Scotland Epiblog

The motorhome holiday this year took us on a round trip of 2150 miles to the majestic scenery of the north of Scotland. We did most of the NC500 route around the north coast that is being heavily promoted as 'the best drive in the world' and Scotland's Route 66. But we added on the Trossocks, Speyside and the Isle of Skye, all places we have not been to before.

We timed the trip very well enjoying almost 3 weeks of mostly unbroken sunshine at the start of the trip, although it was cold at night and windy at times. Then a few very wet days on the west coast, followed by two hot days, bought the midges out and we retreated south with some bites. We managed to fit in stops at the Tower ballroom in Blackpool on the way up and the Lake district on the way back.

We stayed at a combination of 5 Caravan and Motor-home Club sites, 5 Camping and Caravan Club sites, 8 independent sites mostly on the NC500 , one wild night at Aviemore and 4 Britstops going to and from Scotland. We were away 32 nights in all, from 2nd May to 2nd June, stopping in 23 locations. 18 of the stops were in Scotland, 12 were one night stands and the rest were either 2 or 3 nights. The journey to and from Glasgow, for Loch Lomond, was about 800 miles allowing for overnight detours, so I drove about 1350 miles averaging 50 miles per day during the 27 days loop around Scotland.

The scenery was everything we expected, the seafood was great, but all eating out was expensive. We have ticked off John o Groats from the bucket list and I always wanted to visit Glamis Castle after being involved with the school production of Macbeth. I have got some (miniature) bottles of single malt whisky from the distilleries we passed, 750 photos to review and Rosemary is just glad to be home safely with piles of washing.

Home

Rosemary shopped in the farm shop and I picked some fresh strawberries from the PYO poly-tunnels. They have thousands of plants growing in waist high troughs so PYO is really easy as the fruits are just dangling ready to pick. Yields and harvesting time must be 10 times traditional method on the ground. We spent a few hours at Shugborough, the NT property that belonged to the Anson family, later Lord Lichfield. Interesting place thats worth another visit when the NT have done more work on presentation of the last Peter Lichfield photography stuff. We arrived home at 4:00pm after taking a rather slow A5 from Stafford back to Croft. The total round trip was 2150 miles.

Stafford Britstop

I had another fruitless 2 hours of fly fishing  and Rosemary found some interesting plants in the onsite garden centre before​ we left the nice little site at Sizerg. We found a Britstop and  NT property near Stafford for a final stop on the grand tour. We stopped on the M6 at a service station with an M&S and found some bargains. We passed the 2000 mile marker on the way. The Britstop is a farm shop and soft fruit farm by a canal. I had another hour fishing and caught a roach whilst Rosemary made a traditional Scottish delicacy, macaroni cheese. The Belgium Britstoppers were surprised I did not want to eat the roach.