Scotland via England

For this trip we decided to fly into London and drive to Scotland, this will give us a chance to see the Northern part of England.  We flew Ryan air again for $123 round trip for the three of us. You really can't beat their prices. We picked up the rental car from Sixt for around $100 for the 4 days. This time we rented hotel rooms on Hotels.com instead of houses on Airbnb since we were traveling around and not staying in one spot.
Our first stop was to Sherwood forest and to check out the area of Robin Hood and his merry men.

This is a must see for anyone who is in awe of nature.  The forest is home to a lot of very old oak trees.  The forest covers over 450 acres but is recorded in records back to 927 AD which covered over 100,000 acres then.  The major oak is considered the oldest tree in the forest and is thought to be anywhere from 800-1000 years old and is still producing acorns. 

She may be propped up, have some rotten holes and not have any leaves on her right now but she is beautiful! look at her! just look at her! I wish i could have seen her during the summer when she is in full leaf. her trunk circumference is 33' and branches spread over 92' wide! The tree is thought to be the site of the base camp for Robin Hood and his followers, but there is  no evidence of it.
Here is another picture of her The Major Oak.

Ok last picture I promise. Up at the gift shop there was an artisan making wooden bowls with a homemade lathe, it was pretty cool.

Our next stop was to Nottingham castle it was originally built in 1067 and rebuilt in 1678 to what you see now. It was the residence of King Richard I also know as Richard the Lionheart.
 
There are tributes all over the grounds of Robin Hood.

On our drive to Scotland we stopped in the town of Kensington, England.  We noticed a cute little gate with rabbits on it.

We did a little search and realized that this is the town that Beatrix Potter wrote her famous book Peter Rabbit. This was a cute little garden that we found a geocache in.

We finally made it to Scotland and went to see Edinburgh Castle, there has been a royal castle on this site since the 12th century.  

Before driving up to see it we stopped below it to get our first geocache in Scotland.  

The entrance to the castle grounds, you can see how high up the castle is over the city.

The castle grounds were pretty awesome. In 2014 researchers claimed the Edinburgh Castle as "the most besieged place in Great Britain and one of the most attached in the world".

The views from the castle are amazing, seems like you could see forever. 

The arms rooms were really cool, all of the swords and spears are originals, and there are loads!

 Here is a shot of the entire room, you can see the displays of spears and battle axes hung high on the walls. The suits of armor are really cool too.

 This is what the Scottish Armys barracks looked like, talk about being close to your brothers in arms.

Kim was a bad girl and had to go to the stockade. The castle jail was pretty neat and had been modernized to hold prisoners during WWII. 

 I love the look of the architecture, even though it is all gray scale it is still cool looking.

 In the back ground is St Giles cathedral built in 1243.

 Highland Kirk church right outside the castle in the city.

 This is an overview of a tartan factory, they make multiple patterns for kilts and other items.

 The machinery looks very old and heavy, pretty cool.

 We left Edinburgh and wanted to go find Nessie, in Loch Ness.  Driving through the highlands was beautiful, it was really strange, the temperature dropped way down as we were driving through.  When we came out the temp went back up.  

 If your are interested in the legend of Loch Ness then you want to visit the exhibition center.  It was pretty neat, it showed the research of the lake and it also showed the hoaxes that have been created over the years.

 The lake is absolutely gorgeous! We looked for a while but no luck we didnt see Nessie.  We drove around the entire east coastline.  It was amazing to see it so green since we just drove through the snowy highlands.

 On our drive back to the airport I wanted to stop and see Hadrian's wall.  It was a wall built by Romans fro east coast to west coast in 122 AD.  Parts of it are still standing!! There was a roman fort about every 5 miles along the wall. We got there to late to visit the fort and visitors center.

Te trip would not be complete with out a man in a Kilt playing a bagpipes....THE END.