Trip to Scotland 2011

 Scotland 2011

We arrived at Heathrow took a direct train to St Pancreas Station where Astrids aunt met us and so we were able to give her the goodies we brought from Israel.
 In Sheffield which is high up in the Peak District and the weather is equivalent to the Israeli winter, I3C at night 18C in the day and overcast with drizzle at the beginning of Sept.
 We were taken for a long drive and we visited Haddon Hall one of the English houses to survive from the middle ages.
This house belonged to the Vernon and Manners family who were related to Henry VIII.
The Haddon Chapel was mentioned in the Doomday Book 1280
We were also at a museum and factory that shows how cutlery is made, but I think the stainless steel sheets used is imported.
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We spent 3 nights in Edinburgh which is a city built on hills with bridges connecting them and parks in the one big valley.
Went to the Scots writers museum which celebrates the lives of Robert Louis Stevenson, Robert Burns and Walter Scott.
We took a tour bus around the city so we learnt the whole history of the city the route takes about an hour and a half but you can keep hopping onto the green buses and each one has a different guide so you hear different story.
Edinburgh has one of the important Universities and has supplied the world with doctors. I went to the City museum so learnt about the development of  the city and  there was a section with all the memorabilia of General Hague from WW1
We both enjoyed the Scottish Museum where I spent a lot of time on Scots history.  I visited the Scottish parliament which has 129 MSPs and everything is in English and Gaelic which nobody speaks. Astrid went to an education project called the Earth's Centre which is a museum of the origin of the earth many of the scientist who figured out the earths geology were Scots. Walked the Royal Mile which is from Edinburgh  Castle to Hollyrood  Palace.

We left Edinburgh in a hired car and drove across the Firth of Forth over the Eskine bridge which is extremely long onto Pitlocherie where we stayed 2 nights.  There we took a long walk around the hydroelectric  dam on loch Tummel and saw a salmon ladder but it is not yet season for the salmon to jump upstream and return to their breeding place.
Pitlocherie attracts golf tourist in fact Scotland is one of the worlds golfing centres.  We went to the Edradour distillery which is Scotland's smallest malt distillery and it is still privately owned.  What was interesting was that the guides were retired distillers who were extremely well informed on the whole history and techniques of Scotch making, I asked about the prohibition period in the States and learnt that till today much mafia money is in the Scotch industry.
From there we drove along loch Tummel , loch Tay and loch Lomand to get to the south. Some of the rivers were flooded but luckily no roads were blocked.  Instead of using the highways we have driven on country roads.



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 We are now in Kirkcudbright at Karen Shamash ne Bagg   and are lucky that the weather has improved after a gale that cut off part of the power before we got here,.Karen and Donald are well and they remember Tal when we were here and he was a 3 year old.

I have learned a lot about Scotland  which has a population of only 5 million and is financially dependant on  Britain .
We were directed to go along country roads in the area that were very narrow to get to a farm that has 4 Henry Moore statues ( including The King and Queen, the ugly Madonna) as well as John the Baptist by Rodin. It surprised me that they have not been stolen.
Here in Kirkcudbright (pronounced Ker-coo-bury) we have had 2 days of reasonable weather and have found out all about this town which is a fishing village and scallops are the main thing caught.
The town is also a holiday centre and has an artist colony and went to see the house of a famous Scots artist here called Edward Hornel, he was a very famous artist in his day died in 1933.  However today his art would be considered to portray that he was a paedophile.
We have exchanged news of  the next generation of the Bagg family and the Feldman's.Karen and Donald's son Andrew and wife  live in London with 2 children and their daughter Nikki and partner Tom live in Rome Italy.  Nikki is pregnant, which Karen is very excited about it.
They have an Aga Cooker which I heard about but now have learnt all about how it is used.  It burns oil and It is kept on all but the 2 hottest month of the year and keeps the house warm but in winter they have a boiler working as well.
It has 4 different ovens at different temperatures so your style of cooking is different. They have an electric stove for summer. From what we saw it appears that many pensioner keep working well into their old age - the gardener or the building contractor.  While many young people you don't see as they live off the dole.
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We drove via Stanrear where there is a ferry to North Ireland - Belfast but were lucky that the road was not crowded with convoys of trucks as it is very narrow in places.  We continued north along the coast to Wyness where we took a ferry to  Rothesay the only town on the Isle of Bute where we went to an Acoustic Guitar festival. This was our first experience of driving a car onto a ferry.  One of the concerts was at Mount Stewart the home of the Duke of Bute and this has very expensive tapestries, stain glass window and clocks it is a tourist attraction and a place hired out for weddings.  Paul Mc Cartney's daughter Stella got married there.
At Rothesay there is the tourist discovery centre which tells you the history of the island.  What made this interesting was and old man we met there told us that he had been evacuated to the island during the war.  He had not visited the island in half a century and we pleased to have someone to tell about the war years there.  For example there were long periods that the ferry was not able to keep the island connected to the mainland and a British aircraft carrier with all aboard was torpedoed and sunk with all hands and the bodies washed up on the island and this was hushed up by the army.
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We returned to Edinburgh and took the night sleeper train to return to London . I slept very well on it and a businessman told me that instead of waking a 5am to fly to London he could get a good nights sleep and wake up ready for work.

We have been to London dozens of time but there is always something new to see.  I have never been to the British Museum but was not really interested in all the works of art  stolen from Egypt Greece etc, the most important thing there is the Rosetta stone.  The British Library has on display manuscripts in all languages but most important is a copy of the Magna Carta.
Minne Fry took us for a drive to her holiday cottage in Chichister near Portsmith and we visited the Chichister Cathedral which has some very modern art including a Chagall window.  It also has the tomb of a knight and his wife which inspired Phillip Larkin to write a poem The Arundel Tomb.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Arundel_Tomb
It is apple season and we had lots of fresh apples to pick from the trees.  Fresh apples taste far crispier than bought ones even though the were not that sweet.