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Enjoy a wonderful tour
at the best time of year. |
You'll really notice the
longest day, because you'll be way north at a latitude of almost
60° N on that day. The night barely gets dark before turning light
again.
Our tour timing gives you the maximum
amount of daylight, and hopefully favorable early summer
weather, to enjoy, see, and do as much as you wish as we travel
the length and breadth of Britain on this unique Grand
Expedition.
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Detailed Day by
Day Itinerary for the 2019 Great Britain Grand Expedition
Page 2
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A feature of our Great
Britain Grand Expedition is the depth of commentary
provided.
This is an intelligent
and interactive experience for thinking people who wish to learn about the
regions they go through, not just passively look at them.
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Tour Itinerary
Part 2 - Scotland
We've split the itinerary
over two pages, because there's a lot to tell you about this
tour and its panoply of inclusions.
The
first
page covers the section in England and Wales, this second page
now details our time in Scotland.
The blue line approximates our journey as we travel from
the south and west of England, through Wales, and up to
the north and east of Scotland. |
Whether it is cities or
countryside, manmade objects or natural beauty, there's
plenty of everything for you on this Grand Expedition.
You can read through the
itinerary simply by scrolling down, or if you wish to jump
to a particular part, here are links to each day.
The first section - England
and Wales - can be seen on the
first page of the
itinerary.
Pre-tour options
In/around
Salisbury
Day 1 Salisbury to
Exeter via Glastonbury
Day 2 To Penzance via
Plymouth
Day 3 Around Cornwall and
Land's End
Day 4 To Bristol via
Tintagel
Day 5 To the Cotswolds via
Oxford
Day 6 Around the Cotswolds
Day 7 To Wales and Wrexham
Day 8 To the Lake
District via Liverpool
The rest of the tour
- the Scotland section - continues on below.
Day 9 To Glasgow via
Hadrian's Wall
Day 10 To
Inverness via
Glencoe & Loch Ness
Day 11 Around
Inverness
Day 12 To Thurso and
Mey Castle
Day 13 To John O'Groats
and the Orkneys
Day 14 Around the Orkneys
Day 15 To Elgin via Dunrobin
Castle
Day 16 To Aberdeen via
coastal towns
Day 17 to Edinburgh/Glasgow via Glamis Castle
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Click here for the main
details of this expedition and the booking form to confirm your
interest.
Detailed Daily Itinerary
Day 8 :
For the earlier days of the tour, please go to
the first page of the
itinerary for detailed information. |
|
Day 9 (Thursday
20 June) :
To Glasgow via Hadrian's Wall |
Lake Ullswater and the small township of Glenridding.
The Castlerigg Stone Circle near Keswick.
Lanercost Priory, close to Hadrian's Wall, dates back to
1169.
A view of the wall at Housesteads. Originally the
wall was up to 15' high and 10' wide.
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We start off our day (after breakfast of course) by
continuing north (again, of course!) and through more of the
Lake District National Park.
We head up to the Castlerigg
Stone Circle at the north end of
Derwent Water, on top of a hill above Keswick, where
we'll have our first stop of the day (always assuming you've
not asked us to stop for 'Kodak moments' prior to now).
We next go to the tranquil and
happily well preserved remains of Lanercost Priory, then
continue on a short distance to have one last highlight of our
time in England before crossing into Scotland.
This last highlight is when we travel
along some of Hadrian's Wall,
going to Birdoswald Roman
Fort where we'll stop for lunch.
If people wish to, we'll
drive along some more of the wall and the ruins at Housesteads,
too.
This allows you to see the best preserved sections of
Hadrian's Wall.
Then we go to the M6, and
speed northwards, crossing the border into Scotland at Gretna Green, once famous
as a place where young English couples would elope to,
because Scottish law allowed marriage at an earlier age
(without parental consent).
These days the law has
been made consistent in both Scotland and England, much to
the disappointment of the people in Gretna Green.
An easy drive up the A74 and
M74 gets us to Glasgow, where there's a special option open
to you for this evening - please see the next section in the
blue box.
Included Meals: Breakfast |
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Tour Option
: One Night in Culcreuch Castle
(Thursday 20 June) Continue on from Glasgow to
Culcreuch Castle |
The outside of Culcreuch Castle, historical seat of the
Clan Galbraith.
The castle cellars and dungeon have now been repurposed
into their dining room. There is also a formal
room for formal dining, upstairs, if you prefer!
Just so you know the castle isn't all stonework and
nothing else. This is one of their upgraded
bedrooms.
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Here's a special bonus for you in the middle of our
Expedition.
Would you like to spend
this evening in a 700+ year old castle, located in
lovely grounds and even with a small private loch,
just 45 minutes north of Glasgow in the tiny town of
Fintry?
If this appeals, then after we drop the rest of the
group at their central Glasgow hotel for the night,
we'll take you on up to Culcreuch Castle for the
night.
We'd pick you up again when
traveling north with the group from Glasgow, mid the
next morning.
You can choose from a standard
or an upgraded room; and if you want to be sure to
avoid the reputed castle ghosts, you could ask for a
room in the stable block adjacent to the castle
instead.
The night at Culcreuch is typically a very popular
option among our groups, and the castle only has a
dozen or so rooms, so be sure to let us know quickly
if you'd like to add this to your experience.
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Day 10 (Friday 21 June) :
To Inverness via Glencoe and Loch Ness |
Everyone loves a sunny day, but the haunting unhappiness
of Glencoe is best appreciated in the mist.
Fort Augustus is a lovely town on the shores of Loch
Ness, with the Caledonian Canal running through it, and
some pubs with lovely canalside outdoor seating.
Beauly is a lovely quiet little town, largely unharmed
by modernity and tourism.
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This morning we'll collect first the people who spent
the night in Glasgow, then travel north to Fintry
to collect the people who treated themselves to a castle
stay.
We then continue our journey, going next to one of
Scotland's most sombre places, a place that has written its
name - in blood - into the annals of Scottish history, and
which sees a feud between some of the highland clans
continuing on to this very day, 325 years later.
This is of course Glencoe.
Set in a beautiful valley which makes the treachery all the
more poignant, we have time to wander around and also to
have lunch, before continuing our journey north.
We pass through Fort William and Fort Augustus, and
drive along the shores of Loch Ness up to Inverness,
the city often termed 'The Capital of the Highlands',
and more recently anointed as the happiest place in
Scotland. We hope you'll be happy too for your time in
Inverness!
But before we do so, we have a choice - would you prefer to
spend time in Fort Augustus and with a cruise on Loch Ness,
or a visit to Urquhart
Castle, or to go through the presentation at the Loch Ness
visitor center?
We'll do the activity that proves most
popular with the group as a whole.
We will have our 'mid
Expedition' dinner in Inverness this evening.
Included Meals: Breakfast,
Dinner |
|
Day 11 (Saturday
22 June) :
Touring around the Inverness region |
A series of commemorative stones on a largely empty
field denote key locations at the Culloden battle field.
A bit of the old and a bit of the new in Inverness.
The Victorian Spa Pavilion in Strathpeffer has been
beautifully restored.
The spirit safe at Glen Ord, where the still man decides
which part of the distillate should be kept and which
should be rejected, thereby determining the character of
the whisky.
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After breakfast this morning we'll head over to another
of the defining places in the history of Scotland - the
moors of Culloden, the site of the (hopefully!) final battle
between the Scottish and the English, in 1746.
While the subject of Scottish
independence is definitely still not yet settled, these days
battles are done at the ballot box, not at Culloden,
Bannockburn, and the other such places that saw the better
part of a millennium of feuding between the English and
Scottish.
After a visit to Culloden, we go
to two smaller towns before returning back to Inverness. Dingwall was once home to the largest castle north of
Stirling, and Strathpeffer was home to a fascinating seer,
Scotland's equivalent of Nostradumus - the Brahan Seer.
Some people interpret his sayings as foretelling such things
as the Caledonian Canal and North Sea oil.
More
recently, Strathpeffer became a popular spa town during the
Victorian era which simultaneously saw a fascination with
mineral water 'cures' and also with Scotland.
Strathpeffer's natural spring
water may
possibly have healing properties, or so it was fashionable
to believe/hope.
It is still possible today to
sample the waters - some rich in sulfur, some in iron - mix
the two together and they turn black!
Talking about magical water, if
time allows we might end the day with a distillery visit -
Glen Ord - the only remaining distillery on the 'Black Isle'
close to Inverness, and a chance to sample some of what was
formerly called 'uisge beatha', or 'water of life'. We
know it, these days, as Scotch whisky.
Glen Ord's whisky is sold both as a
single malt and is featured in Johnnie Walker blends too.
Included Meals: Breakfast |
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Day 12 (Sunday
23 June) :
To Thurso
and possibly John O'Groats |
Lairg is a nice little town where the River Shin becomes
Loch Shin.
Dounreay from the sea. The road we'll be driving
on is barely visible in the background.
Thurso in the sun.
The sign at John O'Groats. The only thing missing
is you!
They truly do take their whisky seriously in Scotland.
It is not uncommon to find ordinary pubs offering over
100 different whiskies, and some will stock 250+.
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Today we realize that 'we're not in Kansas anymore'.
Or, in our case today, we've switched from being in the highest
population density part of all of Europe (ie England) to now
being in the least dense part of the least dense (ie the upper
highlands of Scotland). There are approximately 100
times fewer people per square mile where we'll be traveling
today than was the case last week in England.
Long stretches of empty
scenery will be the order of the day, and even cars will be
far and few between. This truly now is an expedition,
and all the more interesting for being so.
We'll make a stop in Lairg for a
'mid morning snack' - this might have to do double duty as
an early lunch, because it isn't clear where else we could
count on easy access to lunch until we get to Thurso.
On our way to Thurso we pass through a town that is interesting for what it was than what it is - Strathy.
Unlike the clearances all around it, Strathy's population
increased during that tragic time, because people moved
there from wherever they had been dispossessed.
We also pass by Dounreay, an
interesting site that alas we can't see much of directly.
Why not? Because it is a double nuclear
reactor/research facility, both to develop propulsion plants
for submarines and for commercial power generation.
Dounreay
has been at the forefront of British nuclear power research
for 60 years, but is now in the process of being largely
decommissioned. It is believed decommissioning will be
completed by 2336 (this is not a typo).
We'll see how we're going for
time when we get to Thurso. There are three things
we'd like to see/do before heading to the Orkneys early
afternoon tomorrow, and depending on time and weather, we'll
decide which we do this afternoon and which we do tomorrow.
One of the three things is of
course to go to John O'Groats. It is only eight days
since we were at Land's End, and now here we are, at the
diagonally opposite corner of the country.
A bit like Land's End, there's
not a lot to see at John O'Groats. A gift shop, the
famous sign, and a few related shops. But the
achievement of having completed the journey - that's what it
is all about.
We spend this evening in Thurso, and will celebrate our
achievement with a toast to travel in the hotel bar this
evening.
Included Meals: Breakfast |
|
Day 13 (Monday
24 June) :
Perhaps
the Castle of Mey, then the Orkney Islands |
The lighthouse at Dunnet Head, with the Orkneys clearly
visible on the horizon.
The
lovely Castle of Mey has been well cared for, and still
regularly hosts members of the Royal Family.
Today's ferry is actually a catamaran.
|
Depending on what we did yesterday, there are two other
'should see' things in the area that we'll do either
yesterday or this morning.
We will visit the true
northern-most point in mainland Britain - Dunnet Head, where
there's a Royal Society for the Protection of Birds
Sanctuary.
The other thing that is well
worth seeing is the Castle of Mey - the former favorite home
of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother. She bought it in
1952, saving it from abandonment, and it is now the
northernmost inhabited castle in Britain.
We take an early afternoon ferry
over to Stromness in the Orkney Islands.
Our ferry today takes 90 minutes to
get us to the Orkneys; we take a different ferry and route
for a 60 minute journey back on
Sunday.
The ferries are large and stable,
and will take our coach too.
Once we reach Stromness we travel
a short 25 minute journey to
the main town of Kirkwall.
To celebrate reaching the
absolute northern-most point in our journey, why not visit a
distillery! We go to one of the best distilleries in
Scotland, Highland Park.
We spend two nights in Kirkwall.
Included Meals: Breakfast |
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Day 14 (Tuesday
25 June) :
Touring around the Orkneys |
A Churchill barrier between two of the small islands in
the Orkney group, with a wrecked block ship visible on
the right.
The neolithic village of Skara Brae.
Scapa Flow in 1939. Iron Duke, minus a couple of
turrets in the foreground, two R class
battleships behind her. No trace of such
leviathans remain today.
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There's such a lot to see in the Orkneys that we've
decided to invite a local specialist guide to tour with us
today, pointing out sights and telling stories that only a
local would know.
We will visit several special sites during our day of
island touring - well, actually better to say islands
touring, because we'll be traveling among several of the
different islands that make up the group of islands
collectively called the Orkney Islands.
A series of
'Churchill Barriers' erected at Churchill's instigation
during World War 2 helped seal off the huge Scapa Flow
moorage, and now provide an easy way to island hop.
Wrecks of earlier ships that had been sunk in WW1 to
(imperfectly) block the channels can be seen from the barriers.
The Skara Brae site is well known the world over.
This is an excellently excavated and preserved neolithic
village dating to about 3000BC and with about 8 - 10
structures housing perhaps 50 - 100 people, looking out over
the North Sea. It, together with the nearby stones, is a World Heritage site.
We'll see some of the remains of
the Scapa Flow naval base, one time home of the greatest and
grandest fleet of warships the world has ever seen.
We also will visit the Ring of
Brodgar and the Standing Stones of Stenness, as well as have
a chance to explore a bit of Stromness and Kirkwall. A
lovely day, with lots to see and do, and very little time on
the coach.
Included Meals: Breakfast |
|
Day 15 (Wednesday
26 June) :
To Elgin via Dunrobin Castle |
Kirkwall, with the St Magnus Cathedral overlooking the
town.
Dunrobin Castle and its lovely gardens.
Not a falcon (a Eurasian Eagle Owl) and not at Dunrobin
(I'm on the Royal Mile in Edinburgh) but still an amazing
Scottish experience.
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This morning it is time to say farewell to the Orkney
Islands - a part of Britain and Scotland that very few
international tourists ever get to visit.
We take a different ferry back to
the mainland, and then hurry down the coast to Dunrobin
Castle. Why the hurry? Sure, the glorious castle isn't
going
anywhere! But we want to arrive in time for the
falconry display in the early afternoon.
After our visit to Dunrobin we
skirt around Inverness (we saw Inverness on Wednesday) and continue east
along the Moray Firth and then the North Sea to Elgin, a town in
the heart of the Speyside region.
This region is famous for having a
greater concentration of distilleries in a smaller area than
anywhere else in Scotland. Over half of Scotland's 115 distilleries are in this area.
We spend one night in Elgin.
Included Meals: Breakfast |
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Day 16 (Thursday
27 June) :
To Aberdeen via the coast |
Baxter's is sort of the Scottish equivalent of Campbells
Soup in the US.
The
oldest bridge in Scotland, dating back to the early
1300s.
Busy downtown Aberdeen.
Aberdeen's Marischal Museum, now repurposed as the City Council
offices.
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We'll travel around the coast of eastern Scotland today
and head south to Aberdeen, Scotland's third city and
re-invigorated by the North Sea Oil Fields off the coast.
It is an easy day, we've no
schedule to keep up with, and we'll pause from time to time
in some of the lovely little fishing villages as we wend our
way. Perhaps a stop in Cullen, the home of Cullen
Skink - a strange name for sure, but which describes a
lovely Scottish soup made from smoked fish and potatoes.
And having been to the northern
most part of Scotland, why not go to the eastern most part,
too - Peterhead.
Mid afternoon should see us
arriving into Aberdeen, leaving you time to explore the
city. It has a fine maritime museum with a display on
North Sea oil rigs, and nearby is the Tolbooth Museum - a
former jail and including the actual blade of its 17th
century guillotine.
The city is known for its mile
long Union Street, lined with classic granite faced
buildings that have earned it the description of 'one of the
most architecturally distinctive cities in Europe'.
It
also has Scotland's oldest bridge, built on the orders of
Robert the Bruce, the Brig o'Balgownie.
Tonight is the final night of the formal tour. How
quickly time has passed! To formally observe the
completion of our Grand Expedition, we'll have a dinner
together this evening.
Included Meals: Breakfast,
Dinner |
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Day 17 (Friday
28 June) :
To Edinburgh and perhaps on to Glasgow |
Dunnottar Castle on a promontory overlooking the ocean.
Traditional Arbroath Smokies. Yum!
Glamis Castle, as featured on this Royal Bank of
Scotland £10 bank note.
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Although we had our farewell dinner last night, we still
have a full final day of touring today, with some interesting
sights on our
way to Edinburgh or Glasgow (you can of course leave the
tour wherever it suits you).
We travel generally south, but
detouring off the main highway from time to time.
If you wish, we could visit the
spectacularly located Dunnottar Castle.
A vsit to Arbroath, a town where a formal declaration of
Scotland's independence was made in 1320, and a document
that was one of the models for the American declaration of
independence, some 450 years later, might also be
interesting or popular.
Arbroath is also famous for
Arbroath Smokies - a particular type of smoked haddock that
is considered the best in Britain (and great in Cullen Skink
- see yesterday's mention of Cullen).
We've been careful not to overload you with castles (or
churches) but if we don't visit Dunnottar, or even if we do, perhaps
we visit Glamis
Castle, the former home of Macbeth.
Some people consider Glamis to
be Scotland's most beautiful castle.
A visit to Dundee, the fourth
largest city in Scotland, will give us time for lunch, and
then we meander on down to Edinburgh, arriving mid/late
afternoon, and over to Glasgow, arriving late
afternoon/early evening.
Included Meals: Breakfast |
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Optional Extra : Time in
Edinburgh
Saturday and on |
Victoria St in Edinburgh with two level shopping, a bit
like in Chester.
London is only 4.5 hours from Edinburgh by high speed
train.
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We've noticed that everyone we've taken to Edinburgh has
been amazed at how much there is to see and do in Scotland's
capital city, and we'd urge you to spend a day or two in
Edinburgh if you're not already familiar with the city.
If enough people wish it, we might organize some touring
in/around Edinburgh, and possibly on down to York.
We also point out that if you fly in and out of London (or
most other cities) then you'll end up not only having done our
Grand Expedition, but what in essence has become a
circumnavigation of the entire country - from London, along
the south, up the west, across the north, and then down the
east again.
Wow. Truly an experience of a lifetime, truly a
bucket-list activity that you'll remember and treasure.
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Note - the schedule sometimes changes slightly to fit
in with traffic, etc, and so this itinerary may slightly change between now and departure.
Click here to return to
the first half of the itinerary.
Click here for the main
details of this expedition and the booking form to confirm your
interest.
Originally published
25 Jan 2018, last update
30 May 2021
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