Brighton

From the secret nuclear bunker we headed to Brighton. None of us had been there before, and after my Blackpool experience, I wasn't sure what to expect. In the end I was pleasantly surprised. It was what I had expected Blackpool to be, and yet wasn't. There were the usual tourist shops along the beachfront, and the pier was exactly as I imagined - full of games, nasty food and the fun fair.




We had parked quite a way from the pier, so we walked up along the top road (I'm not sure what it's called - there's a road that goes along the beach where we parked, and another one above it, which we walked along). We walked along to the Royal Pavillion, not realising that it cost so much to go in there, and not really sure what was in there. In the end we walked back to the beach for some fish and chips for lunch, before walking along the pier. Can't say I'm a massive fan of those piers - they're old and wooden and a lot of the planks wobble. I'm sure they're fine, but they don't inspire confidence, especially with the remains of another pier just beside it! However, if it burns down, it's not my fault...

We had been planning on visiting Hastings and Battle when we left Brighton, and whilst we did go there, we were too late to see where the Battle of Hastings had taken place, so we headed home. It's another recurring theme - being just a little bit too late for things!

Secret nuclear bunker!

Not far from where I live is a 'secret' nuclear bunker, the Kelvedon Hatch. Until the end of 1994, it was a working bunker, which would have housed the prime minister if need be, as it was the closest one to London. It'd deactivated now, but apparently could go straight back into service if necessary.

I say 'secret', as although once it was indeed secret, now it's a tourist attraction. Doesn't change the fact that you're driving along the road, and suddenly you see a sign that says 'Secret Nuclear Bunnker, turn right'. Awesome!

We walked in there, and it was like a scene from 'Z for Zachariah', if they'd actually had a bunker. It was a little freaky; there was just the three of us, and a siren going off in a deserted corridor. Eventually other people showed up, which changed the atmosphere. By the time we were most of the way through we were laughing about most of it - whoever runs it rivals Mel Gibson in 'Conspiracy Theory' for their level of paranoia!

Yet another reason why I should write updates more quickly

I left out a show that we saw at the Edinburgh Comedy Festival - they were a group called Dead Cat Bounce. It had nothing to do with dead cats (sadly), but it was just as entertaining. We saw their late show, which was a 1930s-ish radio show. It was 3 guys doing voices, songs and playing instruments, and one guy doing sound effects. It was fantastic!

Imperial War Museum and Hampstead Heath

The next weekend the same three of us went into the city to go to the Imperial War Museum. Mil's dad had been bugging her about it, so we figured it must be worth the trip. It was.

The ground floor of the museum takes you through World Wars one and two, with lots of displays and information. It would have been much better had their been room to move - one of the most convoluted and cramped museums I've ever been to. We took our time moving through (like we had a choice), looking at everything from weaponry and uniforms to mission documents and ration packs.

Funniest moment - hearing this stupid American woman going on about how America just HAD to step in and save everyone, because the Allies kept jumping out of their trenches to make attempts to advance their position (trench warfare anyone??).

Moment that angered me the most - having gone through all the details of major battles and who helped out, and how many died and what was gained - and seeing Gallipoli barely mentionedl. It said that Australia and New Zealand took the beach, and that was it. No mention of casualties or the reason we were there in the first place.

Upstairs was the Holocaust Exhibition. It was amazing, but simply too big. We spent a lot of time in there, and I learnt a lot from it, but I think we were all feeling a little suicidal by the time we went out of it, and none of us had read or watched everything. I do recommend going if you ever have the chance though.

Needing some light relief, we headed into the centre of the city for a very late lunch and to decide on our next stop. Originally we'd planned on going to Hampstead Heath, but we hadn't counted on being at the museum for so long. In the end we decided to go there anyway, as there were still quite a few hours of daylight left. We caught the tube out there and wandered towards it. We weren't sure of what we were going to find out there, but Mil mentioned going to Parliament Hill - one of the highest points in London. We wandered around for a few hours, past several lakes and along scenic pathways. We also bush-bashed our way through several parts without tracks - can't take us anywhere! In the end we did find Parliament Hill, and the views, whilst not stunning, did cover a lot of London.

Windsor Castle

A few days after I got home, I went to Windsor Castle with a couple of my other friends from home. We met up at Stratford, then headed over there (more complicated than it sounds - train operators really need to get their crap together). We got off the train at Eton, and walked up to the castle. Having pre-purchased our tickets - which Mil found out about before we went, thankfully - we managed to skip the queue and go straight in.

We had the audio tour - another place where we wandered around listening to what looked like oversized mobile phones. It was very useful though, as there was so much history there.

I didn't know a lot about the history of Windsor Castle, so it was quite interesting. We saw Queen Victoria's dolls' house, where the fire had happened in 1992, the Waterloo room, and how odd the guards look as they turn around whilst marching (knees out and bent like a frog). It was more interesting than I had anticipated! Sadly, despite it being a weekend, Lizzie wasn't home, so I couldn't call in for high tea and thank her for the photo and letter that she sent my grandparents on their recent diamond wedding anniversary. What a shame!

Heading home

The time had come to leave Scotland and start heading home. Our first stop once crossing the border was in Gateshead, near Newcastle. There is a giant sculpture there called the Angel of the North. It's a huge steel angel, with a wingspan the same as a jumbo jet. It's amazing! We had to walk a fair way back to get a photo with all of her wings in it. It was finished in 1998, so it wasn't the oldest landmark we'd seen, but it was certainly one of the biggest.



From Gateshead we headed towards Nottingham. Tamara's brother had lived there years ago, and she wanted to see the area. I was more interested in something else - Robin Hood! We followed the signs to Sherwood Forest, and took a walk through it, which included going to Major Oak. This is the tree where legend has it Robin Hood and his band of Merry Men had their hideout. We didn't get robbed (but neither did we receive any riches!). There are some amazing oak trees in the forest, and I got some great photos.

We then drove through Nottingham itself. Same old, same old. There's a lot of history in the town, but as usual there was nowhere to park, so we didn't hang around. Instead we got back on the motorway and headed home. The road trip was over.

The rest of our time in Scotland

We did one more day trip whilst we were in Scotland. We packed the car with people (Tamara, the couple we were staying with and one of their friends), and hit the road. First stop was Kirkcaldy, which is a pretty little beachside town. I don't think any of us had enough caffeine in our bodies to truly appreciate it! We stopped at the beachfront for a few photos, then headed on our way.

The next stop was St Andrews. We stopped on the high street first for some food and had a little look around. As we were driving out, we saw this old cemetery with what looked like the remains of some kind of castle. In actual fact it's not a castle, but St Rule's Tower, which used to be part of the cathedral there. We stopped again for some photos. I wasn't sure where the rest of the group was, as we'd done a bit of a jump and run thanks to no parking being available, so by the time I wandered in I couldn't see them. I walked up to the left, just outside the cemetery, and discovered a cliff top walk. The scenery was gorgeous - Scotland is so pretty! The others ended up finding me there, and we wandered along the cliff until we actually did come to a castle. It cost a fair bit to go in there, so we didn't. Tamara, Clare and Dwayne decided to walk right down to the beach and have a skimming competition. I stayed up top, and discovered that the spot where I was standing was actually the spot where the first congregation of the Protestant church was formed in Scotland.

Our next stop was, of course, the golf course. There was no way we could go there without visiting! We stopped first on one side of the course and took a few snapshots, before heading over to the clubhouse. I actually got a photo of me standing on the course, but it's on someone else's camera, as my batteries chose that moment to die! Hopefully sooner or later I'll actually get a copy of it...

From St Andrew's we moved on to Dundee. There was no real reason for this, apart from it's a big(ish) Scottish town, we'd heard of it, and we figured we'd have a look. We didn't stay long - same thing, different location!

We then took the scenic tourist route up to Aberdeen. It took us along the coast a lot of the time, and generally it was quite pretty. We stopped along the way at Stonehaven, on another cliff, to take yet more photos. Yes, we are tourists!

Finally we got to Aberdeen, and our first mission was definitely food. It was nearly 5pm, and whilst we'd had something to eat in St Andrew's, that was nearly 7 hours before. We parked, and walked right up the high street until we found a Wetherspoon pub. We're all fans! We had a bite to eat, and then tried to figure out exactly what it was that we wanted to see in Aberdeen. I think we should have done some more research before we left - we had no clue! We ended up going to the Golden Square, which in true UK style, is neither golden nor square. Fantastic! In the end, from this point, we decided to start making our way back to Edinburgh. It was another long day on the road!

A rest, finally!

We'd covered a lot of miles so far on our trip, and as I was the only one who could drive (thanks to stupid UK rules), I was starting to feel a bit tired. Tamara was keen to go and explore a bit more, so she and Clare went into the city. I slouched around, reading my book, and then went to meet them to see Jimeoin.

It's the first time I'd seen him live, and I know it was a preview show, but it wasn't quite as good as I'd expected. I still liked it, but I don't know, I guess I expected more.

More comedy fun

I can't really remember in which order we did things in Scotland, but I think the night we got home from Inverness, we went to see David O'Doherty. He's awesome! He's been in Australia a few times, and I think I'd seen him on TV. It's a tough call, but I think that it was probably the best of the shows that we saw. If you get the chance, go see him!

Loch Ness

We decided to do a day trip up to Inverness, to go to Loch Ness. We left early in the morning, and drove straight up there. After a quick stop at the Trespass outlet and a mis-guided detour through part of the town, we were on our way to to the loch.

We stopped a few times along the way for photos, and then stopped at a souvenir shop to make a few purchases. We even took some photos with our 'see you Jimmy' hats on! Sure, we might have looked like dickheads, but we were having fun!

We also stopped at Urquhart Castle, although we didn't need to go in (I was OK with this one though - the castle is in ruins, and we still got some great photos!).

Around Edinburgh

The next day we headed into the city to spend some time site-seeing. We had arrived in Edinburgh at the same time that the Fringe Festival started, which includes the Edinburgh Comedy Festival. We went to the festival tent, and booked some tickets for shows. We'd decided before we even got to Scotland to try and get tickets to see Jimeoin, and we managed to get some. We also booked another show, for two comedians (one who had been named Scottish comedian of the year), Sean Grant and Tiernan Douieb.

We spent the rest of the day wandering around the city, doing a little shopping, before Tamara and I went to Edinburgh Castle. It was great! We did the audio tour, so for a nerd like me it was good to have so much information. Shame I felt like I had to rush through it all, but oh well.

Bonnie Scotland

We hit the road once more, heading for the border. We drove through Gretna Green, so that Tamara could see the marriage houses. Leaving there, after a quick stop for lunch, we headed towards Glasgow. We had no intention of stopping there, but part of Tamara's family is Scottish, so we were in search of Hamilton Ave in order to take a photo for her grandmother. The things we do for family!

We negotiated our way through rush hour traffic, took the photo, and headed back through the city again. We headed towards Edinburgh, where we were planning on staying for a few nights with more friends of Tamara's. Somehow we ended up going right through the middle of the city, including driving on part of the Royal Mile - not the quickest route!

We found Tamara's friends' house, and hung out for a bit before catching a bus into town. There, we met up with Clare (whose flat we were staying at but who had been at work), and joined the queue to see the Edinburgh Military Tattoo. It was awesome - the rain bucketed down, but it didn't stop the show being amazing!

Hadrian's Wall

Even though I'd been to Hadrian's Wall on my first trip up north, I wanted to see it again. Actually, I'd wanted to see it on the other side of the country, but shockingly, that didn't happen either. We headed towards Birdoswald Fort, a Roman fort. We did stop along the way as well for a few random photos.

My last trip had me wondering if I was in the right place, as I had to walk through a sheep paddock to get there. Nothing changed this time around!

Back to my happy place

Leaving Warrington, we had an extra traveller with us, albeit just for a few hours. Another friend of Tamara's came with us to Southport and Blackpool.

Southport was our first stop. It's a seaside town, with what is actually quite a nice high street. We parked without looking around properly first (mistake), grabbed some breakfast and wandered towards the beach. Turns out, the beach was quite a way away. We walked down a street, across a beach, through a carpark, past Pleasureland (mini golf and stuff, not as raunchy as it sounds), and along another street. Jackpot - the beach. Well, sand anyway! The water itself was a looooooong way out, which made the presence of a lifeguard in his hut quite funny.

We left Southport and went to Blackpool. Blackpool is like a show on drugs. It's freaky and trashy and just plain bizarre. I'm sure in the 1970s it was a great place to take your kids for their seaside Summer holiday, but now it's just... wrong. They were starting to set up for the Illuminations, but that just added to its overall crackwhore image. Can't say I was sorry to leave! The highlight of the visit was going on the old wooden tram down the esplanade, and buying some Blackpool rock candy, which I'm yet to sample.

We left Blackpool, and our third adventurer, and headed to my happy place - the Lake District. I swear I felt more relaxed as soon as I turned off the M6! We didn't have any accommodation booked, but I told Tamara about where I'd stayed last time, and suggested we try there. Turns out we not only got a room, the people who own it remembered me from my last trip. Great service!

We drove up to Penrith, stopping along the way for many photos. We had dinner up there, and then headed back. The next day we went in search of Hill Top Farm, favoured place of Beatrix Potter. I didn't realise that the farm they use as Hill Top in the movie 'Miss Potter' is not the actual Hill Top, but another farm that she owned. The actual Hill Top is very small and dark - not at all as I'd imagined it. I loved looking at some of the illustrations in her stories and seeing exactly where they came from.

After Hill Top Farm we went to Keswick, as Tamara wanted to go to the pencil museum. Yes, the same pencil museum that I have mocked relentlessly since my first trip up there. We actually went in there, and it was exactly as expected. A waste of time. Funny how we went into something like that, but not something like Shakespeare's birthplace...

From there we drove around the area, before heading back to Ambleside for dinner and sleep.

Warrington and Manchester

We left Birmingham, hit the M6 and headed north. We weren't too far away from our final destination for the day, and so we just went straight there. We found Tamara's friend's house with no difficulty, and proceeded to sit out the back in the sunshine and have a chat.

I had earlier gotten in touch with a friend from Cairns who lives in Manchester, so I took myself off to the city centre to catch up with a drink with her. Always good to see a familiar face!

Strangely, I don't have any photos from this part of the trip, apart from our short sojourn to Liverpool. I guess it's because really, despite what tourism boards would like to believe, I could just have a photo of any city and call it Manchester. I'm wondering why I don't have at least one photo of the Manchester United stadium though... We didn't do much actually in Manchester - we wanted to go to Old Trafford, not realising that there are TWO Old Traffords - one for Man U and one for the cricket. I know I didn't get any photos of the cricket ground, as I was driving. Tamara hasn't put hers on facebook, so I can't steal those. We also were going to go to where they film Coronation Street, but it looked awful, so we didn't stop.

We were only in town for one full day, and we went to Liverpool for the afternoon. We parked at Abbey Docks, where the Beatles Story attraction is. Now that I'm writing this, I'm realising that we saw the outside of a lot of places, but didn't actually go in to many. *Sigh* We wandered around the town, before heading back to Warrington. We also didn't go to The Cavern. You may well be thinking why we bothered going at all - beats me.

To Birmingham, and beyond!

We left Stratford-upon-Avon, and headed towards Birmingham. Our final destination for the day was Warrington, which is near Manchester. We were intending to spend a couple of nights staying with friends of Tamara's. Birmingham is not that far from Manchester, and it was time for a break.

Now, avid readers (yeah, like you actually exist) may remember that the last time I was in I Birmingham, my original sat nav's battery died, and the car I'd hired didn't have a working cigarette lighter. Well, this time, it went one better. This was the second one I'd had since October 07, as the first one lost its life suddenly in Cardiff in April. This was also the first big trip it'd been on. Birmingham must be some kind of anti-sat nav society, as this one became what we fondly call an epileptic Arabic. Now, I don't mean to offend, but it took on a life of its own and did things that I didn't know a sat nav programmed in English could do! Firstly, it fell in love with the letter e. Yeah, you read that right. Suddenly I had nearly 30 favourites saved, with various combinations of e and E. Then, like that wasn't enough, it wouldn't let me access anything, before bringing itself to its grand finale - upside down question marks. I didn't even know you could somehow put in an upside down question mark! So, given that this was day one of a trip that could last up to a couple of weeks, I rocked on down to Tesco for a refund or replacement.

Sounds easy, right? Wrong. I was a couple of hundred miles from home, and home was where my receipt was. Despite the fact that Tesco could have sent the stupid thing back to the manufacturer without losing a penny, I couldn't do anything but buy a new one. So I did, this time a different brand. I'm hoping for a longer life for this one - 3 in less than a year, when I didn't even have a car for almost all of that time, is ridiculous!

Anywho, whilst looking for a Tesco, we realised that Birmingham is home not only to Birmingham Football Club, it's also home to Aston Villa. We did a proper drive by after we found Tesco, so that Tamara could take some photos. The photo below is hers - I was driving and didn't get any myself.

Other than that, Birmingham is really just like every other town in the UK, so we hit the road again.

And they're off and running...

We headed out bright and early on a Sunday morning, thinking that by delaying our trip until Sunday, we'd miss the traffic. This was true, but we didn't then take into account that being Sunday, things might not open till at least 10.

I picked up Tamara and we headed towards Stratford-upon-Avon. We were intending to go to Shakespeare's birthplace and the other Shakespeare-related places. On the way though, we realised how close we were to Warwick (known to us as Historic Warwick - say it quickly), and we decided to call in. Apparently there's a great castle there. We wouldn't know, as it didn't open for about an hour and a half after we got there. You couldn't even drive close enough to see it. Guess that's something to go back to. Driving away, we saw a sign for the Dream Factory. The name alone had us driving through the back streets looking for it - although we never found it. All in all, a successful visit to Historic Warwick!

We motored on out of there and moved on to Stratford-upon-Avon. After doing a little reconnassaince, we found a park, and wandered over to Shakepeare's birthplace. In the end we didn't actually go in there, as it wasn't open (surprise), and whilst we were taking some photos of the outside of it, a busload or two of kids showed up. Summer holidays is as much a kid-free zone as possible.

We then wandered through the town a little, grabbed some breakfast, and considered our next plan of attack. We decided to try and find Anne Hathaway's cottage. I didn't realise until we actually found it that Tamara (wingman and navigator) didn't know who Anne Hathaway was, besides an American actress! Given the cost of going into her cottage, we decided to not go in there either. We did manage to lean over the fence and take a few photos however. Looks like another trip back!

After the cottage we wanted to find Shakespeare's grave. My map (brought with me more for looking to see what was near us rather than for actual navigation) showed us where it was, so we headed over to the cemetery. Well, I should have done my homework on this one. Turns out, after wandering through the entire cemetery, that his grave is INSIDE the church, and that you can't visit it if a service is taking place. After our luck so far, you guessed it, there was a service taking place. The photo below is the River Avon, which runs along behind the cemetery.

First official place we had planned to visit, and I had seen the outside of the 3 things I'd wanted to see. Awesome.