Its time! For me to write about our awesome experience in the UK!!
Yes,
we finally decided to venture out towards the European side. The
motivation this time being, one of our close friends who live in UK.
Once we decided to travel, we booked our flight tickets, applied for
visa, and then chalked out our plan. We had not traveled abroad for 2
years! So one can imagine the excitement involved :) AND it was our
first big trip with our little one.
As usual, I wanted
to see lot of places in the 2 weeks we had in UK. I started reading
online, bought "lonely planet - The Great Britain" book and of course
our friends were our main guides.
We had exactly 14 days
in UK, excluding the travel days. We left early Saturday morning from
Bangalore on British airways to New Castle, with a stopover at London.
As
soon as we got off the plane and entered the Heathrow airport, we were
facing a different world! We could see people from all over the world
and everyone running around. It was like a typical modern city life
scene. We roamed around the airport while window shopping and had lunch
and snacks in one of the nice places in the airport. We reached New
Castle upon Tyne at night, our friends picked us up from the airport. We
had a nice dinner at their house, chatted for a while and crashed for
the night.
Our little one woke up at 4am the next
morning, fully fresh. It gets bright by 5am during this time of the year
(July end - Aug beginning). We all woke up refreshed on the Sunday
morning. We had breakfast at home and headed out for a nice walk nearby.
It was slightly windy but pleasant weather. We got back home and after
freshening up, went out for lunch. We had lunch at Giraffe restaurant
and shopped a bit at Tesco for some groceries and other necessities
required for the rest of our stay.
In the evening we
had a barbeque dinner at home which was a lot of fun. We had purchased
the use and throw barbeque trays from Tesco. Our friends D and M have a
lovely back yard at their house. We had a yummy dinner with a nice
salad, paneer grill and veggie burgers in the backyard.
The
next day, being a bright sunny day, was perfect for strawberry picking
:) A made croissants at home, so we had the same along with bagels and
cream cheese and scrambled eggs for breakfast. We went to Brockbushes,
about 16 miles from NCL, where they have a huge farm for berries
picking. We started off by having an awesome soup, snacks and tea at the
coffee shop in the farm. Our little one loved picking strawberries. He
was on his own most of the time, roaming around the field, picking and
filling the basket with hay :) We all had a GREAT time. The strawberries
were the yummiest and juiciest! I must have eaten about a kilo of
strawberries before we were finished :) Pluck, eat; Pluck and fill the
basket. It was a looot of FUN :) In the end, we get the basket weighed
and pay. My basket was FULL :) We also picked few blackberries and
raspberries.
We were driving back to NCL from
Brockbushes, on the way we saw a board to a small town called Corbridge.
We stopped here, and we were so glad that we did. It was a very cute
little town, with a cute street and small shops all along. There was a
very tiny bridge where only one car could pass at a time. So they had a
signal at the end of both sides of the bridge to ensure that only cars
in one direction pass at a time :) We walked around, and had tea and
yummy snacks at a small local tea shop, sitting at the tables on the
street. I visited a bookstore that was opposite to the coffee shop. As
soon as I entered the store, the sweet smell of books welcomed me! Just
reminded me why I love bookstores so much. I spent sometime here,
glancing thru everything. We walked back, bought souvenirs at a store
and headed back to New Castle.
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| The 'one-car-lane' bridge |
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| View from the bridge |
In the evening we put on our swim wear and hit Blythe beach. It was the first beach visit for A2, and he LOVED it!
He was SOOOO excited. He ran into the water and realized that it was coming
towards him and stopped and then it retreated. The water was very cold but he was kicking his feet
around, splashing water with his hands and soon he was sitting on the beach
and loving the water coming up to him. He just did not want to get out of the water. We all played in the cold water and lay on the beach. It was a beautiful beach!
We
got back home, had a nice meal and chatted for a while, before we slept.
And we had the strawberries that we had picked with rich cream :D
On Tuesday we had croissants, bagels, cinnamon rolls,
scrambled eggs for breakfast and started driving to Alnwick, where the
Harry Potter movie was filmed at the Alnwick Castle. Alnwick is about 30
miles from NCL. This was again a small cute town and we enjoyed the
walk here. We walked along the streets, seeing all the stores from
outside, and stepped into a few cute stores to buy souvenirs. I got some
very English curios/gift items.
It was time for lunch,
and we came across a board that said "Grannies" in front of a small
shop. We went inside and checked if they had a table, and we were in
luck! The lady said that a table was getting free in few minutes. The
restaurant/tea room was in the basement with about 4-5 tables, a very cute
lovely place! We were so glad to have found this place, it was a very
local eat-out place and we loved the ambiance. We ordered food and
drinks and tea. We absolutely LOVED each and everything we ordered.
Enjoyed every minute here. After a heart filling meal, we came out and
started walking to explore the rest of the town. We came to the city
center where we sat down on one of the benches. It was nice to just sit
there and watch the shops/cafe stores/people.
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| Inside Grannies |
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| The tastiest Greek salad |
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| City center, where we sat and watched |
From
Alnwick we drove to another castle called Warwick Castle. On the way, we
took a detour and stopped on one of the small roads. We just chilled
here for a while, enjoying the view and taking pictures. The weather had
been perfect all along.
Warkworth Castle is beautiful, we sat outside the castle and enjoyed the view.
We headed back to NCL, and had dinner at home and relaxed while packing for the next 5 days travel down south.
We started early in the morning from NCL on Wednesday to York, which is about 2 hours drive, around 90 miles.
York
is a lovely town, which is one the way to London from NCL. We reached
York, parked near city center, and started exploring the place on foot.
Loved the town. We walked around, there were tons of small shops all
along the streets. At one of the junctions, there were people selling
different kinds of things, one of them offering stylish braids/hair-dos.
We stopped at a lovely fudge store, where we had the richest varieties
of homemade fudges. We entered a liquor shop, where they write
our names on the glass bottles. The bottles are of different shapes. We
bought a small box that had 4 different kinds of home-made liquor.
There
were people playing music on the streets, lot of cute shops selling
many things. I could not resist entering most of the colorful shops and
buying small things :) We stopped at a bookstore as well.
We
saw the famous cathedral - York Minster and walked around.
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| York Minster |
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| Street play |
We came to the
"Shambles" street. It is a small narrow street, with looot of small
shops selling everything. This street was a part of the Harry Potter
movie. I loved this street. We walked along here, stopping to visit the cute little shops on the way. By then we were hungry,
and we had lunch at Chloe's of York restaurant. I had the most tasty
tomato soup here.
We continued our journey towards
London, and drove to Leicester, which is about 110 miles south of York.
After briefly stopping in Leicester, we headed towards London. We had
planned to stay at another friend's place near London. So we drove to
their place, which is in Hemel Hempstead. It was dark by the time we
reached Hemel. We had a lovely dinner prepared by our friends, V and S
and ended the night talking.
We had lots
planned for the next 2-3 days in London and had decided to use the tube to travel within
London. We had breakfast at Premier Inn in Hemel, the next morning and
drove to Stanmore, where we parked our cars at the Stanmore station. We
took a full day pass for the tube, and boarded the train here (taking the Piccadilly line).
We got down at Westminster Abbey, and ventured out. We hung out near
the Big Ben for a long time, as this was one of our
favorite spots! We could see Big Ben, London Eye, Thames river and the
Westminster Abbey from the bridge.
We did the "Royal London Walk", which is a
lovely walking tour that covers most of the must-see places. The
distance covered is around 4 miles and takes about 3-4 hours depending on
your speed and interest (where we stop/spend more time). We covered the
following places - Houses of Parliament, Westminster Hall, Westminster Abbey, Statue of Abraham Lincoln, St James
park, Queen Victoria Memorial, Buckingham palace, Green Park, Trafalgar square and many other places.
In
between we stopped for a quick local beer at one of the pubs. We walked
past the new Scotland yard, sat down and had ice cream at St.James park
while our little boy ran after pigeons and had a blast eating his first
mango duet ice cream.
We then saw Buckingham Palace, sat
in front of the palace for a while and visited the gift shop where we
bought marzipan, English breakfast tea, souvenirs and a London bus book
for A2.
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| Buckingham Palace |
We bought lunch from a cart and ate while sitting at Hyde park before going to Trafalgar Square.
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| Trafalgar Square |
We walked towards Piccadilly
circus and hung out there for a while.
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| Piccadilly Circus |
We took the tube to Westminster and went on a
river cruise down the Thames river. After walking all day, it was a
pleasant ride sitting on the cruise, with the cool breeze blowing, beer
in the hand, and watching all the lovely monuments of London for an hour. We
saw Gerkin/
Shard and other famous sky scrapers from a close distance. We went below
the famous London bridge and the Tower of London bridge. We saw the
tower bridge open for one of the bigger ships to go thru.
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| River Cruise start point |
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| The Shard |
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| Tower Bridge of London |
We
got a different view of the London downtown and were also able to
yell at some of the folks crossing the bridges and got them to wave
back at us. A little girl on the front of the boat was the most
enthusiastic of all of us and it was hilarious to see :).
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| London Bridge |
We
got off the cruise and took the tube to the Victoria station, where our
open bus tour was scheduled to start. We picked up sub sandwiches and
sat in the bus. It was a great tour, as the bus took us to many places
and we got to see London in both day light and in the night for 80 minutes. We had a blast sitting on the top and seeing London from 15-20
feet above ground level :) Tower
Bridge of London/ Strand Palace hotel/ Hyde park/ St James park and a lot
of other places were covered.
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| On the Tower Bridge |
After the bus tour, we were done for the day,
took a train back to Stanmore, got our cars and headed back
home to Hemel. V was awake and waiting for us. We chatted a bit and
quickly got ready to go to bed.
The next morning, we were re-energized after a
good night's sleep. We again parked the car in Stanmore and took the
tube to Southfields by changing tube at Westminster Abbey and again
at Earl's Court to Southfields.
Southfields is a quiet little town. We
had breakfast at one of the tea houses, sitting outside by the road. We
walked from Southfields station to Wimbledon, which is one straight road
and about 2km. The
row houses on the street were all very nice and we enjoyed the 30
minute walk.
As
expected, it was an amazing feeling to enter the Wimbledon grounds :)
We visited the center court at centercourt360 and imagined all the great
games played there :D We enjoyed walking around the museum, reading
about the history of tennis. The museum is quite nice. And of course we
had to eat the famous strawberries and cream :)
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| Center Court |
After
buying a lot of small stuff from the gift shop at Wimbledon, we walked
back to Southfields and took the train back to the center of London. We
had planned to meet our friends at the Borough Market - an amazing
place, where you get anything and everything to eat. Its like a farmers
market, with lot of shops selling various kinds of eatables :)
It
was a very nice comfortable place with a lot of sunlight and lots of
cuisines. We had the BEST brownies and the BEST fresh orange juice here :D
We took the tube to Madam Tussaud's,
where
we got quick access because of the pram and went thru the Bollywood
section to the Hollywood section, to the sports section to the
politician section. Some of us went thru the chamber of horror before
taking the “taxi” ride thru London’s history which A2 enjoyed a lot and to the gift
shop. Had a GREAT time here. It was a lot of fun to see and pose with all the wax monuments.
We
needed coffee after the tour at Madam Tussaud's. We found a Starbucks
and had coffee there. We took the tube to Stanmore and got into our
cars. We drove around a bit, picked up dinner at Marks and Spencers and
headed back to our friend's house in Hemel. We were up till late in the
night, chatting with them.
The
next day, we had a lovely Indian breakfast at V and S's home, before
saying bye to them. We drove to Greenwich from Hemel which is about 30
miles. We saw the Greenwich Meridian Line and spent some time here, where
we had awesome muffins, pastries and great coffee.
It
was time to say goodbye to London! We started driving west towards
Stonehenge. It is roughly about 85 miles from London to Stonehenge, and
should take about 2 hours by car. As
we reached closer, we got a glimpse of the Stonhenge from the road,
standing tall and in a somewhat attractive way. Once we reached the
parking lot, there was no sign of Stonehenge. It can be seen only from a
very close distance. There were many buses to take us from the ticket
gate upto the site, but we decided to walk the distance. And we were so
glad we walked. It is a beautiful walk that takes around 20 minutes
along a tar road with green field on one side and a golden yellow field
on the other. Our little boy had lot of fun hiking up this road.
Once
we reached the site, it was an amazing view! There is a serenity to the
place. We just LOVED watching the Stones at the Stonehenge. We spent
about one hour here, taking pictures, jumping, walking :)
On
our way back we took the bus, shopped at the gift shop and hit the
road. We had planned to visit Bath, which is about 35 miles from
Stonehenge, but it was late evening and so we dropped the idea.
We
started our journey northwards, driving to Cotswolds, which is around
70 miles from Stonehenge. We had booked a room at Premier Inn in the
nearby town called Gloucestershire to stay for that night. It was one of
the most scenic drives to Cotswolds. We stopped at a pub called Hungry
Horse to have dinner before going to the hotel.
We woke
up the next day and stepped out of the hotel. We went for a drive to
the center of the city hoping to find a tea/coffee shop. Being a Sunday,
none of the shops were open so early in the morning. The drive inside
the town was very nice.
We got back to the hotel, had
breakfast, freshened up and left the hotel. Cotswolds villages are very
pretty with cute little old cottages and churches. We drove to Lavender
Fields located in the Cotswolds area. We had a LOVELY time at the farm!!
Was so much fun, again jumping, walking around, smelling the fresh
lavender and taking pictures :) Had hot chocolate and lavender cakes at
the tea shop here.
We continued our journey back north
driving to Stratford upon Avon, Shakespeare's birth place, which was
just 15 miles away from Cotswolds.We visited the great Shakespeare's
house in Stratford, and roamed around a bit, had lunch opposite
Shakespeare's house at Pattisserie Vaylerie restaurant, sitting on the
street.
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| Stratford |
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| Shakespeare's Home |
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| Backyard of Shakespeare's Home |
120 miles away from Startford is the world famous
Cadbury World located in Bournville, Birmingham :) It was a nice drive
and of course the Cadbury World was yummy :p We bought lots and lots of
cadbury chocolates. One unique kind was "Mis shapes", anything that was
not in the right shape was packed into these packets. It was super
tasty!
We started our drive back home to NCL about 200
miles from Birmingham. We had dinner on the way at one of the services
stop and reached NCL that night.
Monday was a break
day before we traveled north from NCL. We packed and relaxed a bit in
the morning, had an early lunch and headed out to the downtown of New
Castle upon Tyne by train :) We stopped first at the University and roamed around
in the campus. We then strolled across to the city center, window
shopped a bit, ate strawberry icecream, and did some real shopping.
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| New Castle city |
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| The University |
A and M played TT on a random TT table bolted to the floor in a busy
shopping area and they said that there was a lot of "aero-dynamics" each time a bus
passed by. They had a great time playing, while we shopped.
I loved the town :) Loved the old buildings and the
architecture. We stopped at a lovely Italian place for a drink and
snacks. We sat outside in the sun, chatting and enjoying the view
outside. We walked around some more and then it was time for dinner. We
headed back to the Italian restaurant - Jamie's and I am so GLAD we ate
here. It was the yummiest Italian food I have ever eaten! Love LOVED
the food - pasta/salad/pizza/chocolate brownie/coffee :) We returned
home after dinner and got ready for the next day's trip.
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| Enjoying our drinks at Jamie's |
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| Inside Jamie's |
Yippe,
it was time for our Scotland trip :) We left NCL early and started
driving towards Scotland! The capital city of Scotland, Edinburgh is
about 2.5 hours from New castle. As we were about to enter Scotland, we
stopped at the Scottish-England border for a quick photo. There was a
truck selling snacks. Given the kind of foodies we are, we had to
eat there! We had egg and cheese baps :) It was very tasty! IRN
BRU was a Scottish cola drink, so we had that as well.
After the quick stop, we drove to Edinburgh, enjoying the
scenic views all along. There was "fringe festival" going on in the
city, so the whole city wore a festive look! It was very colorful and
musicy everywhere :). We parked in the city center, and walked to the
Edinburgh Castle. We went inside the castle, and it was an amazing
experience. I loved the history behind everything in the castle.
We
had soup, desserts, some pasta and then walked around the castle for
a couple of hours and took a ton of photos. The view from the castle
to downtown was fantastic and so was the weather.
After exploring the castle, we came out, and walked the Royal Mile,
which had lots of small shops. We stopped at a small tea shop and had
hot tea with scones! Down the road, the Fringe festival was going on, so
we could see lot of street players and fun activities.
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| Edinburgh Castle |
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| View of the city from the Castle |
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| The Royal Mile Walk |
We
left Edinurgh and drove to a small town called Pitlochry, where we had
booked a bed and breakfast place. We reached Pitlochry around 8pm, had
dinner at a lovely restaurant called "Victoria's" and headed to our bed n
breakfast - Ashbank House. It was a beautiful house with a stream
running in the back yard. Our room was a loft on the top floor, with
very cute windows overlooking the mountains/sky/moon. The bathroom was
quite big with a bathtub overlooking huge windows. It was a cozy setup.
We called it a night after having a nice cup of hot chocolate :)
We
woke up early the next day, and went for a walk. We went down to the
stream in their back yard. We walked north, towards the beautiful
overlooking mountains. It was quiet everywhere, We walked for about 1
hour, then we came across a board that said "Moulin Hotel". I was soo
excited to see the board, as it was recommended on lonely planet and I
really wanted to try it out. By the time we reached the hotel, it had
started drizzling. We went in and had a pot of tea! It was amazing, a
small quaint town, a small tea shop and rain :) A perfect morning :) We
got back to Ashbank house, and our breakfast was waiting for us. The
specialty of the place was their "baked omelets". It was one of the
best omelets I had tasted! The breakfast was super tasty. After having a
hot cup of coffee, we freshened up and said bye to the owner
lady.
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| View from our room window |
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| Near the stream at the back of the house |
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| Morning Walk |
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| One of the pretty houses in Pitlochry |
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| Moulin Hotel |
We went directly to the Queen's view point from
the bed and breakfast. It took us just 15 minutes to reach along a
scenic drive. It was a gorgeous view of the Loch Tummel and mountains,
on a rainy day. It was very very pretty over there, and it is definitely
one of my favorite spots.We met an older couple here and we chatted
with them for sometime. They were visiting from England and the husband was
a golfer and had started a club called "hole in one club" who travel all over the world playing golf.
We had planned to drive to
Rannoch Moor that day as it was supposed to be a very scenic drive. So
we started from Queen's view, towards Rannoch, the road was along the
loch (lake in Scottish) throughout. It was a lovely drive, very pretty
and scenic! We stopped in between for a nice break at the lake. Our
little one just went berserk in the COLD water. He played in the water
for a very long time and like always, did not want to get out of the
water!! One of the most peaceful places :)
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| Our pitstop :) |
Rannoch is
at the end of the road and the lake. There are just mountains beyond
this point. If we had continued by feet for another 12 miles from
Rannoch, trekking the mountains, we could have reached Glencoe, another
picturesque town. There was a pretty and cute train station at Rannoch.
We went inside the train station and visited the LOVELY tea shop inside.
We were hungry and thirsty after the drive :) we really ordered
everything that was on the menu!! And we were so glad that we did,
because everything tasted sooooo YUMMY!!! We had the BEST scones, the
best vegetable soup, the best everything!! And Tea :)
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| Station and the restaurant where we ate |
After
our lovely little fiesta, we headed back the same way till Queen's
view, Pitlochry, and continued towards Loch Lomond. This was again a
very beautiful drive, mainly next to lakes. We took a short break at one
of the national parks, and went near the water. A picture perfect view!
We sat on one of the ramps on the water, just watching the water,
mountains, sky :)
We had booked a bed and breakfast place called
Barton in Balloch town in the Loch Lomond area. We reached the place
around 7 pm. We freshened up quickly and strolled around the town, along
the lake for a while. We had dinner at one of the local restaurants, The
Balloch Hotel Inn, a nice cozy place. A tried the single malt – Ochentoshen at this place, as it was locally made. We all crashed in our rooms later on.
The
next morning, we woke up early and went out for a walk. We went to the
Balloch Castle, which is being renovated. The castle is located in the
middle of a huge garden - Balloch Castle Country Park - very lush and green with old trees and
overlooking the lake. We sat down on one of the benches in front of the
castle, watching the birds fly over the lake, when one of the gardeners, who
was walking, stopped by and told us the history behind the castle.
We
got back to the bnb, freshened up, and had breakfast. We packed our
bags and left the place around 10am. We drove to Balmaha, which was
around 12 miles from Balloch. Our friends did the Balmaha walk, while we
continued driving down the NARROW road that allowed just one car to
pass by, along the lake. It was one of the most beautiful drives with
the lake to our left and greenary to the right with pretty houses in
between. There were few campsites along the way, where many people had
camped along the lake. We went to the end of this road and stopped,
there were many trails leading to different places, and we saw many
backpackers. We
got down from the car and sat near the Ben Lomond lake for a while
watching families get out inflatable rafts, take dogs on walks and just
staring at the lake and mountains. It was absolutely stunning!
Just
few yards away from here, was a very old and local pub called Clansman,
which was on the bank of the lake. We chilled out here for sometime,
with our little boy dancing in the rain, and while we enjoyed a beer,
sticky toffee pudding, mushroom Guinness soup, home made scones with
clotted cream and coffee :) It was just PERFECT :)
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| Mushroom Guinness Soup |
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| Sticky Toffee Pudding |
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| Scone |
We
drove back to Balmaha and went to the Oak Tree Inn, which was
recommended on Lonely planet. So as usual I was super excited to visit
this place :) I bought a nice long postcard of Scotland at their
giftshop. We went around the inn, and walked a bit near the lake,
watching local people load their boats with goodies and rowing away and
people coming back after enjoying their picnic. We went back to the Oak
Tree Inn and had a heavy yummy lunch sitting outside, overlooking the
lake. The place is huge, and they have a very large seating area inside.
It was packed.
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| Oak Tree Inn |
It was time to say goodbye to Scotland. We started our journey back to New Castle, about 175 miles away.
Friday
was the most adventurous day planned by us, activities in the water. We
left home around 7.20am. We ate breakfast at home and had packed our
lunch and snacks the previous night. We reached Ullswater lake around
9.30 am where we were greeted by Melanie and Ian from Eden Outdoors
adventure. We parked our car, Ian put up a tent behind the car, where we
changed. Melanie and Ian provided everything. We wore wetsuits
waterproof outfits on top of the wetsuits and life jackets. They gave us
shoes as well.
They had a wetsuit and life jacket for our little one also :)
We first did canoeing and our friends paddled the kayak. 2 canoes were tied together as one of us had to hold A2 and sit. It
was fun and lil A was having a blast. We did
canoeing till we reached a small island. We stopped here, and did a
mini-rock climbing :) It was fun! And it was time for a lovely hot
chocolate break. Melanie had got hot chocolate for us! Imagine having a
hot drink on the banks of the lake! We switched places, D and I started
kayaking from here. I absolutely LOVED it. It was sooo much FUN. We
stopped in between, where A, M and Ar jumped into the water from a rock
15 feet above water level. We continued kayaking and canoeing. I kayaked
most of the time. I cannot describe the beauty of the place, so I am
just going to post pictures :D :)
A
lovely morning, we finished kayaking and canoeing and stopped for
lunch. We ate our packed lunch sitting near the lake. It was time for
GHYLL SCRAMBLING. We drove to another place called Hartstop. We parked
the car, and geared up by wearing a helmet, water boots and safety
harness and we already had our wetsuit and waterproof outfit.
We
did the ghyll scrambling thru the Angle Tarn falls on Ullswater lake.
There was loot of water and hence it was lot more fun. We started off at
the base, walking in the water, and we gradually climbed up the water
falls! It was crazy FUNNNN. We had to climb up the falls, by holding on
to the vertical rocks, finding a grip with both our hands and legs, and
pulling ourselves up. Very often, we used to stand right below the
falling water :) The water was soo fresh :) I used to drink the water
all along. At one stretch, we had to climb a completely vertical rock,
with water falling in full force on the side. Ian, our guide, went up,
and tied a rope to our harness as a safety precaution. And then one by
one we all climbed up, It was really scary, because we had to find a
place to hold our hands, and feet, and pull ourselves up, on a slippery
rock! WOW, but we did it! At another point, we had to crawl on our
knees, behind the water falls, with about 3 inches space, on the rock.
This was my most scary moment :) We lay down in the water, we stood
below the falls, we crawled, we pass thru the falls and sat in a very
tiny cave and watched the water fall in front. It was an amazing
experience, climbing thru the water falls, just amazing! Ian, our guide
was super encouraging and great in guiding. We just trusted him and
followed.
We
got down via the mountain. We changed, and had hot chocolate and snacks
that Melanie had got! It was sooo refreshing. We said bye to Melanie
and Ian, and sat in the car. We drove a bit towards the Struggle drive,
another picturesque drive. We stopped on the way, at Kirkstone Pass Inn that was
found in 1496AD. The weather was perfect for a cold beer, we sat outside
on the benches, watching the mountains, greenary, too tired to think
anything, but just enjoying the nature.
We were all
exhausted from the day's activities. So we started driving back. It was
almost dinner time, so we stopped at a restaurant in a small town called
The Hungry Horse. Ate a lot and headed back home.
It
was Saturday, and we were supposed to leave UK the next day. So we spent
the morning packing. We weighed all the 3 suitcases, and realized that
we had space for more shopping :) We went out to the shopping area and
shopped a bit for chocolates and other stuff in Tesco, Next, Mothercare
etc. I bought more strawberries to eat on the last day in UK :) D and I
sneaked out late in the night around 11pm to see the Millennium bridge of
NCL. It was very beautiful!
 |
| Millennium Bridge on River Tyne |
The
alarm rang too early, we headed to the airport, checked in our bags –
23, 23 and 23 kg!!!! Along with the car seat. We crashed on the plane
and woke up at Heathrow airport.
Overall it was a PERFECT vacation for all 3 of us! The
weather was perfect! The sun used to go down around 9pm, so we had more
day light to see places :) I loved the history that the country carries
in everything they have. They have maintained/restored as much as
possible since 100s of years! We walked and walked everyday, the best
way to explore any place! And WE GOT TO DO MANY THINGS FROM THE LIST IN
LONELY PLANET BOOK :) The best part of the trip was that our little boy
enjoyed as much as we did :) Yippeeee!
I had forgotten
the passwords to all my email accounts. That shows how much I have
enjoyed for 15 days :D Felt really refreshed!!
I cannot
thank our friends enough! Thanks a loooooot D, M and A. You guys made
our stay really wonderful! Thanks for taking time off for us and a big
THANKS for everything you did for us.
Thanks S, V and
S. You guys are the best! You are really on my most favorite people in
the world list :D :) Thanks for the VIP 10 star treatment :)
