Travel Musings

Summer Strum was great fun. It is a ukulele based music festival, done purely to raise money for charities in the Wirrall and Liverpool areas. It is also, unusually, free to enter. Each year Hoylake Rugby club provides its grounds, clubhouse and a load of volunteers to put this on, and it was superbly well run. Even though the majority of musicians, volunteers and visitors were my age group, it was most definitely a family occasion - although teenagers were conspicuous by their absence! Of course, there was the usual collection of food, drink and trinket stands, and the clubhouse bar was well frequented. There were no facilities (electric, water, toilet disposal etc) for motorhomes or caravans, but the field we were in gave us plenty of space.  We made friends with the people in the two vans next to us - Brian and Mo in one, and Mike, Ann and a labradoodle called Gladys in the other. They all had recently taken up the ukulele. In this photo they are in the second row back...

Two nights at Garlieston Camp Site is an excellent way to finish off our holiday. The site is quiet and welcoming, and apparently very popular. It is situated in Garlieston Bay, on the north shore of the Solway Firth. Garlieston itself is a small and tidy fishing village, now with only one (good) pub and a garage/shop. Like in most of small British harbours the fishing activity is now very low, and a lot of the old cottages have been turned into holiday lets. In this case it has at least saved the village from decay. The main claim to fame for Garlieston is the part it played in the Normany Landings seventy five years ago. The beach and harbour here were apparently very similar to the Normandy beaches, so it was here that Operation Mulberry was launched. This was to devise and test methods of getting tanks and equipment off the ships onto land. They developed three methods, but only one was worthy and became known as Mulberry Harbours. Needless...

On Friday, summer decided to make a tentative appearance. It stopped raining around Loch Lomond and we had a spectacular sunset. There was still a cool breeze, but this kept the emerging midges at bay, so they weren't a great problem. Everybody seemed more cheerful. The next day we carried on south towards Largs, on the North Ayrshire coast. The drive through Dumbarton and north Glasgow was nowhere near as grim as I expected, and most places looked tidy, but the accents were seemingly getting harsher. The Erskine bridge over the Clyde was impressive, and the towns on the North Ayrshire coast all looked prosperous. The Largs Marina, or Yacht Haven to give it its proper name, simply oozed money. Quite apart from the yachts and cruisers, the car park was full of Ferraris, F Types, a DB10, assorted Porches and Mercs, and some downmarket Range Rovers. The sun shone all day on Saturday, so Ann and I just got the chairs out and watched all the boating activity, and got ...

The drive from Oban to Loch Lomond was pleasant at the beginning, but became much better as we neared Loch Lomond. Once again, though, it was misty with occasional showers. Our campsite is right on the edge of the lesser used east side of Loch Lomond, and it is very good indeed . Because the video is much shorter I have been able to raise the quality and still stay within the blog limit of 100mb. I've looked at the videos I took on the journey, but to be honest they are not really worth putting up. The rain is just too obtrusive. Instead he is a short video about a Highland rush hour traffic jam we found ourselves in. We are here for two nights as we needed another day to do some admin and housekeeping. Tomorrow we begin the journey south, and eventually home. First stop on the way though is on the Ayrshire coast at Largs Marina.

Scotland is quite tall, but it isn't very broad, The journey from Inverness to Fort William takes only two hours in a slow motorhome. Loch Ness was....somewhat disappointing. It could be much more interesting for the tourist if they got rid of the very narrow band of trees between the road and the Loch. We only saw a fraction of it because all the lay byes were full of Japanese carrying buses. Not Japanese carrying buses, but buses carrying Japanese. And, when you got to the heart of Nessie country your heart sank, and you put the pedal to the metal. Further on the Great Glen was impressive, but with nowhere to stop and admire. There was a highlight, however. On the way we came across a memorial to the Commandos. It was raised here as they originally trained in the wild mountains surrounding us. Latterly it has also become a small memorial site for Commandos killed in Afghanistan. It was incredibly moving, and I'm sure the water in my eyes was from the strong wind blow...

Monday night - three o'clock in the morning...." David!!  David!! The roof is leaking!!. Jeez, above Ann's head water was dripping from the roof light fitting. It wasn't raining, but we did have the roof light open during a rain storm a few hours previously. Could that be the reason? Anyway, in a state of undress, and with Ann stating the bleeding obvious, I tried to mop up the interior of the roof light. It seemed OK, so back to bed. However, at half past four (it is light then in Scotland) I could hear the drips again. So, roof light fully open (luckily it wasn't raining), and standing on a stepladder with my head out the roof light I could see that due to the particular angle the van was at, water had pooled at one corner of the roof light  - and sure enough there was a crack in the mastic. Luckily, having been a boy cub, I carry a roll of gaffer tape (don't ask!), and after mopping up a quarter bucketful of water got to work with the tape. What the inhabi...

We left Skye on Sunday, with a three hour drive to the next stop at a pub/hotel near Inverness, called The Grouse and Trout. We didn't take the obvious route along the north shore of Loch Ness, as we wanted to do that on the way back towards Oban. So we took a more northerly route, which although was pretty at times didn't have much in the way of drama. Some of the roads had suffered badly over the winter. Here's another road trip video, but I've now learned about transitions between the clips, and how to stabilise and clean them up a bit. Our route into Inverness was therefore from the north, over the Moray Firth Bridge, and passed the football stadium of Inverness Caledonian Thistle, known locally as Caley. They had a few overachieving seasons in the early Naughties, including a famous cup match where they destroyed the mighty Celtic. The newspaper headline the next day read: "Super Caley go ballistic, Celtic are atrocious" The Grouse and Trout h...