SHEEP, SHEEP, EVERYWHERE A SHEEP

Unsurprisingly, this wee island known for its pastoral countryside dotted with sheep actually DOES have sheep everywhere you look. Ray and I took a road trip up to Scotland this past weekend - our first official road trip since our arrival here - and the weekend's theme was definitely "Sheep". More on this point later.

Friday morning saw us up bright and early with our rental car (driving!!! on the left side of the road!!!) and we actually managed to find our way out of Cambridge without too much trouble. After consulting our map, we headed up the highway, following signs conveniently labelled "The North" (we were able to follow these signs all the way to Scotland, and by the end of the weekend had developed a theory that the signs would continue to say "The North" until reaching John O'Groates). After catching a quick lunch in the rather industrial city of Doncaster - and getting lost in said city, because it appears there is no such thing as an "easy off, easy on" town in this country - we continued towards the Scottish border and then turned west towards the town of Newton Stewart, where our friend Warren is spending the year teaching at the local highschool. Warren kindly showed us all around town and took us to dinner at a great restaurant before allowing us to crash on his pullout couch.

Our drive took us through some very beautiful and varied country, from the flat
Midlands of England, the rolling hillsides of Yorkshire, a region of moorland, and then the pastoral countryside of Dumfries and Galloway county. Think lots of sheep (of course!) and rugged castles in various states of ruin. Because the Scottish/English border has been heavily disputed over the centuries, there is an exceptionally high density of castles in this region (in order to secure the border), as a consequence of the fighting over the land, the castles have all suffered some pretty serious breaches and attacks. All of which makes them very, very cool from this Canadian's perspective.

Here are some shots from our first day. Two points to keep in mind: (a) please pardon the blurriness of some photos, as they were taken from a car rocketing through the countryside, and (b) the small white blobs everywhere are - what else? - the ubiquitous sheep.





The three of us set off on Saturday towards Edinburgh, with a quick stop along the Scottish coast:





We also checked into another small town for Warren to pick up some kilt accessories (being of Scottish descent he has been busily getting the entire ensemble together) and then it was smooth sailing the rest of the way into the big city.











Edinburgh was a lot of fun to wander around because it is so different from Cambridge. We were jolted out of our small market town mentality by this larger, very gothic-feeling city with rather severe (but attractive) architecture, dominated by Edinburgh Castle. Of course the castle was one of our main points of tour, with stops at pubs (where else!) for sustinence, whiskey shops and trinket stores along the way.









We wound up our day with a "ghost" tour through an underground close - which is basically an old alleyway on which people lived and worked, but then was literally covered by new buildings about a century ago, thus preserving the original structures below the city - and a brief stroll through the Old Bailey graveyard, one of the most haunted in all of Europe. Not bad for our first day in town!

Sunday started out with more of the fine but frigid weather (note hair flying in the wind and the "I'm having fun but DEAR GOD I AM FROZEN" look on my face in the Mons Meg photo above) we had been enjoying all weekend, and we enjoyed a great breakfast at our hotel before piling back into the car and taking Warren back to Newton Stewart. Then we were onto our epic drive home, this time following "The South" signs, through the edge of the Lake District, the Pennines (mountain range), the Yorkshire Dales, and back through the Midlands. Partway home it started to snow, but thank goodness it wasn't sticking on the roads. I absolutely loved our drive home through many of the smaller highways, because we got to travel through the rolling countryside which in turn lead to several more photo ops:







The weekend in summary: more sheep than I could count, Ray very successfully navigating both the left-hand side of the road AND roundabouts, and the strengthening of my love affair with the English countryside. Not such a bad way to spend a weekend, if you ask me.