Road Trip

Five weeks ago, Emma and I had a bit of a road trip.  It was something that we had initially planned back in March, and when we did, it had seemed months away, but it came around really quick.

The idea was that we would go to Edinburgh and see the Royal International Tattoo, which was something that both Emma and I had always wanted to see.  The other thing with this trip is that it would be me returning to the City of my birth for the first time since I left at about four months old.

However, it is quite a drive from Kent (we had decided to drive as it would cost us less in petrol than the nearly £150 each that the train fare would cost!), so we decided that we would do it in stages, driving to Leeds on the Monday, continuing to Edinburgh on the Tuesday, and coming back after a two-night stay in Auld Reekie on the Thursday, with a two-night stay in York to break up the journey.

The journey to Leeds was fairly uneventful, but because we didn’t leave until later than we had planned, we didn’t arrive there until the late afternoon.  The hotel that we stayed in was one that I had stayed in a couple of years ago when I had gone to Leeds for a Resuscitation Council conference.  When I had stayed the first time, it was called Bewley’s, but it is now under new management and called The Clayton Hotel.

We had a quick bimble around the area near the hotel, not that there was a lot to see, but we had decided to eat at the hotel rather than eating out, which was definitely a good idea. The food that we had was both very good and inexpensive, and I would recommend the hotel.

On the Tuesday, began the next phase of the trip.  In addition, there was someone who I’d served with in Iraq who I knew lived near Edinburgh, whom I hadn't seen for about ten years, so I had suggested that we meet up and he invited us to dinner.

The journey to Scotland was quite slow, and there seemed to be an awful lot of road works, but we arrived at about 3pm and found the hotel, Pirie’s Hotel, which was located quite close to Haymarket and a couple of miles from Princes Street.  So, once we’d settled into our room we decided to go exploring and walk towards the Castle.

Ok, so we became a little geographically challenged but we managed to find the Castle, Princes Street, which was very busy as we were in the City at the same time as The Fringe, and even found our way back to the hotel (although I did cheat, as I knew the trams went to Haymarket, so it was just a case of following the tram tracks from Princes Street) in time to shower and change before driving out to Patch’s in Auchterarder.

Like me, Patch is an Army Reservist, but an Officer in the Royal Artillery rather than the AMS, but he had been attached to the medical unit that I was with in Iraq.  Dinner was fabulous and a pleasant evening was had by (hopefully) all, and we were given some recommendations of places to go/things to see in Edinburgh.

The following day, after breakfast, became somewhat surreal, as we drove out to the Oxgangs part of Edinburgh and to the house that I had lived in immediately after I was born.  The quarter in which we had lived had been knocked through to the one next door and was now the Welfare Office.  With Emma's encouragement, I went in, introduced myself and explained why I was there. The lady was extremely helpful and allowed me to go out into the back garden to take some pictures as well as giving me the guided tour of what had been my first home.  And that was the surreal part, as the last time that I had been in that house was 48 years ago, with my mum and dad, neither of whom are with us anymore.

We then drove back into Edinburgh and did a bit more exploring of the shops on the Royal Mile, before the highlight so far for Emma, which was our tour of Mary King's Close.

After heading back to the hotel and changing, we then got a taxi to dinner at a restaurant called Il Castello in Castle Terrace, after which we walked up Johnston Terrace and found our seats for the Tattoo.

The Tattoo was very good, the highlight for Emma being the Top Secret Drum Corps from Basel in Switzerland, although I thought that all of the "acts" were equally as good, and the nearly two hours of the show flew past.

On the Thursday was the next long trek, this time to York, which we made good time, arriving in the early afternoon and booking into the York Pavillion Hotel.  After settling in, we then made our way into York, meeting up with our friends Barry and Anna, before grabbing some food and settling into an evening of cocktail drinking.

The next day became a museum day, as it was hammering it down all day.  In the morning we visited the National Railway Museum and spent a couple of hours exploring this very large museum.

We then walked into the centre of York and had some lunch before then walking to our next museum, the York Castle Museum.

It had been suggested to us by both Patch and Barry that if we were going to be in York for lunch that we should visit Betty's, which we did, but we arrived at midday and the queue of people waiting to go in was enormous, so we ended up going elsewhere. 

Once we got to York Castle, another enjoyable couple of hours was spent going around the museum before we made our way back to the car and to the hotel for a quick pre-dinner snooze.

We had a very enjoyable dinner in the hotel, followed by a nice nightcap prior to a good night's sleep on what was effectively the last night of our "holiday" before the long drive back to Kent, with the reality of returning to work a couple of days later.

Now there's nothing until Malta in October, but hopefully the time until then will go as quick as the time since Edinburgh.