Corbridge to Edinburgh and everything in between

SUNDAY
On Sunday we picked up our hire car and set off in search of Corbridge. It was a pretty long drive (for the English anyway) and we arrived in Corbridge at about 4pm after a few mishaps we found out bed & breakfast and checked in to our room. The time had changed that morning (which confused us when we got to the station to catch our train and all the clocks said 7am when we thought it was 8am) so it was dark by 4.30pm which is very hard to get used to. We had dinner at a local pub; I think it was called the Black Bull. On the walk back to our accommodation we passed a cemetery and James wanted to take some photos so somehow I ended up in a cemetery on Halloween... it turned out we started a bit of a trend by walking into the cemetery because about 10 people followed us in.

MONDAY
The next morning we went for a drive along Hadrian’s Wall, this is a 2000 year old 73 mile long wall that the Romans built to keep themselves in and the bad guys out. We stopped at Housesteads Roman fort for a look around and ended up spending about 2 hours here wandering the forts and then going for a walk through a little forest and along part of the wall. As we were driving back towards the highway we stopped at a place called Chester’s Roman fort which was a smaller version of Housesteads.  After checking out the Chester’s forts it was time to drive into Scotland. Just over the Scottish border we stopped in a town called Jedburgh for a late lunch and a wander around the Jedburgh Abbey which had similarities to Tintern Abbey but wasn’t as big. It was in much better condition though. We arrived into Edinburgh in the early evening and managed to find some parking and our hostel fairly easily which was a nice change. We checked into our tiny 6 person dorm room and then braved the cold to walk to The Stand which is a comedy club where we picked up our tickets for that nights show. We paid 2 pounds each to get in and got to see about 10 comedians (in various stages of experience) doing their thing. Some of them were quite good (although any who dropped the c-bomb were quickly crossed off my list) and some you couldn’t help but feel sorry for. At the end they had a comedian come on who was actually paid to be there because he was meant to be at least semi successful, he was possibly the worst of the lot. Since when did talking about murdering your wife and father become comedy???

TUESDAY
The next day we went on a free walking tour of Edinburgh, our tour guide was a Canadian guy who came travelling through Edinburgh 5 years ago and fell in love with the place. He was pretty good and knew a lot of random and interesting facts about Edinburgh. The thing that surprised me the most is that a few Harry Potter sites are in Edinburgh. Apparently J.K. Rowling sat in one particular cafe and wrote the first couple of books back when she was too poor to afford more than one cup of tea a day. Our tour took us past the cafe she sat in and also the school that was her inspiration for Hogwarts and a cemetery where she is meant to have gotten the idea for a lot of the names in the book. Apparently Potter, McGonagall and Riddle (among others) are all on different headstones in the cemetery. Our tour guide pointed out the Riddle headstone for us (the name is spelt different in the book but this is supposedly where the idea for the name initially came from). Other sights included on our tour were photo ops of Edinburgh castle and stories about the castles history, St Giles Cathedral which is where Sean Connery was knighted by the Queen. We also saw Greyfriars cemetery, a man by the name of Greyfriar was the night guard of Edinburgh and he had a pet dog names Bobby, when Greyfriar died Bobby stayed at the site of his grave for 14 years. The priest of the church in the cemetery wanted to have Bobby kicked out of the cemetery but the townspeople loved Bobby and petitioned to make him a citizen so he could come and go anywhere he pleased. In the end Bobby the dog was made a citizen of Edinburgh and legally was allowed to vote before women were allowed to. We saw lots of other places but I better leave some stories for when we get home :-) After the tour we went to a pub and Ewen and James ordered Haggis for their lunch (I was boring and got lasagna but I did taste Ewen's haggis). For those who don’t know Haggis the heart, liver and lungs of a sheep that is minced together and mixed with onion, oats and spices and cooked up and served with mashed potato. It tastes kind of like a spiced mine meat but with a very odd texture. It was ok but I don’t think I’ll need to have it ever again. By the time we left the pub it was 3pm and starting to get dark, we walked through the town and found a good spot to get some photos of the 'Hogwarts' school and then walked down the Royal Mile to Holyrood house but it was closed.

WEDNESDAY
Our last day in Edinburgh we went to Edinburgh castle and spent a few hours wandering around the different rooms and museums, we watched the 1pm cannon display which was interesting nowhere near as loud as I thought it would be. We had yummy scones with jam and cream and then headed to Holyrood castle which is a nice but relatively modest palace where Ewen’s Uncle Andrew once sat next to the Queen of England at a dinner, we got to see the Queens seat (which was surprisingly the same as everyone else’s) and the seat next to it where Andrew would have sat. It then took us an hour and a half to negotiate the streets of Edinburgh to get us on the correct highway headed for Stirling. Sometimes driving here is a pain and sometimes it’s the best thing in the world... usually it’s the best thing in the world!!!

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