Stirling

Stirling

 

We left Harrogate early in the morning, eating breakfast at Costa Coffee in town before we left. Costa Coffee is England’s answer to Starbucks. It’s actually not bad. Their chief coffee taster has his tongue insured for £10,000,000, so I guess they trust his taste buds to source their coffee.

 

John decided to take us on the scenic route for the trip up to Stirling, traveling north on the A68 via Scotch Corner. What a great decision. The scenery was magnificent despite the light rain. (John: Barb omits to mention the fun we had escaping Harrogate in the morning peak period. Even when we passed our hotel for the second time she remained uncharacteristically calm).

 

We reached Corbridge and stopped in a little tea room for morning tea. The ladies there urged us to stop by some nearby Roman ruins, which we did. I was hoping to catch a glimpse of Hadrian’s wall which was also nearby, but we must’ve driven through a gap in the wall or missed the signage. Never mind.

Roman ruins at Corbridge

 

The Yorkshire Dales and Northumberland National Park scenery more than made up for any disappointment about walls not seen. We stopped to take obligatory photos at the Scottish border. Man (I think she means “ Och mon”) it’s cold in that wind! Not to mention wet. We also stopped to admire Jedburgh Abbey, but sadly missed the opportunity to stop at a lovely viaduct that we didn’t know was there and which we sped past.  Aaaw …. I’m sure there’ll be more viaducts to see.

 

John crossing the Scottish border

John at Jedburgh

Barb at Jedburgh Abbey

Because the weather wasn’t the best, we decided to by-pass Edinburgh today and go straight to Stirling instead. We found Stirling Castle easily and spent a happy couple of hours viewing this awesome place. Barb is happy. Very happy. Her first Scottish castle really delivered the goods.

 

Stirling Castle

John at Stirling Castle

Looking down from Stirling castle

They have gone to a great deal of trouble re-creating the rooms as they might originally have looked in Mary Queen of Scot’s time. She was born at Linlithgow Palace, but was brought to Stirling Castle for protection by her mother after her father died when she was just a baby. The castle was used for many hundreds of years by the army, occupying such a great position as it does at the top of an extinct volcano it was easy to protect from invaders.

 

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John’s phone GPS led us to our overnight destination of the Premier Inn at Stirling. It’s pleasantly comfortable and really close to the train station, so it was a no brainer to buy return tickets to Edinburgh the next day.

 

Looks like Kurilpa

John was delighted that the pedestrian overbridge to the train station at Stirling is a very similar structure to the Kurilpa bridge in Brisbane. We feel at home!