Day 12 - Boat of Garten, Scotland to Newcastle Upon Tyne, England

Today we continued our trip south and left Scotland which we have thoroughly enjoyed. We found it much quieter (and we like that) than England and the people seem more approachable and helpful.

We were very happy with our hotel in Boat.

I will take a bit of a detour here and spend some time explaining how we go about choosing hotels which we have to do every evening as we have decided not to plan too much ahead and rather be more flexible. In general this method has worked very well although we had less choices in the large cities as these fill up quite fast. I also believe this works as we are not in the peak of the season when hotels will all be full. We use mainly a combination of booking.com to do the actual booking and most of the analysis and now and then we do a check in trip advisor to ensure ratings are consistent and there are no horror stories. Using booking.com we usually check for hotels close to the city center, within our budget and that have ratings higher than 8.5, ideally 9 or above. Hotels with these ratings have been excellent.

For the night our bike had her own room (the only place where this happened) and we loaded it up inside.

 

The weather was not very good when we left Boat but we still took some time to visit the Loch of Garten which is tucked away in the middle of beautiful vegetation. It is so remote we even saw a deer crossing the road. It was a magic moment and wished I could have suspended time at that instant and taken a picture.

 

The NE to SW view of the Loch is very beautiful.

 

We then made our way towards the A9 which is the main highway that crosses this part of Scotland in a N to S direction. We went through some beautiful countryside.

 

For lunch we stopped at the House of Bruar which is widely regarded as Scotland's most prestigious independent store. Here is a short summary of what you can experience

" Quite simply, it is the perfect place to take a break, walk the dog and see the spectacular waterfalls immortalised by Robert Burns in his poem “The Humble Petition of Bruar Water”, before enjoying an outstanding meal, stocking up with delicious foodstuffs for your holiday…. and partaking in some serious retail therapy!"

We did take the break and enjoyed an outstanding meal. Paula had the Scottish salmon and I had the roast turkey. We top it all off with a delicious freshly baked carrot cake.

The sun actually came out and we enjoyed some beautiful riding on the A9.

 

After the A9, the trip south was a bear as roads became full of traffic, visibility was poor due to fog and the temperatures started to plunge. We were very happy when we got to our hotel and felt the warmth of an heated room.

During the evening bought the tickets for the overnight ferry from Hull to Roterdam and the 28 hour ferry from Travemunde to Helsinki. A couple more days of riding on our magic adventure.

 

Click HERE for all the pictures for Day 12

 

Posted by Armando