Through England and Beyond!

Family under the Roman Arch

We are now full circle back with my parents in London where we started three months ago. We have had a great whirlwind tour of England starting from the North and working our way down. Met my parents and Glasgow and then the fun of driving on the left hand side began. Dad had to drive the whole time because it would cost extra for insurance if I drove, this was bad, not because my dad is a bad driver but because he is/was so excited and wanted to see everything that his head was swivelling around trying to take it all in and the car was swerving off the road….We managed to survive leaving Glasgow with me giving dad an on the go lesson in traffic circles. We drove down through southern Scotland and in the evening arrived a nice B&B near Hadrians Wall (after a few castle stops along the way of course). In the morning when we were leaving Dad apparently saw an interesting sign and, without stopping the car, had to read it. Scrape! Car meets a historic stone farm wall. 

York Walls

Dad's Mishap

O well, didn't let is spoil our trip. Hardrians wall was awesome and my dads favourite part to far. We walked along the best preserved parts of the wall for about 3 miles and then toured a roman fort. Next stop was York where we spent two days touring through the small city. Small, but really neat as it has some old medieval walls you can walk around and Yorkminster abbey was a beauty. My parents paid for a tour. Sophie and I went with the free option of gaining entrance to the abbey by attending an anglican evensong where the was a choir and everything. Interesting service and of course had a look around afterwards. Not sure if it is immoral to pull one over on the church or not but….16 pounds…how can us peasants ever gain entry otherwise? After York we headed to the Cotswolds which is a nice area of England where the rich own lots of houses and its very picturesque. Kind of like our Muskoka. 

Did some hiking in the fields  in between the villages. We were suppose to do a one way hike and then take the bus back but of course we ended up hiking on a statutory holiday when there was no bus service…..oh well. My parents had their first hostel experience in the cotswolds and it was actually pretty nice. Apparently had their best sleep so far on their trip there and we had a kitchen and a bathroom that we didn't really share with anyone else. It was actually better than this two star hotel we are staying at in London haha. After the cotswolds we headed towards london and along the way stumbled upon an awesome (free) Roman town site with an ruined amphitheatre and old walls. It was great! When on the outside of London we stayed with some of Dad's relatives Tom and Avril and they were very hospitable and told us a lot about our family history in England and everything which was awesome.

Roman Ampitheatre

 Took a day trip from their house to Bath and the sun was shining when we woke up so we all put on out shorts and were prepared for a pleasant day. By the time we arrived in Bath it was pouring rain non stop and so we pretty much did a 2 hour tour of the city in the rain, got frozen, toured the abbey and drove back for some warm pub food. What I saw through the rain and from under my umbrella looked great, we will definitely have to make a return trip. Today we turned our car in and came back to London where we will be for the next two days before we finally hit the continent. Been have lots of fun and it is nice to see a familiar face. Dad has been keeping us in stitches with his version of the english towns Newton-Upon-the-Tyne (Newcastle-Upon the Tyne) Bourbon on the Water (Burton on the water) and Stow on the Go (Stow on the Wold) amongst others! Lots of fun still to be had!

To The Mainland!

We are currently sitting at a McDonalds in Perth waiting for our bus to Glasgow to meet Nathan's parents at the airport so I will fill you in on our activities these past 3 weeks. 

Home sweet home

On the right the Tea Garden, On the left reception

Living at the croft we were finally close enough to a town to be able to get to a church, Crieff Baptist to be exact. Our options were either  a 2 hour walk, 45 minute bike ride or 5 minute bus ride to get there and me not wanting to be all sweaty and being cheap opted for the 2 hour walk into Crieff. We left at 8:30 in the morning thinking it was ample time to get there, but as time quickly passed we realized we really had to hustle. Fortunately we just made it in time and we were welcomed very warmly into the church. After the service we were invited to their annual church bbq and we did not want to be rude and refuse their offer were given a ride to the farm of one of the couples in the church. It was fabulous not only to be in fellowship with believers again but the food was amazing! Desserts especially. We later found out that the farm couple were also the parents of Andrew, the owner of Comrie Croft. And since we had not met Andrew yet, we got to introduce ourselves later on and tell the story of spending the day with his parents at their house, which was ironic seeing as we  met his parents before we met him.

Looking out from the Tea Garden 

At the croft we have continued to be busy cycling and hiking around the area, my legs are beginning to  see muscle, which is definitely a change for them. Nathan has definitely been doing some more cycling than me, since I opt out of most excursions that include cycling up hill. He took a trip to Innerpeffray Library, the first library in Scotland, and was given his own private tour since it was not exactly a popular attraction among most non-history nerds. He was able to flip the pages of a book on Roman History written in 1604, he was quite excited! At night we are able to go up into the campground and have campfires with our caravan neighbour George, cooking up burgers, potatoes and of course banana boats and apples. 

It has not all been fun and games though, we have definitely been busy working on that games room some more. We were not able to see it to completion but definitely got them well on their way. Most days we were busy painting the walls with some days in there spent organizing their shed and clearing cement. 

Just said goodbye to all our friends at the Croft today and started our journey to meet Nathan's parents. We are off to Glasgow to see some Canadian faces and start our journey to the Continent! 

Comrie Croft

So we are now staying at a place called Comrie Croft which is, you guessed it, near Comrie. That's just north a bit of Stirling and Edinburgh. Comrie Croft is a hostel/campground and they also rent bikes and have a tea garden. They usually have large groups come into the hostel so last week we had a Baptist Church group here and this week we have a German school group. Our accommodation is in large caravan that has a living room and everything so we have a lot of room to ourselves.

 This helpx job is a bit different as we are making all our own food and just get an allowance from Comrie Croft for food. We only have to work about four hours a day which leaves a tonne of time for us to do lots of our own things. Since they rent out lots of bikes we can take bikes out and cycle around the countryside anytime we want. They even have a tandem bicycle, which is something fun and different to go out on. 

One day we got a tip from Martin the maintenance guy that works here that there was a ginormous raspberry patch only a mile cycle ride away so we went and picked a few pounds of fresh wild raspberries, so good!

For work we are working on creating a new games room that will have a pool table and table tennis in it. So far we have moved all the rental bikes out of the room into their new places and disassembled the old bike racks. After that we sealed the walls so that the new paint will stick on the old mortar walls. I'm using all the handy man skills that my dad tried to teach me, but that I never quite paid enough attention too…. 

We've had lots of really sunny days for once which is really nice for biking and hiking around. One night had a fire and made some banana boats which made us feel like we were right at home camping in Algonquin. It's even been hot enough to go swimming, so i've taken a dip or two in the campground pond thingy. Ice cold! No chance of Sophie going in. Overall this helpx is quite a bit different because we keep more to ourselves and on our time off we can just go and do whatever we like so we spend a lot more time together and just have a lot of down time. 

From Farm To Croft

So today we said good bye to our hosts Jamie and Morag and our animal friends and headed off to Crieff to work for the next three weeks. We really enjoyed working at Barndromin farm. We learned a lot about farming and sheep, did lots of hiking in the highlands and just had tonnes of fun hanging out on the farm. 

Last Thursday we got a day off and went down to the coast to take a boat tour of the local area. Jamie generously paid for us in return for all the extra work we were doing and we got a great 2 hour tour of the coast. We went and saw the third largest whirlpool in the world and saw lots of wildlife including some seals and a minke whale! Topped the day off with some classic fish and chips in Oban and had a great day off. 

Jamie and Morag have been great and took us along to one of their many dinner parties that they have regularly with their friends. This party was at one of their friends' that live on an island which makes the party a bit more interesting. To get over you have to get to the ferry (first come first serve) and line up, the ferry can only take a few cars but they just squeeze them all on and once were over the ferryman kind of deploys the ramp and revs the engine to keep the ramp on the pier to prevent the ferry from drifting away while you drive off…..crazy Scots. Had a great dinner and met lots of their travelling friends. As soon as around 10:15 rolls around everyone jumps up and once and races a crossed the island to try and catch the last ferry back….needless to say if this was in Canada the Van Bergeyk family would always be stuck on the island. 

Yesterday on our last day at the farm Jamie, some friends and I got up at 6:30am and headed up to Glencoe to hike the anakeigan ridge. It was awesome! Bright sunny morning, a great view and a challenging ridge to climb, what more could I ask for? Apparently it was a grade 3 hike which means that it's the steepest kind of mountain climbing you can do without equipment. So fun. After we got back all of us went out in Jamie and Morag's boat for the afternoon. Did some mackerel fishing, I can honestly say that it's my new favourite kind of fishing. I put the line in for literally 5 seconds and had 5 fish on my line, amazing! Sophie caught a whole bunch too. 

We will be missing the farm life, feeding the chickens, shearing, crogging, driving the quad etc. But now we are making some new friends in Crieff. We're at a place called the Comrie Croft which has a hostel, tea garden, camp ground and bike track. They also rent bikes so Sophie and I can use them and bike around the country side for the next few weeks. Should be lots of fun, we only have to work four hours a day and get two days off. We also cook for ourselves and get a small allowance for food  so it's a bit different from our other jobs. As usual there is lots to do around the area and we will get to check out a new part of Scotland!