had to turn loads of others away because they were full.

We had a look round. Not much to see really, aside from a statue of Hadrian proudly standing indicating that his wall was nearby.

Bollocks was it.

We got back on the coach and suddenly we were in Hexham. No sign of the wall. Apparently we drove along side it. But along side in the way that it was invisible over the horizon of fields.

Still, Hexham; We had an hour and a half here so we went exploring. We covered pretty much the whole town, went in a few charity shops looking for books, in another bookshop, a pet store, and Woolworth's. I came away with a Garfield book, a things-people-didn't-mean-to-say book, and an 'Unbelievable' CD.
So that was the first half hour.

Mrs Miggins

The next hour was fairly dull, except whilst looking for the toilets Angela came across a Blackadder stylee shop called 'Mrs Miggins Coffee Shop'!

The coach trip home was OK. I'd finished my book on the way to Brampton so I was listening to music and taking in more of the views.

At tea we sat with the same people. A woman and her mum, and an elderly bloke who looks a lot like Spike Milligan before he went...what's the opposite of really funny?...Oh yeah, Spike Milligan.

I'm glad we've got a lie in tomorrow. For some reason I'm really tired today.


14th August 2001



15th August 2001



16th August 2001



17th August 2001