Darlo's World

大きな地図で見る

The hotel we stopped at was of the non-breakfast variety, but I actually got a good night sleep (and it was cheap) so I won’t knock it. Annoyingly we were blocked in by the hotel’s builder’s vans, so we had to wait a bit for them a budge over before we could head off on our way.

We’d checked online the night before about what kind of events were on at Edinburgh Festival, scratch that, what kind of FREE events were on at Edinburgh Festival, and were pleasantly surprised. Our initial trouble came in the form of getting to the festival itself. The Shat-Nav knew how to reach Edinburgh, but we had forgot to look at where the festival area was before hand. After idly driving around the city for a while, we found a car park and carried on on foot. Fortunately we had parked nearby to the main street of the festival.

Yes the streets were full of performers trying to get people to see their shows. But it wasn’t an unpleasant intrusion of your face-space like I’d talked about with the Chuggers (Charity Muggers), this had a really fun atmosphere to it.


There were various performances that we’d wanted to see, like an Irish folk dance thing-a-mi-bob, but unfortunately the maps we’d picked up didn’t show us where things were exactly, and unfortunately a lot of festival staff also didn’t know where everything was. Still, we made do and enjoyed some interesting street-shows.


Courtesy of Fingers Piano Bar we enjoyed two shows: a comical cabaret by Amy Albert entitled Delilah Dix and Her Bag of Tricks, and a wonderful performance of broadway hits sung by Cheryl Anne Easton in Dear Diary.

Feeling hungry, we ventured to the Jekyll and Hyde bar. Imagine eating in the Addams Family home (or actually it reminded me of a place I used to work at in Somerset), and that’s the kind of style of this place. Even the toilets are concealed by bookcases, unfortunately I got confused and sent a poor girl into the mens. If you’re reading, sorry love. A word to the wise, this place does seem to ask everyone for ID, old and young. While this is something I personally don’t mind or object to (I always carry my driving license), some people do seem to take the hump when they can’t get served. Know the rules people, there’s always somewhere else.

The food was quite cheap here, I think about £4 for a meal. On top of that the food was actually bloody good, and I don’t mean that in a daft stupid pun-like way. Good food, good price, good interesting decor. Coincidentally, there was a free comedy show going on downstairs, so after we ate we went down to watch.

Three comedians and an MC all tried to make us laugh with different styles comedy and performance. What was a real treat was (and I know this may sound harsh) to see a comedian absolutely bomb. It’s something I never thought was possible! I always thought that given the fact everyone was there to relax and laugh, as a group everyone would just laugh no matter how bad the jokes were. Hence why when you’re alone at home you (well, me anyway) don’t laugh as hard as often. But seriously, I did kind of feel sorry for the guy because he looked like a buddy of mine (as well as a bit of a gross between musician Angela Aki and comedian Ed Byrne). The MC and the other two comedians were more entertaining I should point out.

For our final entertainment for the night before heading off was an evening of live jazz at the Guildford Arms. Although it got a bit busy and a bit packed, it was a very good night, but unfortunately my battery had died so I couldn’t take any pictures.

This brought an end to our Scottish adventure. We headed back to the car and set the sat-nav to take us to Hull, or as near to Hull as it possibly could. If anyone out there has trouble setting theirs to go to Hull, try instead Kingston Upon Hull, it seems to be the same place. We parked up sometime around midnight, quite literally at the England-Scotland border. I would have parked smack-bang on the border so one of us slept in Scotland and the other in England, but there was a big ass wall in the way.

One thing I want to bring up before shooting off to get some food, during my time on this whole trip I didn’t drink any alcohol. Mainly because I was driving and didn’t fancy risking even the slightest bit of it in my system flaring up on any detectors. So whenever I’ve been in a bar, pub or whatever, I’ve always asked what soft-drinks were available. I know that Scotland has been associated with Irn-Bru, but seriously I didn’t expect to find it available in every place I went to! Often places seemed to favour it over stuff like juice and cola. I’d never drank so much of the stuff before I went to Scotland.

大きな地図で見る

We’ve reached the top, so I guess it’s all down south from here (ish). Having added 820 miles to the clock just getting here, we headed to the official starting point.

After nosing through the various souvenir shops, visiting the small museum (which led us back into one of the souvenir shops), and explaining to a small group of American tourists that they weren’t a mere “30 or so kilometers” from London (you’d have thought they would have seen the sign), we were on our way.

As this was our first day of serious driving distance wise (according to google maps our entire route would take 7 hours 20 minutes), I made sure to stop along the way for quick rests. The mountains of Scotland are beautiful, though a little strange. After waking up from a quick nap in a layby, I opened the door of the car to see a dead crustacean.

We took a short break in Inverness for some lunch, and to also meet up with a friend. Ironically while she was regaling us with a tale about a crash at an accident hot spot (while we were walking right next to it), there was almost another crash between a bus and a car; the car had jumped a red light. I love good timing.

Next on our stop was the Glenfinnan Viaduct, and, if we could time it right, seeing the Steam Train ride across it. Those Harry Potter (& the Chamber of Secrets I’m told) fans will know it as an iconic bridge where … something happened. I won’t lie I don’t know anything about HP unless it’s related to sauce. Is this the route to Hogwarts? Didn’t he get the train from London? What’s it doing up here in Scotland? Unfortunately we were too late to see the train itself, that only runs twice a day, but the viaduct was still very impressive. If only the rain didn’t dampen the fun (commence booing).

We left the viaduct and went southward towards Falkirk. The mountainous roads seemed endless, and the weather had become much worse. Dangerous as it got, we couldn’t help but gander over at the way the clouds were just falling across the mountains (and the sodding road).

I wanted to try and squeeze in a visit to Loch Lomond since we were somewhats in the vicinity, but with the weather being what could only be described as pretty shitty, we kept on course. To be fair, I only wanted to go there so I could sing the song (like a bit of a twat, I know).

We arrived at our hotel in Falkirk tired and sodden. The Shat-Nav had sent us to the wrong area of Falkirk and we had a hell of a time finding the hotel, and the rain came down harder than ever. But that didn’t matter, for this place had free internet access.