Taynuit

We're never one to pass up the option of some one's couch to sleep on - it got us through another night in Edinburgh allowing us to see both the castle and some more fringe festival stuff. The couch quest has now bought us to Taynuit. After a late arising and a stop off to visit Stirling castle, we arrived nearing night time so haven't had a look around yet, but the I did the driving up (my first UK driving - Craig counted 5 times where the windscreen wiper came on rather than the indicator, and that's only counting the left turns!). The views were spectacular with extremely hilly terrain and quiet lochs bordering the road.

My other Scotland post was rather brief so here's an expanded, it's 1am and I can't sleep version.

The Scotland experience started far too early in Dublin, I forget the exact time but probably around 5am - the cheapest Ryanair flights are at stupid'o'clock of course. As no buses started till 7am we had to catch a taxi. We'd ordered it the previous day for 6:20 am and it showed up early despite having gone to the wrong address after a slight misunderstanding. All was seemingly good till the driver clipped the curb at an interesting angle at an interesting speed. This lead to the first blown tyre of the trip, and certainly not the last, but that comes later. The earlyness paid off as we made it to our flight, which was late anyway. It's the first time I was happy to have a delayed flight - The flight to Dublin was on time and this was announced with an incredibly obnoxious trumpet noise, no such rudeness after we got into Liverpool 20mins late.

The goat was left grazing at long term parking and other than a little bird presents on the roof was none the worse for its 4 days of abandonment. We were all pretty happy to get out of Liverpool and the Lakes district was certainly nicer scenery. I was a little disappointed that they didn't hire out sailing boats at the boat hire on Lake Ullswater, but the wind wouldn't have allowed for more than a calm drift anyway - The photo of the boats shows how glassy it was. After this it was on to explore Roman ruins at Housestead. This took us of the M9 and brought us more to the East.

We were pondering making a run for Edinburgh, but settled for staying just out of it in Melrose. The England Scotland border was my first challenging piece of rock climbing on the trip. On the A68 the border is marked by a large boulder, and it simply had to be climbed. I still haven't acquired a pair of climbing shoes yet, but managed to get up bare foot.

Melrose turned out to be a fine decision as the friendly people there were able to book us a night in Edinburgh central after 4 phonecalls back and forwards. The hostel was also right next to a pub and the abbey ruins - what more could you ask for?

Despite only being a 45minute drive from Melrose to Edinburgh, it was an all day trip via Melrose Abbey, Dryburgh Abbey, a William Wallace Statue, Crichton Castle and finally Craigmillar castle. We certainly made good use of our 'Historic Scotland' Explorer Pass.

That night Craig and I went and saw James at the Corn exchange. The concert was fantastic, one of the best large concerts I've been to, we managed to get onto the barrier up the front by half way through and stayed there till the end. After the concert we queued in polite British style for the bus. Despite what looked like an unmanageable queue, everyone managed to pile onto the first double decker bus to amble its way up the street. All was good the the concert awed crowd enjoying the ride back. Eventually a strange sound started coming from the rear of the bus, it sounded just like a dodgy rear windscreen wiper and we thought nothing of it. Turns out double decker buses don't have rear windscreens and hence have little need for wipers on them. This was the second blown tyre. Somehow we managed to score a ride on a couple's taxi that was going the same way we wanted to (I guess it's not that coincidental since that's the route the bus was going...)

The next day was filled with Edinburgh castle, followed by street performers, then free comedy.

The first comedian was really good, and was nothing like the stereotypical "I'm a drunk Irishman with an accent" style of comedy that some comedians seem to get away with. The second however was an Australian woman, and to steal the English phrase, she was rubbish. Still that's surely the fringe experience, and we weren't forced to pay a cent for it!

The drive up was mostly uneventful, we paid our £1 to go over the rather scenic forth road bridge and went to Stirling castle. I defiantly prefer the semi ruined castles to the intact ones. The intact ones seem to be more tourist trappy and seem less authentic what with their illuminated exit signs and clearly modern alterations and repairs. Crichton has been the most enjoyable thus far, and the guy who managed it was able to tell us a lot about the history of the castle, including all the research he'd done on the Internet about the Italian origin of a diamond pattern on one of the walls. To be honest he seemed a little lonely, which was unsurprising since we were almost the only ones there for the two hours.

After Stirling I took over the wheel. I can report our goat drives just fine, other than being a little light on the acceleration and having a maze for a gear box. The only en route disaster was arriving at the petrol station at Doune with the sign 'The last station for 22 miles' to find that we couldn't fill our near empty tank with the unleaded tipple our goat demands as they had run out till Monday. This lead to going back up the road and off to the East a bit to Dunblane. It was also an interesting challenge finding our final destination without a town map, and the fact that addresses here are house names rather than numbers, oh yes, and there are no street signs either.

So I'm not yet sure what plan for tomorrow is, but there are options a plenty with the sea, lochs, mountains, towns and castles all around