In our house we have 2 framed LPs, one is Beatles, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and the other is AC DC, For Those About To Rock. I obviously got to live out my Beatles fan experience so it only seemed reasonable that we should visit the Bon Scott statue while in Scotland. Not quite the same level of fan experience, but also there are no AC DC tours here even though the bulk of the band members were from Scotland before establishing the band in Australia.
So from our wild camp, we continued the country roads through to Kirriemuir where the statue stands proudly in the village where Bon Scott spent the first years of his life before immigrating to Australia. We had the site to ourselves so snapped some pics and then wondered back the garden path to our vans parked up on the street above.
Our next stop was Dunfermline Abbey and Castle. This is the burial site of Robert the Bruce. A few walls and a gatehouse is all that is left of the castle, but the Abbey stands tall and proud on the hill. Another beautiful piece of architecture to wonder through. Again, free with our explorer pass.
We wound our way through the village streets from the castle to find ouraelves on the Forth Road Bridge which is a suspension bridge over the Firth of Forth. Hard to capture the design of the bridge, but you get the idea. A massive structure with the suspension lines in the middle of the bridge. On approach we thought you would drive through the lines, but nope, you drive along side them.
We had decided to drive a bit of east coast costal road back to England and not really knowing the lay of the land soon found ourselves crossing the border 😦 Tip #17, see Tip #16! I was so so tempted to scurry back to Scotland at this point as I was in no way prepared for leaving it behind just yet. I held it together, ever grateful of the experience in the beautiful, magnificent, spectacular, enchanting country of Scotland by telling myself this was probably Scottish territory stolen by the English anyway, so I didn’t need to let go just yet… ha
Our campsite was at Berwick upon Tweed. A beautiful camp set up in the hills overlooking the mouth of the River Tweed and the North Sea. A top spot! Once we worked out our booking (as we just rolled in with our fingers crossed), we set the vans up for the night and caught a bus into town on the opposite side of the river to explore and find our late lunch / early dinner.
Our first stop was the Red Lion and I soon worked out the English would not appreciate any thoughts of me claiming this as Scottish territory. This pub was the kind that everyone turned and looked at you as you walked in. Probably not overly frequented by tourists with those states, but we come from a one pub town, we know those stares aren’t so scary as long as I didn’t mention my Scottish theories, we would be fine. Mind you, one beer and we were ready to find food as it didn’t appear like the kitchen was open here.
Back out on the street we found the Leaping Salmon. The weather had the locals and presumably tourists alike sitting outside in the beer garden/balconies and we would have joined them except there was no free tables (a sure sign of a good place to visit) so we headed inside to play pool and to feed our fading bodies. Once we settled the girls play a better game of pool on this trip (2v1) we jumped back on the bus to camp.
It was such a lovely afternoon that some campers were sun baking in the park so we decided to sit outside for a drink on the grass. Great way to end the day!
My Happy Travels 