I can’t sleep at the moment… second time since arriving. Cindy’s jetlag will be gone soon… she doesn’t seem to have a problem sleeping unless it’s me going I can’t sleep… lol. It’s her birthday today!

Well this is our last post probably for awhile until our next adventure….

Lots of Love and thanks for following!

Kath and Cindy

On Tuesday we went to Bothwell Castle. It was quite an interesting castle as it was partially ruins and part still in tact. We then went to a Mosalium and to a museum. Both of those were really interesting. For lunch we went to Weatherspoons with Ellen and Kath’s Grandpa. It was a really nice lunch and we all enjoyed our meals and drinks! That night we went to see Toy Story 3, Ross and his friend John came with us. We saw it in 3D the movie was really good! It was also sad.. so if anyone goes to see it, take tissues.

On Wednesday we went to Calderglen park, and had a nice walk through the “Rain forest” and saw the animals. That evening we went to visit Diana (Kath’s mum’s friend from primary school).. we had a really nice dinner with her and a few glasses of wine!

Yesterday we hiked up Ben A’an.. It was a nice sized “hill”, (mountain).. It was quite tiring but definately worth it once we reached the top. Malcolm beat Ellen, Kath and I.. we had a few stops along the way to admire the view.. We were able to see 2 Lochs from the top, it was such a nice day and we could see all the way to a hill near Ellen and Tom’s house!!

This morning we went into Glasgow city to see the Cathedral, Necropolis and the oldest house in Glasgow. I like the house the best.. It would have been so dark in the olden days. There were some very interesting tombstones in the cemetery and very old ones! Tom is flying home today, so we will get to see him for a bit before we fly out tonight.

We are looking forward to seeing everyone when we get home!

See everyone soon!!

Love Cindy and Kath

Monday morning we went to the tour office… After awhile – a few people turned up… OLD PEOPLE! We were quite disappointed at that… and then to make it worse, we got a German tour guide.

The tour wasn’t the best… we just wrote a complaint to the company as we thought the tour was a joke. Will post it up here as I can’t be bothered typing the tour out again. But the weather was much nicer this time around so that was good. We had some nice people on the tour which was good but it was a shame they were our parents and grandparents ages.

Heres the email.

We recently went on the 4 day tour up to Skye on the 19th July with Denise. We previously went on a tour in September 09 and decided as we had a few days to spare before going home we would go on another Wild in Scotland tour as we enjoyed the first so much.

However, we were horrified to find out that our tour guide for our Scottish tour was German! We were also annoyed about the fact that the company combined the tour with the green Scotland tour without being told so when we booked only 5 days previously. We were also surprised to find the average age of our tour to be 45 which contrasts to our last tour with it being around 20.

As the first day progressed, we found out quite quickly that Denise knew very little about Scotland’s history and butchered what she did know. She much preferred to converse in German to two other passengers (from Germany) and ignore the rest of the bus. As we went through Stirling, she didn’t stop at the castle or tell us any historic significance to Stirling or mention William Wallace or Robert the Bruce which I think was shocking (In fact she never mention them once on the 4 days we were gone). While I understand there is a lot of driving involved to reach Stromferry, we do not understand why we were not given more frequent stops up to Stromferry and why it was necessary to stop in Fort William for an hour to buy alcohol. When asked by someone on tour about Fort William and what’s there, Denise’s answer was it’s a nice town with a Morrisons. We did a small stop at the Commando Memorial, and she said the most disrespectful thing. She told us that these soldiers were left out here in the winter to fend for themselves and to train themselves for the war – but they didn’t need to because they all died anyway. I thought it was very rude.

Day 2 we thought was going to be an improvement to day 1, but we didn’t start till 9:30 which everyone thought was quite late as we were all sitting ready by 9am. There was a South African couple who were just as much annoyed and were contemplating leaving the tour, when they approached Denise – she told them it would be better. Skye was a nice but very short day.  We were annoyed at the lack of sites we saw, as we only went up to the Old Man of Storr.  We went to Tallisker Distillery and an Oyster Farm (which she got lost and had to ask for directions, even though she has a German Sat Nav that directed her everywhere) which we don’t drink or eat so we missed out on things we wanted to do (and signed up for) and had to do what the Green Tour people signed up for. While we understand we were getting more value on this tour, had we wanted to do these activities we would have signed up for it. We arrived back to Stromferry at around 6pm and still had to wait an hour and a half for dinner, when we could have spent more time at Skye as the weather was perfect and there was more we should/could have seen.
We also picked up 2 lots of hitch hikers whilst driving around Skye, we weren’t even really consulted about it.

Day 3, the worst day. Today we started at 9:15am and went near Glen Alg to go for a ‘easy short’ walk to the Dun Telve Broch. We walked for about a mile before Denise told us about Brochs then telling us to keep an eye out for them in the next 10 metres… meanwhile we saw a sign that said another 1.5 miles away and took us about 45 minutes of solid walking to get there. Meanwhile we left an elderly lady behind to follow slowly as she had low blood sugar and didn’t bring any food in case of attack (as we were told it was a easy short walk) We were there for about 15 minutes before having to walk all the way back in the rain. We walked ahead but the elderly had an attack and Denise had to hail a car and get them to take her to a cafe to get something to eat. We couldn’t believe it when Denise told us about it especially when Denise was aware of her medical condition. Denise had given the bus keys to one of the guys who walked ahead of us so he could sit and wait out of the rain, one of the other people who beat us to the bus got the keys and drove the bus to pick everyone behind them up as they had known that the elderly lady was struggling with the walk and concerned with her well being. We then went to Eilean Donan castle where we spent 2.5 hours there, where we were required to have lunch in the cafeteria. After the castle we went back to Stromferry and waited a few hours for the boat ride… where we said goodbye to Denise for the rest of the day (as she was going out for dinner with the Green Tour). The boat ride was brilliant. That evening we went to the pub, no sign of Denise – Hilary was nice enough to take some people back to Stromferry with her and organised a taxi for the rest.
We thought that Day 3 was a total waste as so much time was wasted on the meaningless walk (on a road none the less not even on a nice path) and WAY too much time at the castle, we could have done so much more.

Day 4, yet another late start at 9:30. We weren’t going to the Battle of Culloden fields as ‘there was no time’ and Denise “could have just told us the story on any field and it would be the exact feeling as actually being there.” She also said that it would be too depressing to go there as it is not a nice place. Isn’t that the whole point of going?? Again we the Wild in Scotland tour was pushed aside to cater to only the 3 Green Tour People. We didn’t go anywhere near Inverness and our Loch Ness experience was done at Fort Augustus where we only spent an hour which included our lunch break (at 11am). We then had a very long drive to Dalwhinnie to go to another Distillery (which we personally didn’t go into).
We then drove further on to go on a nice walk at the Hermitage, and then a little time at Dunkeld. I can’t believe that we went to a Distillery over the battle of Culloden.

Overall we were very unsatisfied with the tour and Denise. If this was our first tour and first time in Scotland I would be utterly disappointed and would never recommend this tour company. While we understand people paid more money on the Green Tour, the Itinerary of the Wild in Scotland tour should not have been dismissed especially when we were the majority. Had we had known that the itinerary would be changed especially to go to whiskey distilleries we would not have booked, had we had known that we wouldn’t get a Scottish tour guide – we would not have booked and had we had known that there would be no people our age on the tour we certainly would not have booked. The people on the tour were nice but they were our parents and grandparents ages…

We would still recommend your Wild in Scotland Tours to our friends however, we will caution them to make sure they will have a native Scottish tour guide as Denise ruined the experience for us and I would recommend you warn people that the guide is not a local and may ruin the experience that they are looking for. There were things that Denise did that we didn’t agree with and personally think that she should not be touring with your company as she is ruining your brand.

The majority of the tour said they would be putting in an official complaint.
We hope that this experience doesn’t happen to another tour group.

Regards,
Kathleen Catchpole and Cindy Middlebrough

After the tour, we met up with Danny… who apologized to us profusely as he’s a guide for the tour company.

On Friday we went back to Glasgow, and when we got to Ellen’s – Tom was there so that was great catching up with him again.

On Saturday, we helped get things ready for Ross’s 25th Birthday Party. It was a great day/evening. We helped cook during the day… (we had a lot of thanks as Tom is known for burning his meat on a bbq). We went to bed around 12 and apparently the party raged till about 4:30am.

Sunday, I helped Ross clean up after the party and we wrote the email to Wild in Scotland…

And now everyone is up to date. If you have any more queries on the tour as I didn’t talk about it – let me know.

Good points to the tour were: free entry to castles (which we would have got anyways), Nice weather, Skye, met some nice people, heard some local folk music when we went to the pub, went on a fishing boat and went scalloping (I climbed to the front of the boat to get closer to the dolphins who were swimming at the front of the boat) – I also tried a raw scallop which wasn’t nice. Thats about it.

Funny bits were when we went to Dalwhinnie to the Distillery and we went for a walk instead we renamed the town Deathwhinnie as there was so much roadkill on small amount of road… poor bunnies. We also had a good night out at the pub but we were playing with people’s cameras who had smile detection…. and trying to get them to work.

So photos will be up next.

We left for Edinburgh on Wednesday morning, the train was nice and quick and as soon as we arrived there the rain came. My rain coat for my pack broke – so we did a quick fix with a safety pin and we walked to our Hostel. We were able to check in straight away and we then to the Royal Mile. Our mate Danny (tour guide) let us use his name to get ourselves a discount for a 4 day tour we are doing next week starting Monday morning. So we were very happy to get a 20% discount. We walked up and down the mile and stopped and ate ourselves silly with an all you can eat pizza hut buffet. Cindy found a bargain in some Scottish shorts (like the Canterbury shorts at home) so we got a pair of them. A person was giving pamplets out on the Royal Mile for free highland tours, so when we got back to the hostel we went online to check them out and decided to book ourselves in for Friday.

That night we made a spaghetti at the hostel which tasted okay and watched a movie.

Thursday, we had big plans to do things but didn’t do much – the weather was pretty eurgh and we just didn’t feel like doing much so that was a nothing to really write about day.

On Friday, we did the free highland day tour which was great. It works kind of like the free walking tours that we’ve done throughout Europe but you get to go on a cool Orange bus (Irene the hairy coo) and go up into the Highlands – Everything is Free… you just leave a tip if you think the guide/tour was good. So we went up north and saw the Falkirk Wheel, Stiring Castle (again), Inchmahome Priory which is in the middle of Lake Menteith (which is the only Lake in Scotland), Loch Drunkie, Hairy Coo spotting, Duone Castle (where Monty Python and the holy grail was filmed), we then went to see the Forth Bridges. We thought the Guide was great – he is the joint owner of the business (which has only be operational for the last 7 weeks). Hairycoo.com is the link – It’s a great Idea – for a 9 hour tour we tipped 30 pound for the both of us. Some people tipped between 20-40 each. It’s pretty crazy.

When we got back into Edinburgh we found a pub and had dinner and a few drinks waiting to meet up with Danny, he came a bit late but we spent a good few hours catching up. We plan on catching up again next Thursday night.

This morning we got up and got ready to leave to find that someone had decided to steal our travel adapter…. bastards… so with that annoying start to the morning we left to catch our bus to Glasgow. Bus trip was good, got to our hostel (we wanted to stay in the city centre as we’re only here for a night) and got in early and had showers and went out.

We bought a cheap digital small camera (as Cindy’s has died) and It’s handy to have a small camera, and then went to poundland and got a cheap case for the camera. We then went to Primarks where Cindy got new 4 pound Jeans as her ones she bought in November are very worn. We got some lunch and then made our way to George Square where the Glasgow Pride Festival was happening. We had a walk around – It wasn’t too big but had a good atmosphere and we walked around getting free pens, and note pads.

After awhile we went to Buchanan street (shopping street) and asked in a few stores about travel adapter… not many people knew what we were talking about. We thought we would try in the post office where the girl behind the counter was very friendly and helped us out! She gave us a discount too – so now we can charge the computer and phones again! I still can’t believe someone took ours.

Tomorrow, we going to my Aunt’s place to have lunch with my Grandpa and Ellen to catch up before going back to Edinburgh for our 4 day tour on Monday. We’re thinking about leaving our big packs at Ellen’s… but haven’t decided.

Next will be our tour to Skye, and a little of Glasgow. Photos will be coming aswell.

Yesterday morning we got woken up really early by the tv just randomly turning on a few times… I kept waking up and asking Kath if she was asleep, despite seeing her fast asleep, I thought I should check. After our continental breakfast we decided to go back to the city and ride the bus again, after all it was a 24hour ticket… At lunch time we hopped off the bus and headed to a pub for lunch. We both had nice meals. Once we were full we decided to head to the cinemas to see the new Twilight Saga film Eclipse. There were huge ques so we bought express tickets through the ticket machine.. After the film it was quite late in the afternoon so we headed back to the hotel and had an early night.

Today we packed up early and caught the bus to “Central Station”, the driver didn’t actually tell us that the bus didn’t stop there, despite me asking him, so we actually travelled for miles out of the city centre, by the time we caught a bus back into the city, we had missed our train by a mere 4 minutes… So we had some lunch then caught the next train to Carlisle.

Jonathon met us at the train station with Eve, she has grown alot since we last saw her… he then brought us back to their house and we said hello to Emma and the dogs and new kitten – Mimi… This afternoon we went for a walk with Jonathon, Eve and the dogs.. then we chilled out and played with the cat and dogs.

we have 4 nights here then we are off to Edinburgh.

Chat soon,

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