Day 2

Ok, so we woke up at some silly time in the morning and began the second day.

The journey today takes us from York to Edinburgh with plenty of stops and sleeping time on the bus available.

Firstly we stopped off at the university city of Durham only very briefly to stretch our legs and have a wee. The next stop was the angel of the north which is a huge statue of an angel made from 200 tonnes of weathered steel and has the wingspan of a jumbo jet. Quite big but not all that attractive

Back on the bus now for a quick nap before we drive through Newcastle and make a stop at Hadrians' Wall. The wall was built at around 122AD by the Romans to mark the most northern part of their empire and kept the Scottish (Celtic) people out, it once stretched the width of the country approx. 120km.

Moving on now it was goodbye England and hello Scotland! thanks to the big rock with England and Scotland written on opposite sides so we new where we were!

Lunch was taken at Jedbergh a border town which was once home to Mary Queen of Scots.

On to Edinburgh. On the drive into the capital we got a nice view of the castle and here's a picture from the door of where we were staying the night.

At this stage the Scottish weather had kicked in and it was bloody windy, the cans were getting blown up the hills. The scaffolding to the right was been put up in preparation for the festival of Edinburgh (one of the biggest festivals in the UK) and I guess it is the same area they use for the Edinburgh tattoo.

We did a full tour of the castle, saw the crown jewels, a whole bunch of cannons, some stain glass windows of William Wallace, the dungeons & other exhibitions. On the way back from the castle we visited the world famous Royal Mile which runs from the castle to somewhere, at this stage I'd like to say that Edinburgh has over 850 pubs the most in the UK per person by a very long way.

Back to the hostel we meet up with a guide who showed us over a lot of the city and filled us in on a lot of history(there's too much to write). Dinner was served up and like a good ancestral Scottish fella I ordered the haggis and thought it was quite nice.

After drinks and the usual shenanigans in a open mic night pub where our driver sang some songs (he has a record coming out soon) we headed back to the hostel for some well earned sleep. Now, it was always the plan to visit the graveyard which has the most documented ghost in the world residing in it after we left the pub. To cut a long story short I ended up visiting the graveyard by myself at 1 in the morning take a few pictures and proceed to call home (Dad and Daniel can verify this). The worst part about the graveyard was trying to find the entrance to the place because disappointingly I didn't see anything weird at all, I tried saying hello to them and all but alas no spirits.

With day 2 finished day 3 takes us through the Lake District (vry nice) and eventually to Liverpool.