Holiday time took us to not so sunny Scotland this August. From Oxford by car the whole way we travelled down the M40 to Birmingham up to Glasgow via the M42 / M6 / and M74. From there it was over to Edinburgh and then towards St. Andrews we stayed there for a week before heading up to Perth and over to Ullapool to catch the ferry over to the Isle of Lewis to stay for another week. To give you an idea of how far that is on the way back we started off in the Isle of Lewis at 10am and arrived home at 3.30am the next day! As far as geocaching went we grabbed a few services caches on the way. I love these types of caches you need to stretch you legs anyway after a long drive and the make a perfect little distraction after you have taken the time to grab your coffee and perform your ablutions. Talking of such activities our first lot of geocaches near where we stayed for the first week was in or around Dunbog Hill and was entitled "Burstin' for the bog" see GC1QEF0 for one of the series you should see the others nearby. The first thing I found was that Scotland doesn't do footpaths like England does. Rather than having signposted footpaths and rights of way and the knowledge that if you stray too far off the path you will get a shouting at by a farmer you have a system that entitles you to pretty much go wherever you damn well like! This is both a blessing and a curse. How many times have you been out doing a geocache and realised that the footpath took you all around the houses where as the direct route was just that direct and shorter but illegal. Scotland doesn't appear to have any such issues so surely time for celebration! Wrong although the sometimes restrictive paths in England mean you can't get to where you want to be quite as fast they usually do it for a reason, a footpath in England is generally well kept, safe and has gates stiles and signposts. Planning a geocaching series is much easier as you follow the path and you can clearly see from an OS map where you are going beforehand. Scotland has no such niceties tracks are made by whoever has been there before. Some are established, others are goat trails many are nonexistent when you get out of regularly travelled areas... we were well outside of regularly travelled areas. The series really suffered from this problem and we ended up cutting it short after two DNF's after a fairly long trek up hill. we found a couple towards the end (one of which was waterlogged) but it never really recovered from the bad start, we were left with the impression that Scottish caches just weren't as good. The next significant caches were done on the Isle of Lewis and I'm delighted to say were a different kettle of fish altogether the first was the most northerly cache I have done so far at the Butt of Lewis. I have been to the location before and it was terrifying that time, it comes with a warning not to do on a windy day indeed there was a memorial to a young man who had fallen to his death nearby! The sea apparently splashes the nearby lighthouse when it gets really bad which must be an awesome sight. Thankfully the sea and the wind behaved themselves and I braved a wander out onto a frankly terrifyingly small bit of rock to get the prize. The next was in the grounds of Castle Lewis which would have been a 10 out of 10 cache if it wasn't fort eh midges that hounded us all the way around. It was just beautiful the views the river running by it the tranquil gardens, the bridges caves sculptures and monuments, the beautiful trees and flowers and castle itself, really wonderful. We finished off the walk at a tea room with Wi-Fi so I was very happy! The last couple of caches belonged to a really nice family that I contacted before going up. We ended up visiting them for a cup of tea and exchanged caching stories and best places to visit during our holiday. I would recommend this to most cachers if you see a predominant cacher in an area you are going to visit far away from home drop them a line you never know you might just find a new friend. The caches were near to where they live and were really good fun to find we found a big frog and many good sized crabs on an excellent rock pool filled beach. All in all it was a great experience caching outside of my normal area. I'm just gutted that so many caches popped up while I was away and I missed out on all of those juicy FTF's. You can't have everything hey!
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