• Big Retirement OE
    St Pancras Train Station - most beautiful train station I have seen
    Inside St Pancras Train Station2Neil is practising posing for his sculpture 😆The inimitable London double decker busIconsSt Paul's CathedralTower BridgeThe ShardTower of LondonThese dragons delineate the boundaries of the City of LondonElizabeth Tower - Big Ben is actually the bell3City of WestminsterCity of WestminsterBelgravia - the most expensive place to buy real estate in LondonJust a cute cafeThe Churchill ArmsKings Cross Station at 4:30pmEnjoying my 12 pound wine! Should have checked the price first!!!!What most of the countryside looked like between London & EdinburghHow you know you are in a Scottish HotelComing onto one of the bridges in London - the people!!Sikh Indian protest in Trafalgar Square

    London Day 2 - Stirling

    Jun 1–3 in Scotland ⋅ 🌬 14 °C

    1.6.25 - Neil and I have been to London before and have ticked off most of the main attractions so today we took the Green & Blue Line BigBus Tour. It covered everything with great commentary, definitely learned interesting facts about the history of London and the different areas. I did take a look inside St Paul’s Cathedral, a service was taking place, the acoustics of the choir singing was spine tingling. No video or photos allowed unfortunately.
    The crowds are mind blowing. We did get stuck in a Sikh Indian protest, first in Hyde Park then they transferred to Trafalgar Square which created a traffic jam. Lots of horn blowing later we made it through.
    Neil and I made a decision early on that this holiday we would mostly keep out of the cities if we could, just explore the countryside, today reaffirmed that.
    2.6.25 - Today we trained from London Kings Cross to Edinburgh then quick transfer to a train to Sterling where we will pick up our rental car tomorrow.
    I only chose Sterling because Arnold Clark Car Rental has a depot here never realising what a beautiful town it is. I discovered that Stirling Castle is one of the largest and most historically and architecturally important castles in Scotland. Definitely worth a visit tomorrow.
    The landscape on our trip up was mostly flat with grain growing the predominant agricultural use of the land, very few sheep & cattle. There were, however, a lot of windmills and solar farms plus a coal fired power station.
    Halfway through the trip an English couple sat beside us on the train and gave us great advice of where to visit in the Lakes District and the coast of Scotland below Edinburgh. Once again lovely people who were so helpful.
    My girls have been telling me for ages that I should be doing some weight training to maintain my strength as I get older, well, it wasn’t until coming on holiday that I have definitely started weight training. Our hotel was only 9 mins from the train station but Google Maps didn’t say it was all uphill then multiple sets of steps 😂 Love the thought of getting fit while holidaying.    Read more