Scotland in the school holidays

After all of the excitement of the weekends, Monday was a little more chilled. After getting up early to make sure Garth and Dickie made it away, I sorted a haircut, checked out of the air bnb and tried to get a train back to Edinburgh. The first train was standing room only, so I waited 10 minutes and got on the next one with a seat. Much better way to spend an hour and a half.

While this was happening, Jo had managed to use the last bit of London Transportation to make it to Kings Cross and board her train to Edinburgh. Just a quick 4 and a half hours up the country.

After checking into the hostel, sorting lunch and walking around the Scottish capital, I met Jo at the train station. Our first priority was to decide what to do in Scotland for the week. Turns out it is the school holidays. Most of Scotland is booked out. After some research we ended up booking three nights in an airbnb in a place called Nairn, near Inverness. Should be interesting?

After a quick breakfast, we jumped on a bus and headed to the airport to pick up our car. Again, being the school holidays the car rental desks were extremely busy. After picking up Nessie, Jo's name for the car, we had to decide how to get up north. After an hours drive on the motorway, we saw a sign for the Angus Coastal Route and started to follow this. Turns out the first place we went was Dundee. After showing Jo where I stayed, we ended up driving past Carnoustie and up the coast towards Aberdeen though some amazing coastline and villages. After some lunch in Montrose and admiring their breakwater, we continued up until we got to Aberdeen. Aberdeen gets a lot of stick. I do realise we were there on most likely the hottest day they have ever had and we only spent an hour there, but it was a pretty nice spot. We decided to find an independent coffee place for a pit stop and were spoilt for choice! After a coffee and a wander around the old buildings we battled the rush hour traffic and made our way over to Nairn to find our accommodation.

After dinner at the local pub, that has 180 whiskeys, we went for a walk along the beach and tried out the water of the Moray Firth, or North Sea. Its bloody cold. Nairn is a great wee town though. Should be a splendid few days.