Landing in Ireland!!

Well it's official - we have arrived in the Emerald Isle, land of Guinness and leprechauns. We came in to Dun Laoghaire port on an earlier swift ferry so had an extra few hours to play with in Dublin! Perfect sunshine greeted us after a rainy start, so we managed to see the Dublin castle and gardens, 2 famous cathedrals and do a bit of noseying through the shops.

St Patrick's Cathedral

At Dublin Castle

Dublin at night - over the river Liffey

The Lakes District, England and Wales!!

On the way down to Wales we decided to drive through a bit of the Lakes District in Cumbria, England.

We visited Lake Windermere which is the largest of the English lakes, and it was a lovely sunny day there. Hamish tried some Kendal Mint cake, which is like a bar of solid sugar (with extra glucose syrup!) that tastes like mint oil. You can even get chocolate covered ones! Good for endurance sport and the like, apparently some went up Mt Everest with the Hillary crew!


Then we moved down and crossed the border into WALES!!!


First stop in Wales was Conwy, where there is an awesome castle with city walls still pretty well intact.

This is Hamish at the top of one of the turrets; check out the one top left!


From there we moved on to Llandudno, a victorian seaside town where we stayed the night. Has a really different atmosphere!
Here's Hamish skimmin' his stones

The Last of Scotland

We have now farewelled Scotland :( On the way down to England and Wales we did check out 2 highlights though - Rosslyn Chapel and Hadrian's Wall.

You can't take photos of Rosslyn Chapel but most of you would have seen (a replica of) it in the Da Vinci Code. It was built in 1446 and has a fascinating history involving Knights Templar, Freemasons, murder, treasure; all the good stuff. We were able to get into a guided tour of the place and learned a lot about the carvings inside. Some of the really kool features were;
- A copy of the death mask of Robert the Bruce (that guy from Braveheart)/ a famous Scottish King.
- Over 100 'Green men'; these weird little faces of men with plants coming out of their mouths, supposedly a Pagan symbol of the bond/link between man and earth.
- 2 famous pillars at the front of the chapel; the Mason and the Apprentice pillar. The Mason carved his pillar, and then set off to a nearby town for inspiration for the 2nd one. Meanwhile the apprentice had a dream and beautifully carved the second pillar. When the Mason returned and saw the work, he flew into a jealous rage and killed his apprentice with a mallet. At the back of the chapel is a carving of the Mason's face, nearby is the Apprentice with a bump on his head, and then the Apprentice's crying mother.
- There is a carving of an angel carrying a heart. This is supposedly because the chap who had the chapel built (William St Clair) and his brother were chosen to escort the heart of Robert the Bruce (King of Scotland) to Jerusalem. Robert the Bruce had wanted his heart to be returned to the Holy place when he fell. If you read the Da Vinci code, there were certain other ties of the St Clairs to Jerusalem!
- The Crypt was where limited filming took place for the movie. Apparently Tom Hanks walked down an aisle and down into the Crypt, but the rest of the church was shot from a model, as the real chapel is currently under restoration and is covered in scaffolding. Apparently the film crew put up a sticker of a pentagram over the entrance of the crypt, which was removed after filming to leave a white mark where it had taken off the surface of the 600year old stone!!!! So now there is a nice white circle above the entrance to the crypt, lol.

After that, we left Scotland and passed over the English border.


Hadrian's Wall was built in ~130AD by Roman Emperor Hadrian as the frontier of the Roman Empire, and to keep the Picts at bay haha, the ancient inhabitants of Northern Scotland proved a bit much for the Romans to handle. The wall is now broken in places but originally stretched the whole way across the country. We visited it in several places, the most memorable being the Sycamore Gap. Here the is a beautiful Sycamore tree in the place where the opening scene of Robin Hood; Prince of Thieves was filmed. Lol.

This is me at the Sycamore Gap.

Here's Hamish with his bow n arrow :)

Almost there

Only 10 days to go before we start off on our travels, so we're busy with packing and organising!! We also moved back to the highland resort staff accomodation so that's kept us busy over the last few days.

This morning we were a bit homeless (between moving out of our house and into the resort later on) so we drove to Carrbridge nearby and ate our cereal (with all our cutlery and dishes and entire belongings haha) at this nice bridge amongst the squirrels.
Apprently this bridge was built in 1717 so that people could reach the burial place across the other side of the Dulnain river, bodies in tow :S