Lakes District to Scotland -

Lakes District to Scotland

22 May

A wonderful moment to share with Miss B, a visit to Beatrix Potter’s House and Garden at Hilltop in Lake District. I loved Peter rabbit as a child and Miss B shares this love. We were both pretty excited to visit both the house and Mr Macgregors Garden! It didn’t disappoint, walking through her house you start to imagine what it was like back when she wrote all those, now famous, little white books.

Walking through the village where there were so many places and things that Beatrix referred to in her writings, was magical in itself. Like the Postbox (Peter Rabbit’s Almanac) and The old Post Office (The Tale of the Pie and Patty-Pan). Such a beautiful day, blessed with sunshine and blue skies, it was lovely. More photos included in weekly youtube wrap.

When we left we took a lovely drive and finished at Burns Farms for the night. This is a Campground we found on Search for Sites and full details can be found on our where we stayed page.

May 23

Early stop at Castlerigg Stone Circle built around 4500 years ago in the Neolithic period. Local Metamorphic Slate, set in a circle about 32m wide, tallest stone 2.3m high and the heaviest stone is reported to weigh approximately 16 tonnes! This is one of the earliest stone circles in Brittain. There are around 1300 stone circles in the Brittish Isles.

Continuing on with our beautiful drive through the Lake District. To say we were impressed is an understatement. The beautiful scenery means you cant help but fall in love with the Lake District.

An area we loved (in spring – Late May) was Honister. Even with the 25% inclines and narrow roads, all of which Betsy, our campervan handled like a pro! It was just such a wonderful display of natural beauty that we stopped multiple times and hopefully some of our footage in our youtube video weekly wrap did it justice.

From there onto Carlisle Castle in Carlisle. We parked in the car park adjacent which was 3 pound for 3 hours. Having visited so many castles to be honest, it was not on our best castles list. But they all have an important part in history which can not be ignored. We were also lucky to visit while the art sculpture Poppie’s Weeping Window was there. We have an English Heritage pass (an annual one) but on this day it was free entry anyway for everyone!

The English Heritage Pass also gives you entry into the military museum on site. There was a great interactive morse code activity that Miss B loved.

Wild camp that night at Rickerby Park which is lovely, flat, bins and beautiful walking, jogging, bicycle path to enjoy and only couple of miles from Carlisle Castle.

May 24

Big Day!

Housesteads Roman Fort (and 3 pound parking) free entry with our English Heritage Pass.

This included a great walk (all good training for our upcoming treks) from the reception area to the museum at the top of the hill. Good to take the time to watch the seven minute video to put things into perspective of what you will be looking at.

In the museum there are models and for the kids a great dress up box, which we always love (but just for kids sorry). Miss B became a Roman soldier complete with shield and sword.

The actual site was very interesting and there are sufficient information boards (great reading material while worldschooling!). These provide some detail on each area of the fort and what it may have looked like and been used for.

From there we went to Walltown.

Bake in a hot oven then cool for 300 million years!! The extra-hard rock at Walltown was once molten magma. Emperor Hadrian saw the rocky ridge as a natural wall of defense and had a Roman wall built along its crest to form the northern limit of the Roman Empire.

From the 1870s to 1977 they quarried thousands of tons of stone (and part of Hadrians Wall!). Planning permission for an extension to this quarry was refused in 1977 and working ceased.

Another beautiful walk along Hadrians Wall, again in sunshine and blue skies.

Lanercost Priory

A 12th-13th Century church which was built with stones from the nearby Hadrian’s wall. Founded in 1169 as an Augustinian House of Prayer. During 1306-07 Edward 1 stayed in Lanercost. You may enter the Priory for no cost. However, if you have the English heritage pass there is an additional area which we found interesting (but would not have paid extra for without our pass).

There is an amazing cemetery at the rear of the Priory you can walk through. Great for photography. Video footage included in youtube weekly wrap.

After all this learning and fresh air we headed off over the border to Glasgow, Scotland.

May 25

Waking up in Glasgow, in a wildcamp 7km from the city centre! Walking distance to the train (2.5km) in a beautiful park Pollock Country Park. Full details with GPS on where we stayed). It is an absolutely beautiful park gifted by the Maxwell family in 1966, on the basis it be kept open to the public. Great for cycling, walking, jogging and wild camping!

Grateful for the continuation of beautiful weather, we walked to the train. We bought tickets (card only) took a photo of platform we were leaving from and made our way into the city to do a Lonely Planet walking tour. We pinned our location in maps.me (offline maps) and took off exploring. On the youtube video of the weekly wrap we showed how we do this.

On our tour we came across the House of Tartan in Scotland. Heggie, our surname, is of Scotland Heritage so we made our way in to see if we could find out any additional information. I was hopeful of getting Brett into a Kilt of the family Tartan, but no such luck. There are over 5000 tartan varieties and they did not have ours in store. We did manage to get a scarf and kilt pin with the emblem though, which was great.

Upon returning from our exploring of the City Centre we took off towards Ben Nevis.

Tomorrow we climb. Wahoo.

We stopped for the night at a wild camp at the North Face car park met two lovely couples one from Alaska and another from Belgium. We had a hearty meal for dinner and off to bed ready for the days adventure.

26 May

Ben Nevis, the highest mountain in Scotland and the Brittish Isles at 1344m or 4409ft!

There is a whole separate blog post on our climbing of Ben Nevis, it was everything we thought it would be and more.

Blog Post here. Youtube clip here.

Wow. What a day, perfect weather, Miss B’s first snow. We all crushed it,

no injuries and the scenery, what can you say it was the perfect day. Not going to go into much detail as all inclusive in the separate blog piece linked above.

Leaving the mountain we headed towards the Isle of Skye, stopping at a wild camp along the way. At this stop there was lots and lots of rock towers various travellers had created and Miss B set about creating a Cake and Eat it 3 tower. Then dad got involved and the task escalated into major structural construction project. Lol. We ended up constructing the biggest tower so Miss B was very happy.

May 27

Travel day out to the Isle of Skye, more beautiful scenery, the Scottish Highlands are nothing short of spectacular. You have to admire the resilience of the Scottish in their time traversing these baron rugged mountains.

My parents visited last year and spoke very fondly of this area, and we can see why. It was one of our favourite drives in the UK.

Arriving at Uig, a small town on the Isle of Skye. You can access the Isle of Skye by bridge, which we did and made our way to Uig for the night at the Uig Bay Caravan and Campsite. There is little to no WIFI or telephone reception in this area. So nothing got uploaded during our time here.

Big ships coming in and going out on the beautiful bay, it is very quaint.

May 28

Went exploring around Isle of Skye. One thing is for certain their roads need upgrading and boy do they have a LOT of single lane roads requiring the intermittent passing areas. Making our way out to Neist Point Lighthouse was lovely but crazy bumpy and not exactly a relaxing drive.

Once there, it was lovely and such a beautiful walk (they love steep walkways here!) or run as Miss B and I went for a jog for some of it, keen to keep our fitness going for the next trek.

Although there is no doubt the scenery is lovely. I felt for poor Betsy on their roads and am happy to continue on our journey North, North East.

Until next week!

Happy Travels…

This weeks youtube video click here.