Tuesday 26 August 2014

Scotland: beautiful scenery, great food, amazing biking and lots of midges!!!

So after the fantastic wedding of our co-adventurers Mandy and Rob (see https://www.facebook.com/pages/Where-to-next-Africa/301927936647306 for some great wedding/land rover photos!), we left to do some camping up North - as far as we could go on a limited time/budget.

We set off in Ditsy with the bikes attached on the back and headed up to Barnard Castle in County Durham. We headed towards a campsite (see link below) and arrived at about 5pm. As we pulled in the wind began to howl and the rain began to lash down, however due to the fantastic staff at the campsite we were pitched out of the worst of it! We visited High Force and Low Force water falls (the longest in the UK - Charles was not hugely impressed!), which was a great visit and beautiful scenary. We walked towards Bowness and had the most amazing lunch and bought some local honey mustard (eaten throughout the week at various stops!!).




We travelled up towards a biking park in Scotland on one of the Forestry Commission sights at Glentress staying in Peebles for a while. Peebles was a small town but had a good couple of pubs - Charles was certainly happy with the ales!! Glentress was brilliant and after this we headed up towards Loch Lomand.

Once in Loch Lomand we stayed a while in Aberfoyle at a campsite called Cobeland. It was a lovely campsite next to the river next to a village with a great pub and a great butchers which sold some amazing pies and pork pies!!





Our next stop was a campsite next to the Loch called Milarrochy Bay. Again a great campsite and we were pitched right next to the Loch. We biked along the foot way - I had a slight sense of humor failure when we had to push the bikes up hill up 60 steps... It was such a beautiful place full of so much to see and do (even some shopping!!). It is safe to say however that both of us got munched on by midges despite cans of insect spray!



Overall another great trip -still tonnes of things we want to get done... many probably a carry over from the previous blog:

Table
Fridge
Shelving unit that goes beyond the load lugger in the back
Nets across the ceiling
Hooks to hang from the poles in the roof tent

We also need some boxes but we are going to see what the costings are like making them ourselves through a CAD design programme.



Links for the campsites

http://www.campingandcaravanningclub.co.uk/campsites/uk/countydurham/barnardcastle/barnardcastle
http://www.crossburncaravans.co.uk/

http://www.campingintheforest.co.uk/scotland/cobleland-campsite

http://www.campingandcaravanningclub.co.uk/campsites/uk/glasgow/nrdrymen/milarrochybay

Sunday 3 August 2014

A quick update and a few photos...

Again nothing much has been done in the last few weeks regarding the trip or the car. Charles and Rob went to Billing Land Rover Show which I am assured was a good weekend!
Whilst there he bought a jerry-can holder for the roof and also a ladder for the back of the car (to help me!!).  


As you can see below the car now has our facebook page (run by Rob) on it - it will eventually have the blog on! Please add yourself to it 'Where to next Africa' to keep updated.
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Where-to-next-Africa/301927936647306?fref=ts 


It is safe to say we have been monitoring the Foreign Office website quite closely - especially with this outbreak of Ebola virus. It has been on their radar for about 3 months now so trying to see where it is spreading to and a time scale is quite important!

Our next jobs are to buy a fridge so if anyone has an opinion please give us your feedback below! We still also need to varnish and carpet the draws (especially as the carpet is sitting in my spare room!!) - however time at the moment is hard to come by (for Charles) so it may be a while before photos are up!