Our trip began with a wedding in Preston. We missed the first train to Manchester due to overcrowding, managed the next one. We got to the hotel in Preston shattered but looking forward to the wedding the next day. Which really was lovely. We knew several people including a cousin of mine and some old school friends from Malta. I conserved enough energy to dance for about 3 minutes before I almost collapsed on my very high heels but was very pleased with the effort.
The next day, I paid for it tenfold. It was possibly the worst day of the pregnancy to date. And what made it even worse was that I had no bed to retreat to as we'd checked out of the hotel by 11am and were headed to the airport by lunchtime for our 5pm flight to Edinburgh. We figured we'd hang out at the airport, if for a rather long while, but at least we'd have access to food.
At 3pm, our flight was cancelled. At that point I think I slightly lost my mind. I was so unwell and was putting so much effort into staying awake and keeping my stomach from lurching every 3 minutes, it was too much to even consider another 3 hours of that until the next flight, at 8pm. So David and I took over a row of four seats in the departure lounge for the rest of the afternoon/evening, me lying down with my head on his lap as a pillow. On the plane, any control I had gained over my stomach seemingly didn't board the flight with me, and that was that.
So an hour later, thanking a very patient flight attendant and my bag stuffed with as many sick bags as I could smuggle out of other seat pockets on the way off the plane, we landed in Scotland.
After that, it wasn't so bad, but as I needed to rest regularly throughout the day, our sightseeing trips around Scotland could never be as long and in depth as we'd have liked. It is for this reason that I refer to our holiday as "Scotland Lite" because we did not see as much as we should and could have had I been feeling "normal."
But what we did see, I loved. It's been a very long while since I've been in a country that struck me as simply beautiful. Even the people were friendly and welcoming. The weather was not as cool as I'd hoped it would be - I was really looking foward to needing to snuggle up in a fleece most of the time, but as it was, a t-shirt generally did the trick! (The picture shows me feeling cold on the Loch, but that was an exception!)A friend who knows Scotland well told me the other day that Scotland has two seasons: August and Winter... lol, I'm inclined to believe it!
Anyway, to name a few places, we stayed in a lovely little cottage in Callander. We spent half a day in Edinburgh, another stunning city - and another half day in Oban, where we visited the seal colony. So cute! We visited the Blair Drummond Safari Park and Stirling and Doune Castles, and another quaint little place which I will be spotlighting in a few days' time for my September Spotlight...
My final verdict is that it's definitely a place I'll be heading back to, perhaps in a few years, when the little kid can walk and hike, and we can really properly see Scotland in all it's glory.
