One of our suppliers, located just Cambridge in England, had arranged for an international training session for 5 days and as the ANZ distributors, we had to attend!
We had to attend training in Ely just outside Cambridge. Since we had seen much of England before, we decided to fly into Edinburgh, Scotland and hire a car to see Scotland and then head down to Ely in time for the training.
Scotland is a great place to visit and we started by spending a few nights in Edinburgh visiting Edinburgh Castle, and some of the local attractions. We stayed on "The Royal Mile" which is the road that leads uo to the castle. The weather was average and rained on and off. We did the "hop on hop off" bus tour - which is a great way to see any city when you first get there.
History abounds in this part of the world with centuries old buildings, pubs, castles, stories and legends! The photo above is of Edinburgh Castle.
Fun fact..... a canon is fired at 1pm every day, just a single shot to mark the time... Why 1pm? Simply because if it were fired at midday, it would have to be fired 12 times, it's cheaper to fire it just once and hence the 1pm time slot!
We did a tour of the castle, which is located atop a hill overlooking the city of Edinburgh. One of the photos shows the setting up of the grandstand for the Roayal Edinburgh Tatoo which was happening in a few weeks' time.
The city itself is fascinating and there is lots to see and do, and if you like Scotch Whiskey, then there are plenty of Scotch Whiskey bars to visit and try some of the hundreds of brands and blends!
Edinburgh looks rather grey, and that's because it is. Much of it is centuries old stone construction. We went into the Deacon Brodies Tavern for a drink and tasted a number of Scotch Whiskeys - and that's where we found out how many hundreds of different brands there are let alone how many blends of each brand exist! One would need a very long time and several livers to try them all.
While in Edinburgh, we went to a Scottish Culture show and dinner, which includedthe local cuisine such as haggus and black pudding. The latter was not a favourite, but haggus was actually quite good!
We left Edinburgh and headed north toward the coast to St Andrews.
We saw this as a "must do" stop. We vivsited the town for lunch, explored the ruins of St Andrew's Cathedral and visited the Golf Club itself.
We continued on through Dundee and onto Carnousti where we stayed at the Carnousti Hotel. This was an awesome pub stay and was a great stop. It's just as you imagine a UK pub stay to be - locals playing snooker, playing darts and having dinner - it's the locals "meeting place" where everyone goes to catch up as it's too cold outside!
From there we continued north to Dunottar Castle and StoneHaven just exploring the countryside, going for walks and seeing what was around.
There are dry stone walls everywhere throughout the UK and lots of paths that take you through countless villages. A fascinating way to explore the countryside.
From Stonehaven, we headed west into the Scottich Highlands to see the home of the Single Malt Scotch Whiskey. A picturesque place with LOTS of distilleries. We stayed in Nethy Bridge at and old-world hotel and it was a nice experience. We visited Dufftown which is the home of Glenfiddich and did a tour of the distillery as well as a tasting.
The photos below show the Glenfiddich Restaurant, the distillery, the "cooperage" where the barrels are made, a Nethy Bridge next to our hotel which is called the Nethy Bridge Hotel (no surprise there I guess!)
Leaving Nethy Bridge, we headed for Inverness and Loch Ness to see iif we could spot the Loch Ness Monster - sadly, but not surprisingly, it didn't happen. It snowed the day we visited Loch Ness and Inverness. The weather was miserable, but it was a fun experience.
The ruins of Urquart Castle can be seen right on the edge of Loch Ness.
From Inverness we headed south to Linlithgow and on to the Falkirk Wheel to see a marvel of human engineering. Scotland has many canals and lochs that narrow canal boats travel on. These canals often have locks to raise the level of the river so the boats can travel up hill. In Falkirk, a "wheel" has been built to do a job that a lock cannot do because of the huge height difference.
The wheel picks up the boat from the bottom canal and rotates to take it up to the top canal while at the same time bring one down from the top canal to the bottom canal! It was fascinating to watch.There are hundreds of little villages and hotels/pubs along the canal systems and they look like great places to visit and stay if one had the time.
Continuing south, we bypassed Glasgow due to time contraints and continued down to Lockerbie - the site of the plane crash disaster back in 1988. There is a memorial/cemetery there dedicated to the people that died on that Pan Am flight. We visited the memorial.
We stayed in a nearby village called Moffat. A quaint picturesque place which was like a scene out of the childrens
animated show Postman Pat ! There were countless laneways with room enough for one car and "right of ways" that one would have to reverse into to let another car pass. They had either dry stone walls and/or hedges either side, so passing was not an option and someone always had to back up! It was fun driving these lanes.
The video below is a bit shaky due to the roads, but it gives an idea of what we experienced.
We continued south and crossed the border into England where we continued until we got to The Lakes District. Lake Windemere is exremely beautiful and one can understand the popularity of the area. We stopped at KeswicK and Bowness on Windemere.
We were told by a friend that the city of Chester was a great place to visit and that it was a walled city that was worth exploring, so after The Lakes District, we headed to Chester. Yes, it was a fascinating place to visit. We walked along the top of the wall of two sides, the wall was to protect the city during the middle ages.
We continued to Ely where we were staying for the training.
Ely is a small village outside Cambridge. It has a huge cathedral (as every English village has), but this took 600 years to build. It is an amazing catherdal and is now associated with an Anglical School which has been built next to it.
While at Ely, our supplier organised a trip into Cambridge where we explored the town a bit and did "punting" on the River Cam which runs through the Cambridge University grounds.
We visited the cathedral just as the choir was practicing!
After our training, we drove to Heathrow and flew back to Sydney but on the way did a quick two night stop over in Singapore to break up the journey. We did the touristy stuff such as the cable car to Sentosa Island, visited the Merlion, Raffles and Marina Bay Sands, we had dinner at the street food stalls as well as other typical Singaporean touristy stuff.
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