Gordon's Big Trip

Full photos on flickr . Last day: York to Romford. York is famous for it's Viking heritage and Jorvik Viking Centre, the York Minster, and for expensive parking. We partook in all three. This is the castle in York. We scheduled the blue sky ahead of time (unlike the Lake District), and so we had some beautiful weather. This is the Jorvik (Viking for York) Centre. Specifically, you enter the museum/exhibition onto a glass floor with the recommendation: "no stiletto heels" (perhaps those people fall through the grass?). The museum is great at detailing the entire history of the Viking occupation (regime change?) right up until "Eric Bloodaxe" (circa 885 to 954). Another great name, along with, for example, "Edward the Hammer of Scotland". Perhaps we can do the same for Obama? "Obama the Healthcare Reaper"? Perhaps not. Here is Gordon riding around the exhibition on the authentic Viking hanging railway thingy. Not sure why they...

Saturday was our penultimate day on the road, taking us from Edinburgh down to Thirsk ( Heriot County) via Berwick-upon-Tweed, the Holy Island of Lindisfarne (almost), Bamburgh Castle, Hadrian’s Wall, and a gratuitously large and bizarre sculpture-artwork thing next to the main road. The first stop of the day was Berwick-upon-Tweed . Berwick has lots of numerous wonderful things to photograph, a list of things that doesn't include the above the sign. But come on, they’re advertising REAL food?! Who can resist real food? Which begs the question, what the Ell are all the other eating establishments serving? (To be fair, I was never under the ghastly false impression that haggis is real food).  OK, so this is the real Berwick-upon-Tweed. Berwick is so fiercely proud of its Scottish heritage the town is literally situated on flowing Tweed (hence its name). Unfortunately, no-one has remembered to tell Berwick that they are solidly and completely in England....

We had an exciting and long day. Numerous photos have made their way to the flickr page . First, I'd like to relay how the conversation about last night's dinner menu could have gone (i.e., the first two lines are correct).    Gordon: What's a "smoked loin of cod"? Do cods really have loins?    Waitress: No. It's a piece of cod.    Gordon: You mean it's a codpiece ?    Waitress: Great, another joker using 15th century clothing for humor. Our first destination today was going to be Dunkeld . But we got side-tracked by the first (rail; left) and second (road; right) bridges across the Firth of Forth. The third bridge will be built in the next few years, making three bridges with different styles ( cantilever , suspension , and cable-stayed ) from three different centuries (1890, 1964, and ~2016) all going across the Forth of Firth (sorry, Firth of Forth). And then sometime in the 22nd century, we might end up with a Four...

More photos at http://www.flickr.com/photos/middles . We're a little late on the blog due to partaking in the local music scene into the wee hours of the morning (fine, it wasn't even midnight, but it felt like the wee hours).  The day started at Edinburgh Castle. The castle has a strangely large car park (parking lot) for a castle with no public parking. The castle, apparently, has only ever been taken by stealth and starvation-besiegement. Which is only surprising since the car park seems to have plenty of flat ground for siege equipment and a healthy road (Royal Mile) leading up to it. This is the queue to buy tickets to get into the castle. Historically-failed castle besiegements have been quicker than the time it took to buy tickets. In fact, they have removed security at almost all of the nine gates and instead keep out pillagers and plunderers using the more-effective buy-a-ticket system. This method is particularly effective for keeping out the...

Gordon and I are in good spirits. We will post some holiday snaps (i.e., vacation photographs) later today. In the meantime, we found a great story and headline in the Metro newspaper while eating lunch on the Royal Mile - see below for the photograph I took of the actual newspaper. Admittedly, the original article didn't come with an accompanying image, so I selected an image (a meme?!) that added the most context to the story. Some of the timelessly and telling quotes from the article include: "We want to give people that extra confidence... to give people the incentive to find work", "[i]t will recognise those who are doing their utmost to to find employment by giving them a beauty treatment", and "... sometimes people need to feel and look the part when they are going to a job interview". However, there were some negative reactions to the new scheme. For example: "It's... skills that will secure a job, not how bronzed you are...

Days photos at http://www.flickr.com/photos/middles/ . We are in Scotland, a place that reminds us that not only is the US the land of the free and home of the brave, the US is also the land of convenient bathrooms where the light switch is actually in the bathroom. This is not Scotland. It's still the Lake District. Scotland looks a lot like this, except the stone walls are made of the skulls of Englishmen. I waved my US passport at border control (carefully hiding the UK one) as we crossed the border. Or I would have if such a thing (a border control) existed. The first town across the England-Scotland Border is Gretna Green, commonly known as the "Las Vegas of Scotland", though without the gambling, gratuitous nudity, and anything vaguely modern and/or risque ( I'm not entirely joking ). Basically, you can marry at 16 without parental consent in Scotland and Gretna Green was the first accessible town over the border (or something like that). People often go...