Kilts & Bagpipes :: Callander, Scotland

As we drove the long drive from Isle of Skye back to Edinburgh for our flight to Ireland the next morning, we passed again through Loch Lomond & the Trossachs National Park. We stopped in the little town of Callander so the ladies could do a little shopping.  The men and others less interested in shopping got some coffee at a coffee shop. And then as we sat sipping our coffee, we heard bagpipes in the distance! So we meandered down the block to the main square where kilt-wearing bagpipers and kilt-wearing dancers took turns doing all sorts of traditional Scottish dances! What a pleasant surprise!

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The dancing happened in front of St. Kessog's Church

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A bow before the dance

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Cute blond Scottish girl ready and confident

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Marching in for the sword dance

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Scottish bagpipes

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Laying down the swords for the sword dance

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Dancing the Scottish sword dance

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Dancing the Scottish sword dance

This post is part of a series of posts about my family's British Isles trip in July/August of 2016. My parents and four siblings joined me as we went from London to Dublin and everywhere in between in 2.5 weeks. Here's our itinerary:

1. London (England)
2. Stonehenge (England)
3. Oxford (England)
4. Bibury, Cotswolds (England)
5. Wales
6. Peak District (England)
7. Chatsworth House (Peak District, England)
8. Yorkshire and Staithes (England)
9. Foggy Scottish Highlands (Scotland)
10. Bright Scottish Highlands (Scotland)
11. Kilts & Bagpipes (Scotland)
12. Edinburgh (Scotland)
13. Northern Ireland
14. Waterford/Dunmore East (Ireland)
15. Western Ireland and the Cliffs of Moher (Ireland)
16. Dublin (Ireland)

Bright Scottish Highlands :: Isle of Skye, Glencoe, Fort William

To get to Neist Point, you wend your way to the far backside of the island and the last 4-10 miles (sorry, I'm bad at estimating) are on a one-lane road. You need to keep a sharp eye for oncoming traffic around the sharp curves and pull off at one of the many turnouts. When you arrive, you can either go to the left and down a steep path to the path you see in the above photo and do about an hour roundtrip hike out to the lighthouse. You go down steeply, up shallowly (the main visible part of path in above photo) and then down again to the lighthouse. However, the views on that path are not the greatest. The best views are going off to the right along the ridge and up slightly. That's where the above photo was taken.

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Girl in the red coat. This is the view to the SE from the Neist Point parking lot. Neist Point is by far the most spectacular bit in that immediate area, but there are a number of different scenes in the area, every which way you look.

You may have noticed the somewhat odd naming of these last two posts: Foggy Scottish Highlands and Bright Scottish Highlands. That's because while these posts cover many of the same areas, they're just dramatically different depending on the weather! If I go back to the Scottish Highlands to do solely photography, I will definitely take 3-4 days in Isle of Skye, 3-4 days in the Glencoe area, etc to allow the weather to change a bit. As it was, we did get a nice variety of weather despite rushing through both the Isle of Skye and Glencoe areas in 2 days.

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Scottish mountain scene along the A82/A87 Glencoe/Isle of Skye road

One thing to be aware of is to budget a bit more time than Google Maps says for driving on Isle of Skye (in particular, but really anywhere in the UK). The roads are extremely narrow and windy and there are large numbers of tourists in high season, so progress will often be frustratingly slow.

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My sister Heidi posing amidst the flowers and Scottish mountains with the flower crown she made

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Hills of Scotland along the Glencoe Fort William road

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Dietrich and Benji arm wrestling

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Another one of the fantastic scenes along the most beautiful road in Scotland

All of these photos, except the first two taken at Neist Point and this last one (taken in Loch Lomond and the Trossachs) were taken along the A82/A87 in the Glencoe, Fort William, Isle of Skye area.

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The beautiful old-fashioned stone rail viaduct near Glenogle, Scotland in the Loch Lomond & The Trossachs National Park.

This post is part of a series of posts about my family's British Isles trip in July/August of 2016. My parents and four siblings joined me as we went from London to Dublin and everywhere in between in 2.5 weeks. Here's our itinerary:

1. London (England)
2. Stonehenge (England)
3. Oxford (England)
4. Bibury, Cotswolds (England)
5. Wales
6. Peak District (England)
7. Chatsworth House (Peak District, England)
8. Yorkshire and Staithes (England)
9. Foggy Scottish Highlands (Scotland)
10. Bright Scottish Highlands (Scotland)
11. Kilts & Bagpipes (Scotland)
12. Edinburgh (Scotland)
13. Northern Ireland
14. Waterford/Dunmore East (Ireland)
15. Western Ireland and the Cliffs of Moher (Ireland)
16. Dublin (Ireland)

Cotswolds :: Bibury, England, UK :: How to Visit and Photograph Arlington Row

While I did tens of hours of research for our British Isles trip, it was a last-minute, night-before suggestion from dad that was one of my favorite stops of the trip: The Cotswolds. It had been a favorite of his on a previous trip to England when he was a youngster, a trip I had not been aware he had taken! I thought I knew most of the places he has traveled over the years, but this one was a surprise to me.

Arlington Row, Bibury, Cotswolds AONB, England, UK. Sony A7rII, Sony 24-70mm f/4 at 34mm, ISO 250, f/8, 1/125th. Edited in Lightroom and Photoshop.

Rosemary Cottage (see the sign?), Arlington Row, Bibury, Cotswolds AONB, England, UK. Sony A7rII, Sony 16-35mm f/4 at 16mm, ISO 100, f/8, 1/320th. Edited in Lightroom and Photoshop.

The Cotswolds are designated an AONB, which stands for Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. It's a British thing that practically is a National Park-lite.

Dad researched three towns: Bibury, Bourton-on-the-Water, and Stow-on-the-Wold. We settled on visiting Bibury because it was the least complicated name. Actually, we chose it because it looked the nicest to me in some Google Image searches and it was handily right on our route from Oxford to Brecon Beacons National Park.

Arlington Row, Bibury, Cotswolds AONB, England, UK. Sony A7rII, Sony 24-70mm f/4 at 38mm, ISO 400, f/8, 1/125th. Edited in Lightroom and Photoshop.

Arlington Row, Bibury, Cotswolds AONB, England, UK. Sony A7rII, Sony 24-70mm f/4 at 34mm, ISO 200, f/8, 1/250th. Edited in Lightroom and Photoshop.

The most scenic part of the town is Arlington Row, pictured in all the previous images. There's a road that goes all the way to Arlington Row, but I strongly recommend against taking it. We briefly debated taking it, before being dissuaded by a sign that said "Unsuitable for HGVs". We had no idea what an HGV was (it's a "heavy goods vehicle"), but it sounded as if it might be of similar size to our nine passenger Vauxhall Vivaro van. The road you shouldn't take is appropriately named Awkward Hill Rd. and is incredibly narrow and steep and there's no place to park: you'll likely annoy local residents by blocking their driveways or the entire road itself if you try to park back there. Instead, there's a very nice car park with a 60 second walk across a pedestrian-only bridge. I've placed two red arrows at the beginning and end of the parallel car park very close to "Arlington row entrance" which is where the pedestrian bridge is. I've placed a third arrow at another free car park that adds only an additional 60 seconds of walking.

On a future trip, I'd love to explore The Cotswolds more, visiting a few of the other towns we learned about. Even though this is an AONB, there are other places in the British Isles with far more natural beauty. The really killer feature of The Cotswolds for me was not driving through the countryside, but rather the unique stone cottages in the quaint towns. The Cotswold stone used is mined locally and has some measure of renown.

Between the two parking lots I marked on the map. Bibury, Cotswolds AONB, England, UK. Sony A7rII, Sony/Zeiss 55mm f/1.8 at ISO 320, f/8, 1/125th. Edited in Lightroom, Photoshop, MacPhun Intensify.

Bibury, Cotswolds AONB, England, UK. Sony A7rII, Sony 16-35mm f/4 at 16mm, ISO 100, f/8, 1/1600th. Edited in Lightroom.

We finished our hour-long stop in Bibury by eating some delicious home-made ice cream and sipping some high quality espressos from Bibury Trout Farm, located across the road from the second car park I mentioned above. It was a perfect end to our quick visit to a wonderful little English village!

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Home-made ice cream and espressos at Bibury Trout Farm

This post is part of a series of posts about my family's British Isles trip in July/August of 2016. My parents and four siblings joined me as we went from London to Dublin and everywhere in between in 2.5 weeks. Here's our itinerary:

1. London (England)
2. Stonehenge (England)
3. Oxford (England)
4. Bibury, Cotswolds (England)
5. Wales
6. Peak District (England)
7. Chatsworth House (Peak District, England)
8. Yorkshire and Staithes (England)
9. Foggy Scottish Highlands (Scotland)
10. Bright Scottish Highlands (Scotland)
11. Kilts & Bagpipes (Scotland)
12. Edinburgh (Scotland)
13. Northern Ireland
14. Waterford/Dunmore East (Ireland)
15. Western Ireland and the Cliffs of Moher (Ireland)
16. Dublin (Ireland)

How to visit and photograph Stonehenge for free :: Stonehenge :: England, UK

I just returned from a packed family trip to the British Isles. In 2.5 weeks, my parents, four siblings, and myself visited London, England, Wales, Scotland, Edinburgh, Northern Ireland, Ireland, and Dublin. (I had found a fantastic deal for about $450 per person roundtrip in business class, which I booked for the whole family about 9 months ago. Subscribe to my Deals email list to be occasionally notified of deals like that. Over the last three months, I've sent 2-4 emails per month.)

Admission for a simple visit to the field that contains Stonehenge, with a few rope fences and a short shuttle ride from the carpark, costs an astounding £15.50 GBP ($20+ USD) for an adult! However, there's a fantastic way to get 90% of the experience for absolutely free!

Place to park along dirt road right beside farmer's gate for free access to Stonehenge

The farmer with land adjoining Stonehenge generously put a pedestrian-friendly gate in his fence (marked by the red marker on above map or you can view it directly on Google Maps here) and there's a nice path into his sheep field that goes right up beside Stonehenge! There was plentiful free parking on that dirt road, right by the farmer's gate. You'll get the view as seen in my opening photo. Now you can only view it from one side and you can't get quite as close, but you really can't get very close even if you purchase admission. Rope fences keep you quite a ways back. From the farmer's field, you are vulnerable to admission holders blocking your view, but as you can see, I was fortunate to not have that issue. (I did no clonestamping/healing in my photo. If you do have people blocking you, if you're patient, you can likely take multiple photos, load them as layers in Photoshop, auto-align the layers, and use masks to composite the photos together wherever the tourists are not. That combined with content aware heal should get you a clean photo relatively easily.)

A few key tips:

1. Make sure to use Google Maps to get to Stonehenge. Google Maps routed us around the absolute logjam on the A303 by taking us up on The Packway through the little town of Larkhill. We came down from the NE on the dirt road I have marked. That saved 20 minutes of sitting in traffic! (Use Google Maps almost everywhere you travel. Its traffic data and intelligent routing saved us tons of time. Do audit its routes, though, and do not take back roads in the UK & Ireland when it only saves you a minute or two as the narrow roads can be stressful driving, especially when driving a 9 passenger van as we were.)
2. After comparing Google Maps' aerial photos with my on-the-ground photos and my memory, I'm 90% sure they've removed that little paved angle road that comes up from the A303 from the SE, as well as that parking lot right by Stonehenge. This is likely due to the advent of the visitor center some distance away and the use of a shuttle bus.
3. The paved road between the visitor center and Stonehenge (that approaches Stonehenge from the NW) is marked for permitted traffic only, so you MUST come in on the dirt road from the NE (or possibly the dirt road from the SW; I don't know if coming in from the SW is still possible, given Google Maps' aerial photos appear out of date and we didn't try it. If the A303 right by Stonehenge is anything like the day we were there, you're much better coming from the NE from Larkhill anyway.)
4. The approximate location of the farmer's gate is here on Google Maps or is found at 51°10'52.6"N 1°49'43.5"W which is also sometimes notated as 51.181273, -1.828743.
5. If you want to spend the money to get up closer and view it from all angles, consider the 9 day pass that allows you into 100+ historic places in England for £30 GBP vs. £15.50 for this single location.

If you choose to go the free route at Stonehenge, you will be skipping the visitor center which some folks may value for its educational info. However, there are plenty of free resources online to learn about the history of Stonehenge, such as the ever-excellent Khan Academy's essay on Stonehenge.

Here are a few more photos that help you get the lay of the land:

The road that approaches Stonehenge from the NW, for the shuttle bus only.

The loading/unloading zone for the shuttle buses just SE of the main intersection on the above map.

The farmer's gate

The farmer's gate

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This is a very wide-angle panorama that shows the view from the farmer's field and the lay of the land. Where my brother Benji is taking a selfie is where you can stand for free.

I'd like to wrap up with some more personal notes on both visiting Stonehenge and on my travel philosophy in general, which will inform you what you can expect from this blog.

I don't want to say Stonehenge was a letdown. I'm glad I've visited Stonehenge once in my life. But was it worth driving an extra three hours, three hours we could have spent in the GORGEOUS town of Oxford? I'm not sure. There's something about incredibly famous landmarks (Stonehenge is a UNESCO World Heritage Site) whose high expectations adversely affect our enjoyment of them in an incredibly unfair way to where we would enjoy them more if they weren't as famous! I do think that the question of whether it was worth the trip was only a question for us because of how much we had packed into our schedule.

My travel style is that of Budget Luxury. I try to find deals where I can get awesome stuff very cheaply. I'm willing to pay a little more for luxury or high quality or otherwise unique experiences, but I'm always looking for ways to save money while traveling. Thus my travel experiences are what are for most people a very odd high-low mix of luxury 5 star hotels (when I can get them for cheaply) and 2.5 star hotels, for instance.

A perfect example of this seeming disconnect was when we were staying at the Sheraton Grand Edinburgh (which had rates of $700/nt around the time we were there) using credit card points. Dad asked the concierge for a place my brother Dietrich could get a haircut. The concierge recommended a place that charged $52 for a haircut, likely a normal price for most who would spend $700 on a 5 star hotel. However, this was quite a shocking prospect for my father as my family has never spent more than $20 on a haircut and usually spend more like $10-15.

All that to say, there were a few places in the British Isles that we visited (that I had not researched ahead of time as thoroughly as I should have) where we did not go inside because of the high entrance fees relative to their unique value. I was very happy when we found free or cheap alternatives to the many high costs of admission.

This post is part of a series of posts about my family's British Isles trip in July/August of 2016. My parents and four siblings joined me as we went from London to Dublin and everywhere in between in 2.5 weeks. Here's our itinerary:

1. London (England)
2. Stonehenge (England)
3. Oxford (England)
4. Bibury, Cotswolds (England)
5. Wales
6. Peak District (England)
7. Chatsworth House (Peak District, England)
8. Yorkshire and Staithes (England)
9. Foggy Scottish Highlands (Scotland)
10. Bright Scottish Highlands (Scotland)
11. Kilts & Bagpipes (Scotland)
12. Edinburgh (Scotland)
13. Northern Ireland
14. Waterford/Dunmore East (Ireland)
15. Western Ireland and the Cliffs of Moher (Ireland)
16. Dublin (Ireland)