Edinburgh.

We’ve been in Edinburgh for a few days now and my photography activities have been severely curtailed. All we’ve really done is wonder around the Christmas market and then the Royal Mile. We’ve been spending time with Lynne’s brother Jet and his wife Jean. Subsequently I thought it would be rude to be on a photography mission where I’m stopping every five minutes, when all they really want to do is mooch around the shops and market. So, nothing much to report from Edinburgh except to say I don’t recall the bus journeys to and from the city taking quite so long last year. Each journey seems to have become progressively longer to the point where it starts to feel a bit like a Chinese water torture. Last night we got on the wrong bus away from the city centre but only realised our mistake around 15 minutes into the journey. When I asked the driver if the bus would eventually go to our intended destination, his answer was “yes, but it will take about two hours, the best you can do is get another bus back from the other side of the road”. So we got off and went to wait on the other side of the road. We waited about twenty minutes until the bus we’d just gotten off came along and we got back on. The driver  asked if there had been any other buses along before him. I was tempted to say, “don’t you think we might have got on one if it had come along” but we just got back on and prepared for the longest and most boring bus ride ever. By the time we got back to Edinburgh’s Caravan & Motorhome club camp site an hour or so later I was well and truly pissed off and we went more or less straight to bed. So Edinburgh was a story of long boring bus rides and, incidentally, the one I just wrote about wasn’t the last or even the worst! Most of the time which wasn’t taken up with endlessly tedious bus rides was spent at the Christmas market and strolling up and down the Royal Mile. I really do like Edinburgh but one shop full of cashmere is pretty much the same as the next shop full of cashmere, and believe me, there are lots of them.

Anyway, this is my boring attempt to wrap up the blogs from our Scottish trip. Edinburgh didn’t give me much to write about as nothing of note really happened although we did indulge in a quite exceptional meal at a restaurant near the castle called The Witchery. This is a beautiful restaurant at the top of the Royal Mile. We booked a couple of days ahead as it definitely doesn’t seem like the kind of place where you could just walk in off the street and expect to get a table. Anyway, we had a wonderful evening, the food was exceptional and the company excellent. The only down side was the inevitable bus ride back to the camp site. To anyone not interested in motorhome/caravans, you would be amazed how many you’ll see as you travel around Scotland and the campsite was constantly full with people leaving and quickly being replaced so that there were rarely any spaces vacant.

To sum up, there are no photographs from Edinburgh because I didn’t take any but with Lynne going off on a cruise with her sisters not long after we return home, it is my intention to return to Scotland in the next week or so.

PS. By way of a confession, As I just finished writing this, I’m already back in Scotland, or more specifically, Portree on the Isle of Skye. Today I drove 510 miles so now I’m so knackered I’m not even going to attempt to write a full blog, but hopefully I’ll be rested tomorrow and with any luck there’ll be some photos to share, (always assuming anyone is interested). Once again, watch this space!