Travel Blog #1 - Scotland, United Kingdom

Scottish Highlands - Glencoe

Hello Reader,

Welcome to my first of many travel related blog post that I am excited to share with you! As you have already found out from my website or perhaps one of my social media pages, I am a holistic life coach. So you might be wondering why I am spending the time to create travel related blogs even though it might not have anything to do with my coaching services? Great question! I wanted to share with you one of my passions, and that is traveling and experiencing adventure, either on my own, or with my family. I hope through my writing that you'll be able to feel and experience what I did on my many journeys around the world. Without further ado, let's get started!

It was early 2019, and my wife and I were starting to have the urge to go on an adventure. At the time I was working full-time as a territory sales representative, and doing well in terms of reaching sales targets, winning large orders, and keeping busy. At that point of my life I was traveling for work full-time, bouncing around southern Alberta and British Columbia. I wasn't home much, and I wasn't able to spend much quality time with my wife or my first born son for almost 5-years. We decided that it was time to give ourselves a sweet treat, and since we were both having the urge to travel, we might as well go big!

My wife and I over the past 18 years decided that we alternate which destination we get to visit, so this time around it was my turn to pick, and I decided to pick Scotland UK. Our last big adventure was back in 2009, and my wife decided that she wanted to explore Thailand. My next travel blog will likely be about that adventure, so stay tuned! Once the destination was chosen, the fun began, and we started to plan out our Scotland trip on the floor of our dining room. If you haven't done it before, go to your local store and find yourself one of those large expandable folding maps to help you plan out your next trip, it's oddly satisfying to be able to write on the map of where you want to explore, and at the end of the trip, you'll have a sentimental keepsake of your adventure that you got to enjoy.

Our trip to Scotland was going to be spread over the span of three weeks, with one week dedicated to visiting and exploring London. The two week's in Scotland was going to be dedicated to nine days caravanning (RV'ing here in Canada), and the rest spent visiting the two main cities, Glasgow and Edinburgh. If you enjoy RV'ing or maybe you've never done it before, I would high recommend it if you're planning on exploring Scotland. The UK has many RV'ing sites with many amenities, but we came across something that Scotland promotes and that is "Wild Camping". I haven't have the chance to do research to see if other parts of the UK does it, but when we were doing our own research for Scotland, many other travel bloggers have mentioned this style of camping, and it really piqued our interest!

Basically, as part of Scotlands access legislation called the "Land Reform Act of 2003", you have a right of responsible access to most land and inland water, and you are allowed to camp on most unenclosed land. Please ensure you are following the policy of "leave-no-trace" and familiarize yourself with the "Scottish Outdoor Access Code" to ensure you're following the rules and being respectful to the locals and nature.

For more information about wild camping in Scotland, here is a great informational website by Visit Scotland: https://www.visitscotland.com/accommodation/caravan-camping/wild-camping

We also used a couple mobile apps to help us with the wild camping and caravanning planning, here are two that we used on our trip:

1. iOutlander (iOutlander 2 available but never tried) - A mapping app to help travellers find camping and accommodation worldwide. This app worked well for us because it helped us find beautiful remote locations to wild camp along our road adventures.

2. Park4Night - Another great app that we used to find places to visit and rest for the day or night in our caravan.

For our caravan rental I ended up choosing a company called Roseisle Luxury Campervans (Now closed). The main reason is because they had vans that were semi-automatic and not manual transmissions. At the time, many of the rental campervans had manual transmissions which meant I needed to know how to drive stick, which I did not! So I found Roseisle in the end, and they were really great to rent our van through. Super easy process, and they had great quality vans for rent.

I don't want to bore you with every detail about our pre-trip planning, but I wanted to share about renting our caravan and a couple of the apps we used to plan our routes with you in case you were wanting to experience a similar adventure as mine. Feel free to comment any questions you may have down below! Moving along, it took us a few months to plan and book most of the details of our trip. If you don't know me very well, I take pride into planning our trips to make sure that our adventures pan out without much of a hitch. My wife always compliments me about that whenever we go on vacation. This is where I give myself a well deserved self pat on the back!

First leg of our trip. Calgary - London - Edinburgh.

Our flight to London was uneventful actually. We were a little unsure how our 4-year old son would do on a 10-hour direct flight from Calgary to London would do. But amazingly enough, he fell asleep not too long after we took off and stayed asleep until we were about to land in Gatwick airport. We landed at London Gatwick International airport and got to experience riding the London tube to our hotel. When we arrived my wife and son fell asleep pretty fast due to jet lag, and I went on an adventure of my own to find some dinner for us all. Came back to the hotel with a bag full of sushi - mission accomplished.

The next morning we checked out of our hotel and made our way to Kings Cross station to catch our LNER (London North Eastern Railway) train to Edinburgh. We booked advanced-class tickets which really made the train experience one of the highlights of our trip. We got comfortable seating with a table, and it came with complimentary food and drink as well. This is also where I got to experience British sarnies (sandwiches), nothing super fancy, but I also love sandwiches so it was a great experience for me! If my memory serves me right, the train ride lasted about four and a half hours from London Kings Cross station to Edinburgh Waverley station. The view was peaceful all the way through, and we got to see some of the other cities like Peterborough, Doncaster, and Newcastle as we passed through them. We eventually arrived at Waverley station in Edinburgh, and now our Scotland leg of the trip finally begins!

So much to see. So much history. So little time.

If I get another opportunity to visit Scotland again, I would make sure that we add-on a few more days to properly explore Edinburgh. The amount of things to see, do, shop, and learn could easily fill up a week. We explored Edinburgh castle, Camera Obscura, Palace of Holyroodhouse, Royal Mile, Edinburgh Old Town, and many more. There is obviously way more that you can do here, especially if you jam pack your itinerary. But my wife and I are slow travellers, and we like to savour what we see. Having a 4-year old also slows down travel, as many parents would understand. The positive side of not being to see everything in Edinburgh all at once just means that I get to one day visit Edinburgh again, hopefully soon.

Second leg of our trip. Caravanning through the Scottish Highlands, and falling in love with Isle of Skye.

We reluctantly parted ways from Edinburgh feeling a bit sad like saying goodbye to a close friend, but we were excited at the same time because this day was the day we went to pick up our rental caravan for the road trip portion of our trip. It was just a short train ride to the town where our caravan rental centre was located, and once we had our tour, van pre-inspection, and signed some papers, we got our keys for our van, and our next chapter of our adventure began! Insert minor driving anxiety here. This was the first time I drove a camper van, the steering wheel was also on the right hand side, and it was semi-automatic. Meaning, it shifted like a manual would, but you don't have to worry about actually shifting the gears. Oh, and don't forget that you drive on the left side of the road on top of all of that. Oh, and all of the roundabouts! In the end, once you got used to everything, driving in the UK was fine. If I can do it, you can too!

If you remember at the beginning of this blog, I mentioned about getting a large folding map of Scotland. This is where your planning gets to really shine! We created a route through all of the places we wanted to go, and did our best to see them over the nine days that we had the van. Unfortunately, we weren't able to stop at all of the areas we wanted to check out, but we got to see most of what we had on our list.

Places we planned on seeing while caravanning:

• Three Lochs Forest

• Loch Lomond & The Trossachs National Park

• Glencoe - Three Sisters

• Fort William

• Isle of Skye

  • Fairy Pools

  • Loch Slapin

  • Portree

  • Kilt Rock

  • Fairy Glen

  • Uig

  • Dunvegan Castle & Gardens

• Inverness

  • Culloden Battlefield

  • Clava Cairns

  • Inverness Castle

  • Leakeys Bookshop

  • Old High Church

• Dunkeld

  • The Hermitage (National Trust for Scotland)

• Perth

  • Huntingtower Castle

• Kinross

  • RSPB Loch Leven Nature Reserve

At the end of our nine day road adventure, we put on roughly 1050 kilometres on our caravan. It was such an amazing portion of our vacation and it was truly one of the highlights of our trip! Having the caravan for the nine days added convenience with the built in washroom, kitchen, and sleeping area. It also added a sense of security and comfort that no matter where we were on our road trip, we always had our home on wheels to be able to rest, recharge, and have quality family time together. We made sure after we found a place to sleep for the night, that we share our favourite parts of the day.

On day nine we had to drop our caravan back off at the rental centre near Edinburgh. We only had the van for nine days, but I guess I grew attached to it. There was a feeling of sadness that our road adventure had come to an end, but despite the sad feelings, we left with our hearts full from seeing the beauty of the Scottish highlands. From here, we boarded our next train to Glasgow.

The third and final leg of our amazing adventures. Glasgow & London.

Instead of the LNER we booked our tickets with Virgin (Yes, the same company that is a phone company, and also builds rockets). We boarded our train at Edinburgh Waverley station to head to Glasgow, the largest city in Scotland. The train ride is under an hour, nice and short. Glasgow has its own charm in comparison to Edinburgh, but I did get more of an industrial vibe compared to Edinburgh's historical energy. Like in Edinburgh, we only had about three days to explore. We mainly stayed near Glasgow's city centre, visited shops, toured the local sights, and admired the building architecture. There was one spot we had to stop and look at, and that was in George Square. Specifically at the Duke of Wellington statue outside the Gallery of Modern Art. I often find myself stopping to look at statues because I have a level of intrigue and curiosity to learn about the individual and the significance to why they have been given this honour. This time it wasn't neccessarily that, it is because the statue of the Duke of Wellington had a traffic cone placed on top of his head! This statue isn't a small statue at all. He's on top of a horse, probably almost 20 feet tall. People would have to climb up there to place the traffic cone on his or his horses head. Feel free to dive deeper into it if you would like, but here is a photo of it:

Statue of Duke Wellington - Getty Images

Another odd sight to see in downtown Glasgow was a Tim Hortons on a corner of a professional building. I didn't realize until that point that Tim Hortons was a true Canadian icon and brand with some global reach. Large Double Double please!

Last thing that stood out to me when we were in Glasgow, was the amazing street performers that were out entertaining daily on the main street. There was one specific street performer that really made me go "Wow!" His voice and guitars skills were amazing to listen to and I had to purchase one of his CD's to bring home. Look up "Malachy" on your preferred music platform and one of his best songs is called "Time".

Just like our visit in Edinburgh, our stay in Glasgow went fast. The feeling was a little different this time around compared to leaving Edinburgh, not saying that Glasgow wasn't great, but I think it's because our mind and hearts were set to seeing London. This is a huge destination for my wife to check off her bucket list. She has been wanting to visit and explore London since she was a child. She loved reading about Sherlock Holmes growing up, and of course 221B Baker Street was on our list! Aboard our last train back to London, our feelings were mixed as we knew that our adventure was coming to an end soon. We were excited to finally visit London and explore the hidden gems she has, but we were also missing Scotland already as well. London, such an amazing place with so much history and culture. Here is a list of some of the places we visited:

• Monument to the Great Fire of London

• London Bridge

• Tower Bridge

• Shakespeare's Globe

• Borough Market

• River Thames

• Westminster Abbey

• Palace of Westminster

• Big Ben

• Natural History Museum

• Sherlock Holmes Museum

• London Eye

There is so much to see in London alone, I wouldn't even be able to take a guess on how many days you would need to actually see everything there. We've all decided as a family that eventually we would make a second trip again to the UK, for sure Scotland and London, but we have a urge to visit Ireland as well.

Our trip to Scotland and London was by far the best adventure I have ever had. I wouldn't hesitate if the opportunity came for us to go visit again. If you have been wanting to make a trip to the UK, I would highly recommend it! Yes, it is expensive, but yes it is totally worth it in my mind. The memories we have from that adventure will forever be engrained in my mind. The Scottish Highland; forever my mental happy place to go whenever I need a place to escape and find peace and joy.