EIS –Newcastle to Edinburgh (Day 06)

EIS –Newcastle to Edinburgh (Day 06)


(8/23/2010) Today we traveled to Edinburgh (pronounced Edin-bra) with stops at Hadrian’s Wall, Jedburgh, Melrose, and finally Edinburgh.

We left Coventry around 8:00 and after a short ride stopped at a ruined section of Hadrian’s Wall. This is the coast-to-coast defense wall that the Romans built as a defense against the northern tribes of Celts. (See the movie Arthur which has sections of the wall, even though it is probably a movie prop.) Here, the wall is mostly gone with the wall mostly a base and a few stones high. But at various places, the wall reaches 14 feet high and about six feet wide. At these locations, the wall is a world heritage site. Here, the wall is barely two feet (less than one meter) high as you can see from the photos.

We continued our trip through the Northumberland National Park to Scotland’s border. We made a short stop here for a break and to get a photo of the border, in this case a rock with “Scotland” painted on it and a man wearing a kilt, playing the bag pipes. Some photos and my left over change (17p) later we were back on our way. In truth, the country side is very nice, although it did start to sprinkle as we arrived, which that did not dampen anyone’s exit from the bus.

Back on the bus, we motored on and by the time, we got to Jedburgh and a bathroom break, the rain was just a sprinkle. Sorry I missed the picture of the hanging tree on our way into town, it was on the opposite side of the bus we were sitting on. In respect, it was a very old tree, wide at the trunk with two large limbs extending in opposite directions.

Where we stopped was right next to the Jedburgh Abby. The Abby was for Catholics and the English destroyed this Abby along with three others so the Scotts would not use them. It was raining a little, but I hope, you cannot tell from the picture. Here we also saw the house of Mary, Queen of Scotts on our way out of Jedburgh.

Leaving Jedburgh, we continued on our way and after an hour or so stopped in the village of Melrose for lunch and a break. Located next to the rest stop we find the 12th-century Melrose Abbey ruins with ties to Robert the Bruce.

We are taking pictures of the abbey when it begins to rain. Not hard, mind you, mostly a drizzle, but still annoying and it only lasted about 3 minutes.

On our way back to the bus, the sun came out and was on the Abby so we took some more pictures.

As we drove through the countryside, we pass an aqueduct (or viaduct, not sure which). But I thought it look neat so I took a picture. As you can see, it is quite tall. The aqueduct was of course on the other side of the coach and I was lucky to get the picture with only minor reflection.

Later we finally made our way to Edinburgh. After a short drive through the streets of “old” and “new” Edinburgh and a quick orientation of the “new” town streets, we get off the bus for several hours for sightseeing and shopping. In our drive through the “old” town we passed by the Royal Mile. Since the past couple of week is part of the festival that also includes the Tattoo, they blocked off the street (High Street). As you can see from the picture, there are many thousands of people here.

There are many shops on Princes Street and you would have thought we would find a store that carried power converters, not so. However, we finally found a new power converter about a mile from the spot where the bus dropped us off and bought that one. That took us about 45 minutes, we had to rush there, rush back, and we still had a little time to check out the gardens between the castle and new town.

From the gardens on Princes Street, you have a good view of the Edinburgh Castle. As you can see from the walls on the right side of the castle, they are quite high. We will tour the castle tomorrow and also go there for the Tattoo tomorrow evening. Although you cannot see the stands in the picture, they are just to the left of the building on the left side where the flag is located.

We meet the bus on time and then head on our way to check into the hotel. After an hour or so, we again leave because we decided to attend the Scottish Evening excursion festivities. This included a meal and traditional Scottish dancers, bagpipers, violinists, and ended with the ceremony of the haggis. I will cover this excursion in a separate blog following this daily blog’s posting.

Now back at the hotel room and having my new voltage converter, I had started to charge some batteries. First, the batteries for my Canon camera, since these are specialty batteries and I probably would not be able to find any more. While we were at the Scottish Evening, I charged one of my batters, and then I charged the second one. Next, I plugged in my AA battery charger to charge the batteries for Carmen’s camera. Poof! The new converter starts to smoke and now it no longer works. What? Oh well, at least I got my batteries charged. Carmen’s camera takes AA batteries and we can buy some of those.

I get the receipt and repacked the voltage converter to return to the store tomorrow after our city tour. Hopefully they’ll exchange it or I’m buying another one.

Later, Bob and Carmen – EIS.