Collins UK Travels: Long Weekend: Scotland (Edinburgh, St. Andrews and Fountains Abbey)

Back in 2013 when we knew the secondment was going to happen, Scotland was on the short list of places Kristine and I wanted to visit during our time in the UK. As time went by and we planned our trips, we confronted a conundrum. Kristine has very fond memories from her year studying at St. Andrews. Put simply, those memories and their associated ideas of places in Scotland to visit, meant that we just couldn't do it all in one trip. Our solution was to make two trips - this long weekend trip to Edinburgh, and a full week trip later this year during the girls' half-term break.

Horrible Histories are very popular in our home. I couldn't resist adding this to the collection.

The drive from Derby to Edinburgh was uneventful. That is noteworthy because it was just over 5 hours in the car without only one rest break to exercise the squirly daughters. We love our trusty Golf, but 3 girls in the back seat for that long is asking a lot. They did well.

The route for our drive north

Our rest stop included a hotel where the girls ran away from their parents

That moment when you realize your mother is using the phone camera on you

We go back and forth between cottages4you, ownersdirect, and AirBnb when we look for holiday lodgings. Our flat on this trip was a find off ownersdirect. It was in a nice location, just under a mile from Edinburgh Castle, and with a Sainsbury's right around the corner. The flat contains several historic architectural elements from its original 19th century life. One of them, which is very beautiful, is the ornamented ceiling in the main living area. As it turns out, this ornamented ceiling extends into what is now the front bedroom. The pictures below will explain why this meant that Kristine and I took the front bedroom, while Charis and Clare got the master bedroom. Fortunately, the bed was (just barely) long enough for me to sleep without intruding on Kristine's space and getting summarily evicted to the living room couch.

The street with our apartment

Requirement for any city holiday - a window next to which one may sit and read

The couch that I didn't get banished to

The beautifully ornamented ceiling that needed a glass finish to the wall

The lack of light blocking due to said glass finish

Another holiday tradition - proper English breakfast

The space felt much tighter when I parked the car. I think the phone camera makes the gap with the next car look wider than it actually was.

Saturday - Indoor Soft Play

One of my colleagues loaned me a book called Edinburgh Unlocked - A Guide Book for Kids, which is a very handy kid-friendly guide to activities in and around Edinburgh. I brought it home for Elise to read. After some time looking at it (and probably a little bit of consulting with her sisters), she wrote down a list of ten potential activities. As I said at the beginning of this blog post, there is this conundrum about too much to do and not enough time. Elise's list sparked an extended, emotionally vulnerable family talk about how children planning vacations could seriously jeopardize all parental feelings of having a purpose in life. Actually it didn't. We had a short, light-hearted family talk about how the parents should delegate more planning of vacation activities to the daughters.

Unfortunately, we left the book and the list in Derby because the delegation for planning didn't instructions to pack the list. Fortunately, Elise remembered several items. One of them, Time Twisters, was our first stop on Saturday morning. When Elise described it, I heard "adventure playground with educational activities." Kristine heard "soft play area where children run around while adults drink tea." I was wrong. This was good for all of us. The morning quickly turned cold and rainy (score for being indoors). The playground had lots of ladders, tubes, and slides to explore (score for daughters who endured a long drive the day before having a place to let loose some energy). Since it also had a max height restriction, both parents talked over cups of tea (as one of our friends observed when she heard the story, "sitting and talking with your spouse - imagine that").

The entrance - which makes you think there is something historical about the location

The inside - when you realize it's all about climbing and sliding

Our plan was to go to Time Twisters in the morning, and then climb Arthur's Seat in the afternoon. That plan got scuppered by falling snow when we walked out to the car, and by several construction / traffic incidents which turned our drive back into a bit of a parking lot. We decided to return to the flat. Kristine took advantage of that time by going for a jog while the girls and I played card games.

Kristine selfie during her jog (Edinburgh Castle in the background)

Sunday - St Andrews

Sunday morning we drove up to St. Andrews. We walked onto the university campus, found Kristine's old dorm, and made our way out to the pier. By the time we'd walked a mile, the temperature was low and we hadn't made it to any interesting sights. Younger daughters started to flag. Clare was helped by an eagerly encouraging Elise. Charis was helped by laughing at a father who got flustered listening to her recite tongue-twisters from Fox in Socks. We checked "walk to the end of the pier at St. Andrews" off our bucket list, and then made our way back into town to have lunch at the Doll's House restaurant. As with our last couple of trips, we had a peaceful meal as a family. It still boggles my mind that I type that about eating at a restaurant without a playground.

Reconstruction of the day's walking

New bridge being built over the Firth of Forth - really cool because it's all these pillars in the middle of the water

Clare displays the results of her activity from the drive

At the end of the pier, looking toward the sea

At the end of the pier, looking toward St. Andrews

The girls enjoyed their food enough that they didn't need encouragement to finish it, but this definitely helped

Having been sufficiently revived and warmed by our lunch meal, we returned to the Cathedral ruins. I'm sure these ruins have much of educational, historical, and architectural significance. Perhaps I will visit in the future when my interpretive filter is not biased by daughters who believe the ruins are primarily there to play hide-and-seek. We returned to town to meet friends from Melbourne who were also on holiday at St. Andrews. From there it was a stop at the university coffee shop that was a low-priced student bar during Kristine's time there, then into a bookstore, and finally back to the car for the drive to Edinburgh.

Obligatory educationally informative photo

Can you spot the hiding daughter?

Emerging from hiding (either I found her or she let herself be seen)

Off to hide again

We're in St. Andrews, so we must have a photo about golf

Restoring strength after a day in the cold

The only thing better than finishing the day in a bookstore would have been staying there forever

Melancholy walk back to the car after being forced to leave the bookstore

Monday - Edinburgh

At the end of the day Monday, we looked back with more than a little amazement at what our family accomplished: 6 miles of walking, 8 hrs outside the apartment, 2 major activities, and eating out twice (okay, at the same place). All without turmoil. At the beginning of the day we were not so cheerful. The girls were tired from the day at St. Andrews, and there were a couple strong votes to stay in the apartment instead of traipsing through Edinburgh seeing things the parents thought were interesting. After unsuccessfully trying to negotiate peaceful resolution (specifically, stop complaining and abide by the parental plan), we simply said "That's it. We're going, and you're coming along." Our lack of sympathy wasn't helped by a 3/4 mile walk to the castle that was largely uphill.

Reconstruction of the day's walking, not including Arthur's Seat

Things started looking even worse when we got to the castle and a certain cheapskate father didn't want to rent audio/visual tour guides. Fortunately, the sympathetic mother overruled the father, and the 7 pounds were paid to get guides for everyone except the cheapskate father. In my defence, I was remembering the dysfunctional audio that soured our experience of the bus tour in London. To Kristine's credit, she was thinking about how much happier we would all be if the small cost yielded guides that worked. Fortunately she turned out to be right. The guides worked. The girls collectively cheered up as they took turns picking places to explore within the castle and as they figured out how to work the guides. We wound up filling the couple of hours we'd allocated without any trouble, and making the walk down to lunch with all of us in considerably better humo(u)r than we were at the beginning of the day.

We tried mighty hard to smile for the camera (castle in the background)

Cheerful girls making plans for where in the castle to go next

Poster about the cool massive cannon that I enjoyed and nobody else noticed

The cool massive cannon

Living quarters for prisoner's of war - we learned that American prisoners were treated worse than many others during the 1700s and early 1800s because the UK didn't recognize the US as a real country

Another "Shawn found cool but nobody else cared" - the metallurgical skill on display with all the swords

I found this display about forged banknotes to be really cool

Celebrating whisky - because without it I wouldn't have a really cool mandolin

We ate lunch at The Elephant House. This is one of two Edinburgh cafes where JK Rowling would sit and work on the first Harry Potter book. The story goes that her daughter would sleep in the stroller in the cafe, but not at home. Rowling would buy a single cup of coffee and make it last as long as she could while her daughter slept and she worked on the book. Kristine and Elise, as committed Harry Potter fans, decided this was a cultural landmark worth visiting. I was sceptical about the cultural landmark thing, but it was not far off the Mile and we got there to find a relatively short line ordering food with a table for 5 available (it turns out this co-occurrence is a rarity). The food was tasty and the Kenyan AA coffee was top quality. That made Kristine and Elise's choice a good one.

Kristine and Elise were excited about the Harry Potter heritage at the cafe. I found the literature and sculptures about elephants to be much more interesting.

Graffiti is encouraged. Evidently correct grammar (black writing) and knowing which books JK Rowling wrote (blue text) are not required.

Obligatory photo with a bagpiper

Edinburgh Cathedral (we only walked past)

We made our way down the rest of the Royal Mile to the foot of Arthur's Seat, an extinct volcano that may or may not have legendary ties with King Arthur. Arthur's Seat was on Kristine's wish list since she didn't climb it when she was here before. It was also on Elise's list from the guidebook. We wanted to do it on Saturday, but snow and traffic getting across the city from Time Traveller's changed our plans. That wound up being a good thing. The hike was a lovely one, but not something to do in the rain and snow unless you're pretty hard-core. We are not. By the time we started the climb, we'd already been on our feet for several hours and put in about 2 miles of walking. I wasn't sure how everyone would do. I worried without cause. Charis was tired until she started telling Kristine about the different characters in Subway Surf. She got so excited about her extensive descriptions that she forgot she was tired. Kristine nodded and "Uh-huh'd" with appropriately encouraging tone of voice. Clare was tired, so Elise invented a game where they would exchange imaginary super-strength bars. As Clare flagged, Elise would pretend to toss her a bar, which Clare would pretend to catch and eat. Somehow the imaginary bar and the act of pretending to eat it gave Clare real strength and energy. She made it most of the way to the summit on her own strength. The last bit of climbing over rocks needed no games for motivation. She scrambled up cheerfully.

Reconstruction of the hike up Arthur's Seat

Cheerfully discussing the details of Subway Surf

Handing out one of many super-strength bars

Almost there ...

We made it!

View of Edinburgh from the summit

Somehow the hike up and down Arthur's Seat got rid of the weariness from the beginning of the hike. Nobody really complained that we still had to walk back up the Royal Mile to reach the streets which would take us back to the flat. The girls didn't really need our promised of a stop for refreshments as motivation. They just walked. We rewarded them by stopping at the Elephant House, where for the second time the line was short and a table was available. The coffee was still tasty, but this time we only ate treats (no real food).

Can you find the well-behaved children? Me neither.

One more stop at the Elephant House to refuel after a long day of walking

Kristine and the girls walked home while I detoured over to Scales Music Shop. They are one of a handful of shops in the UK that stock tenor guitars. I first heard of the tenor guitar when I saw Chris Leslie play one in a concert I attended last fall with a friend from Melbourne. I'd flagged it as "cool instrument that I should at least try sometime." The folks at Scales were very helpful, and they did let me play the one in stock. Unfortunately for them, it was the low-end model and I knew we didn't have any space in the car. Fortunately for me, it was the low-end model and I knew we didn't have any space in the car. I was all set to congratulate myself for musical self-control until I was about half way back to the flat and recognised the Coda Music Shop (a place that my friend Dave Bagdade has mentioned several times on his Kitchen Party Ceilidh radio show).

Self-control on the day in Edinburgh: I only bought a couple CDs

Self not controlled. Rising office stress intersected impulse-buy price point for solid wood instrument, thanks to the good folks at The Music Room. The tenor guitar joined the two mandolins as UK instrument acquisitions.

Tuesday - Fountains Abbey

Our last stop on this trip was at Fountains Abbey. It came highly recommended by a fellow secondee family with children, and was close enough to the half-way point between Edinburgh and Melbourne where we would have planned a stop anyway.

Fountains Abbey has an interesting history. The massive Cistercian monastery that was originally founded in 1133 AD, dissolved by Henry VIII in 1539, and formed part of the estate of wealthy landowners until eventually being taken over by the National Trust. During the 1700s, one owner and his son did some very creative work with the estate to create an extensive water garden that incorporated the abbey ruins. This work was ground-breaking at the time, and got the estate added to the UN's list of world heritage sites. The abbey ruins got included for free.

The grounds at Fountain's Abbey deserve a whole lot more time than the couple hours we spent on the way home. We arrived mid-afternoon, and the cold temperatures finally exhausted the goodwill from the girls, who had been real troopers on this trip. We satisfied ourselves with exploring the largest of the monastery ruins, and putting a longer trip on the "maybe we can do this before we leave" wish list.