Another Castle and Nessy

Yesterday evening we drove to Inveraray and saw a beautiful castle from the road – dad was sure it's exactly how Cair Paravel would look if it were real. This morning we went back during opening hours to go for a tour. The Duke and Duchess still live in the home (while she was waiting in line for our tickets, mom saw the Duchess walk past – closest we'll probably come to seeing royalty during this trip). The rooms looked lived-in and homey instead of the museum-like setting you often find in castles and stately homes. The furniture and tapestries were still ridiculously old, but somehow it felt like you could live there. One of our favourite features was in the corner of the large living room where a doorway led to a circular turret room with walls lined with cabinets. The glass panels in the cabinets were curved to match the curves in the walls. When the doors to the turret were closed, they formed a corner in the living room and the tapestry panels were cut to create a practically invisible doorway.

Inveraray Castle or Cair Paravel... your choice!

Our driving today included plenty of beautiful scenery - we don't have very many sites to stop at in Scotland, it's mostly just a chance to see the countryside. This also happens to work well for dad, who still isn't feeling well.

We spotted this rope bridge over a small river in the middle of nowhere so we pulled into the car park to take a short walk. This rope bridge was even better than Carrick-a-Rede because we could bounce and sway to scare mom.

Our day continued with plenty of driving through beautiful highlands and a brief stop on the shores of Loch Ness, just so we can say we've been there.

We spotted the Loch Ness Monster!

Or did we...?

Loch Ness.

Tonight we're staying on the Isle of Skye, just across the Skye Bridge, just so we can say we stayed on the Isle of Skye. The B&B I booked smelled like cigarette smoke even though smoking isn't allowed in indoor public places in the UK so we told the owner we wouldn't be able to stay (she looked terribly embarrassed as she apologized). I had seen two B&Bs side-by-side around the corner so we stopped by and they had space for us for a lower price than the smoky B&B and they were right on the water facing Skye Bridge! (The owners of the two B&Bs were actually sisters!) My dad's favourite feature was that the owners reminded him of Mrs. Doubtfire with their grandmotherly behaviour and Scottish accents. The owner at my parents' B&B was named Mrs. MacLennan and mine was Mrs. MacRae. Could it get more Scottish than that?

Skye Bridge as viewed from the front yard of our B&Bs.

The view from the front doors of our B&Bs.

Ach, it's a Bonnie Wee Valley

This morning we flew from Belfast, Northern Ireland to Prestwick Airport, south of Glasgow, Scotland. We drove past Glasgow, along Loch Lomond, and checked into a B&B in a small coastal town called Arrochar.

My room at the B&B.

We still had a couple of hours of daylight so we checked the map for local places to visit and asked our B&B hostess for ideas. We decided to drive to a spot called “Rest and Be Thankful” – the name was intriguing and our hostess assured us that the gorgeous view would make our jaws drop – and then on to Inveraray to see if the castle was still open and pick up something for supper.

We drove through a deep pass in the hills and up the end of the valley to reach the look-out spot known as “Rest and Be Thankful”. As we neared the top of the hill I asked with disbelief, “Is this it?”

We rounded a corner and saw a tiny sign with the name of the spot and an arrow to the parking area. We all fell silent as I parked the car in a spot overlooking the valley.

“Are they serious?”

It was certainly beautiful, but far from the breathtakingly awesome view we were expecting. We spent a few minutes discussing our shock and realized that we should stick with historic sites and rolling green hills as they make our jaws drop, but we've been terribly spoiled by gorgeous mountain scenery back home in the Rockies and it's hard to beat it. Some day I want to go far north into the Scottish Highlands; judging by photos and stories, I think they could make my jaw drop, but “Rest and Be Thankful” didn't do it.

"Rest and be Thankful"

We continued our drive to Inveraray and got side-tracked with another graveyard and old church.

A hook on the graveyard gate.

A memorial bench in an area of the graveyard covered in bluebells.

A memorial amid bluebells.

Most churches here are open from dawn until dusk - part of the bell tower was also open so we climbed up and explored the building.

A view from a bell tower window.

We finished our explorations and arrived in the small town of Inveraray.

A view of Inveraray Castle from the main road just outside of town.

Inveraray.

We've discovered that waiting until late in the evening to try to find supper somewhere doesn't work so well. We really need to start checking into our accommodation earlier.

Castle and Causeway

“Oh wow – this is so weird.”

- My dad's oft-repeated comment in response to the experience of driving on the left side of the road.

Although I'm still not completely at ease when driving on the left, I'm relatively familiar with the process compared to my parents. The decision has been made for me to be the sole driver on the car rental and act as chauffeur for my parents while they're in the UK. Before we flew to Ireland I bought a guidebook with all the rules of the road for the UK. During our flight to Ireland I skimmed through all the rules for drivers and read in detail anything that differs from Canada (e.g. in Canada you can turn right on a red light but in the UK you can't go anywhere on a red light). I'm a bit nervous about being responsible for driving my parents around for the next three weeks, but I'm sure the GPS will be a huge help. I just need to learn to ignore my parents' nervous gasps and arm-rest gripping; I'm sure they'll eventually relax and get accustomed to the feeling of driving on the left.

First stop today was Dunluce Castle, a ruin clinging to the edges of a cliff jutting out into the sea. (In the 1800's the portion of the cliff holding up the kitchen tumbled into the ocean.) The rain started pouring down while we were exploring but after a few minutes of waiting out the worst, we kept exploring.

Archeological excavations of the site recently started.

View from one of the castle windows.

We took a walk along the road to get photos of the castle from a distance.

Mom with a camera, dad with his binoculars - a frequent sight.

Dunluce Castle.

Red phone booths aren't just in London; they're everywhere, even small villages.

Our next site was the Giant's Causeway, an area of interlocking stones resulting from volcanic activity. I've wanted to see this site for quite some time, although I would have preferred to shoot photos in evening light with no tourists around. Not a practical thing on this trip as we had to visit the site late in the morning and it was covered in tourists but I still managed to snag some stranger-free photos.

Dad is quite sick with a cough and cold so he caught the shuttle bus down the hill to the beach and mom and I walked down. As we neared the beach I paused to take a photo and the following conversation occurred - I'm including it here as I'm often asked this question.

Mom: I'm going to take a photo from the same angle and I want to compare and see what you do differently because your pictures always look better than mine.
Me: Well, I'm just doing a general landscape type thing so it won't be very different from yours.
Mom: But what do you look for?
Me: [while looking through the lens] I'm zooming in to cut out the grass right in front of me, looking at the rocks in the distance for composition, checking the seaweed and smaller rocks in the foreground to see if there are any areas I should cut out by zooming in, crouching down to see which angle gives the best reflection of the sky in the tidal pool, and...
Mom: You look at all of that?
Me: Yeah.
Mom: Okay, forget it.

For those of you who have been curious about what goes through my head when I look through the lens, now you know. I make all these considerations in a matter of just a few seconds so it was actually quite interesting to talk through it and realize all the different things I was considering before pushing the shutter button. Now I know why it can be so exhausting to do a portrait session.

The area in the distance dotted with people is the area with the interlocking columns of rock.

Dad perched on one of the highest points of the rock formation, checking out something at sea with his binoculars.

Tiny wildflowers growing amid the rocks, safe from ocean waves.

Dad, mom and me on the Giant's Causeway.

I've seen the Giant's Causeway - a dream fulfilled!

Next was Carrick-a-Rede rope bridge (click the link for info about the history of the site). This is another National Trust site – not something we would have paid to do, but since it was free and along our route, we decided to take a visit. The walk from the car park to the bridge is along a long, beautiful, cliff-side path. The colour of the ocean was more what you'd expect in the tropics - quite stunning.



A man in the line in front of us was terrified to cross the bridge and an older couple, likely his parents or parents-in-law, were chiding him and telling him his whole family had already made it across to the island. We told him to just put one foot in front of the other and he'd get across just fine by avoiding looking down. He pleaded, "But where do I look?" and I told him to stare at the hood on the sweatshirt of the girl in front of him. I've never seen a grown man so terrified of anything. I felt sorry for him but he made it across just fine and crumbled and sat on a rock when he reached his family on the other side. Thankfully they all congratulated him and didn't make fun of him. Although I don't understand such an intense fear of heights, I panic when I go snorkeling (seriously) so I understand the experience of feeling terror over something even when I know the fear is irrational.




By the time we were ready to return to the car, massive storm clouds had formed and we could see the haze of rain falling on the ocean in the distance. As we walked the path back to the car, we pulled on our waterproof jackets just as the downpour hit. Our jeans became soaked but the rain didn't last long and by the time we reached the car our jackets were dry and our jeans only damp. We paid a pound or two for a certificate stating that we had crossed Carrick-a-Rede Rope Bridge – we figured it would make a fun addition to mom's photo scrapbook for the trip.

Another stop at an intriguing-looking graveyard.

Dad checking out a gravestone.

Not really sure about the formatting of this gravestone:
HERE LIETH
THE BODY OF DIN
NES MURPHY WHO
DEPARTED THIS LI
FE APRIL THE 6TH
1776 AGED 24 YEA
RS

View along the Causeway Coastal Route.

We ate lunch at a little town called Ballycastle – I love the names of towns over here! We took the coastal road around the north coast of Ireland to enjoy views of farmland, rolling hills, and the coast. Tomorrow we're off to Scotland!

Ireland and the Argory

“You're brilliant!”
- My mom's comment after I smoothly maneuvered to the third exit of a three-lane roundabout.

We enjoyed a delicious breakfast at our B&B while visiting with a couple of other guests from Calgary, Alberta. It seems so strange to travel halfway around the world and still run into Canadians at every turn. Breakfast included potato bread (quite dense and thin – more like a pancake than bread) and soda bread (flour, buttermilk, and baking soda fried in a pan). Both are new foods for us and we enjoyed them, especially the soda bread.

Our first stop was The Argory, a stately home owned by the National Trust. The place has never been updated with electricity beyond a few outlets for the security system and cleaning so the home is only open in the summer as it is only lit by sunlight. National Trust sites sadly don't allow indoor photography so I can't share images of the interior, but it was a beautiful home, largely retaining the same arrangement as when the family lived there. The office used by the last owner remains exactly as it was when he died, with staff occasionally carefully cleaning items on his desk and replacing them in the same position as he left them.

This dog followed us on a walk around the grounds - we were told he belongs to a neighbour but likes to hang out with guests on the estate.

The Argory.

I like Ireland.

Most of the people in my family enjoy exploring old graveyards - I spotted this one along the side of a country road so we stopped to take a quick walk and check out the gravestones. I could hear waves crashing on the beach on the other side of the hill.

A beautiful old graveyard.

We did plenty of driving today as we wanted to reach the northernmost tip of Ireland, partly because we heard that area is beautiful and partly just so we could say we reached the northernmost tip of Ireland. When I was a kid my family was on a road trip in British Columbia and my dad went out of his way to drive us across the border on the southernmost tip of the Alaska pan-handle just so we could say we'd been to Alaska. We like adding quirky things to our been-there, done-that list.

The most northern tip of Ireland.
Why did we go there? Because it's there.

I drove on some fun roads.

Now we can say we've been to the North Pole.

As we drove down a narrow, steep, winding country road (I like to throw random way-points on the GPS route to give us a better chance of stumbling on interesting scenery away from the main routes) we spotted this stone cross and decided to find a place to turn around so we could check it out. You never know what you'll find when you do that, but it's my favourite thing to do while on a road trip.


Next to the cross was a low, stone wall with a sign mounted on it:

"An early ecclesiastical site founded by St. Patrick and which survived to the 12th century. There is a tall, simple wheeled cross; the remains of two church buildings; one to the north west being that of a chapel built in 1622 and destroyed in 1688. There is a small gabled structure with a stone roof known as the Mortuary or Skull House and said to be a tomb-shrine associated with St. Finnian, Abbot of the Monastery. Also located within the modern graveyard wall is a basing-stone, a cross-inscribed stone (both near the Skull House), a wheeled-cross slab and a small stone cross (near the South Church)."

Like I said, you never know what you'll find when a random site catches your eye.

Stairs over the rock wall.

View from the top of the wall - the ocean, a small town, and in the foreground are bushes covering the old building remains and gravestones. I could see old paths worn between the bushes so I left mom and dad on the wall and did a bit of exploring.

Climbed onto a wall and discovered a few cows staring at me from a nearby field. For some reason I find it really amusing when cows stare at me like that.

A gravestone from 1732.

A close-up just for my font-addict brother, David.

Tonight we're staying at a guest house in Coleraine on the north coast. As I drove into the town I saw a police officer standing in the middle of the road with more officers and stopped cars behind him. He motioned for me to stop and he wrote down my license plate number as he approached the vehicle. He asked me to pull ahead and speak with the detective. I was then asked if I had been in the area the night before between 10:00 and 11:00 p.m. I said we hadn't and he let us proceed. The guest house was about two or three blocks away (between the detective and our accommodation a drunk guy stumbled into the road in front of me but his friend grabbed him and held him back... welcome to Ireland). Later this evening mom and dad turned on the news and were shocked to discover that a brutal murder the previous night only a few blocks away was why we had been questioned by police. Mom had been nervous about our safety in Northern Ireland due to “the troubles” and I had been telling her that we were perfectly safe as we wouldn't be going to any rough areas of Belfast. Watching the news tonight certainly didn't help. The religious affiliations of the people connected with the murder (Protestant or Catholic) were also mentioned in the news broadcast – not something you'd expect to hear, but not surprising in Northern Ireland.

Our guest house is large and beautiful but the room rates were quite low - a perk of travel in Northern Ireland compared to travelling in a more popular place like the Lake District in England. So nice to be spoiled! We had separate suites and each had a kitchen, sitting room, bathroom, and separate bedroom for only £25 per person.

My canopy bed made me feel like a bit of a diva.