Roadtrippin’ around Scotland

New Years Eve 2006 - January 7, 2007

We flew into Newcastle and paid too much for a train ticket to Edinburgh (bloody public transport) where we met our roadtrippin’ team from London.

First stop – Edinburgh for NY. The world famous Hogmanay, one of the biggest NY street parties in the world, cancelled due to hurricane strength winds and dangerous weather conditions. This didn’t stop us bringing in 2007 with a bang and a bottle of Moet (thanks to our mate Callum).

Stop 2 – Day trip to Glasgow with new Australian friends and pseudo-roadtrippers Kate and Ezzy for a Celtic football game.

Stop 3 – Stirling, home of William Wallace (aka Braveheart) monument.

Stop 4 – Back to Edinburgh because Ambo’s bag somehow got left behind.

Stop 5 – Stirling again.

From Stirling we drove north to Fort William in the Highlands. We saw some amazing scenery including Britain’s highest peaks (a massive 974m – I reckon Pyramid Hill looks bigger!) We stopped and chased a deer around the bush with a camera Steve Irwin style (got some great pics). We saw the Loch Ness monster and some big hairy highland cattle.

We also ate some traditional haggis at a little country pub – chopped up liver, kidney, spleen, lung, heart and all the leftover offal, boiled in a bag and served as minced up meat balls. It tasted excellent!

Possibly the highlight of the trip (for some of us anyway) was on the final day. Our aim was to drive from Fort William to London in a day with only one major stop to go and have a look at Hadrian’s Wall. A wall built by the Romans in 122 right across the north end of England to stop the movement of people from north to south and vice versa. Only ruins remain now. Anyway it was meant to be a short drive off the main motorway back to London, maybe 30 mins round trip to see it. So we stop at this place, after driving 30 mins, thinking that we've found the wall, really beaten up little wall. We met this old timer who was building his own little wall next to the broken down one (we nicknamed him Hadrian). He corrected us and pointed into the horizon to where the 'real' wall was! Reliable team A in the front, consisting of Ambo – mad Paris driver and Gibbo – Aussie bloke who navigates on instinct, decide that instead of turning around and going back the way we came (some would argue the sensible thing to do) we'd try a different way. So we go deep into the English countryside where pubs close on a Saturday afternoon and end up heading back towards Scotland! Three hours, one car sick road tripper trying to spew on the roadside (Dysko), one sympathy spew from another roadtripper (Fi) and a pub meal later (we finally found a pub that was open) we're back on the motorway heading to London. A team my arse! Piss funny!

Big thanks go to Dysko for inviting us on the roadtrip, Ambo for making it all possible, Azzo for the DVD player, Gibbo for the highlight and all the guys for making it a wicked roadtrip!