I recently got back from a 10-day whirlwind road trip in the United Kingdom, with stops in London, the Isle of Sky, Dublin and more. Talk about going into hyperdrive! I easily could have spent all 10 days in any of those places and been happy, but when you're time is limited, your budget is limited and there's a big whole Earth out there to see, you take what you can get when you can get it.
The trip was planned with the help of a Groupon coupon - the first time I'd ever used Groupon for traveling. We thought it'd be convenient because it offered us a rental car around England and Ireland and two flexible bed and breakfast packages - but I'm not sure that it really saved us that much money in the end because of course I had to modify the trip to include Isle of Skye in Scotland, one of my bucket list destinations. No way was I getting within 1,000 miles of that area and not making it all the way there. A lot of things about our Groupon deal weren't as flexible as I'd hoped, so I wound up having to take about three days out of the time we would have spent driving around England to hop on a plane to Glasgow and drive up to the tip of northern Scotland. I'm not really sure what I missed out on by skipping Oxford and Cambridge (that's not really true, I really wanted to get to those places) but I have to say, the detour was worth every extra cent spent. Scotland was OUT OF THIS WORLD breathtaking.
PART ONE: ENGLAND
The trip started after arriving at London Heathrow Airport. We made our way to the Hertz-Rent-a-Car location, actually hoping to put the car on some kind of reserve so we could take the train into London instead of driving. The agent at the desk — who I am still upset with — asked us why we didn't want to drive. "I don't know, it's a big, foreign city. We're not really used to driving on the left side of the road..." My voice trailed off. "Oh you'll have no problem!" she exclaimed, all enthusiastically. "It's a Sunday, the perfect time to go into the city! And you don't even have to pay the overcrowded-highway fee!" (I'm paraphrasing here.) "Are you sure?" we asked. "Oh yeah, it's fine," she said.
Lies. Lies. LIES. Attempting to drive into downtown London was a nightmare, only the kind that could actually kill you. The roads are all narrow, traffic seems to be coming from the wrong direction, and there doesn't seem to be any parking anywhere. We ended up spending $70 for a parking space in a lot just to get off the streets - probably worth it because an accident costs more.
But walking around London was a ton of fun. We only spent about five hours in the city but we got to see Big Ben and the London Eye, St. Paul's Cathedral and Platform 9 and 3/4s, among other stops. (Pro tip: Don't go to Platform 9 and 3/4s. I'm a big Harry Potter fan, but it's a trap.)
We spent the night at the Ely Hotel in Camberley before heading heading to Waverley Abbey and Pride of the Valley Sculpture Park the next morning. Waverley Abbey is a beautiful old ruin, but it was Pride of the Valley that really stole the show that day. I think the park has more than 800 sculptures of every variety and from every medium imaginable, all hidden (well, not so hidden) in a beautiful forest and water garden. I think the plot of land is actually pretty small, but you wander through it like a maze, following arrows through narrow trails and back again so it winds up taking quite a bit of time. We spent the night at South Lawn Hotel south of Brockenhurst. (Driving through the rest of England, Scotland and Ireland was fine - way better than attempting to drive through London).
The next day, it was already time to head to Scotland, but we did make a pit stop at Hawk Conservancy Trust because I love owls just so much. They are beautiful birds, dinosaurs from another era, and Hawk Conservancy is an amazing nonprofit that both promotes all birds of prey and helps care for the animals when they are injured in the wild. They had a spectacular Birds of Prey flying display that we had just enough time to catch. If we'd just been heading to Dublin, I would have been tempted to miss my flight.
STAY TUNED FOR PART TWO: ISLE OF SKYE, SCOTLAND