Mega Scotland 2010 was very good to say the least. We’d got ourselves checked in about 11am or so I suppose. We had a bit of a lazy morning on Saturday, but who can blame us after the 10hr marathon drive from Heathrow to Kinross.
After checking in we needed to get ourselves over to the kilt shop to get our kilt fitting for the Ceilidh on Saturday night, which was a blast. We didn’t get up and do any dancing however, it really was a couples thing. But was great fun to watch the dancing. Before heading to the party we had a long walk around Perth collecting Geocaches along with the other 1000 or so people attending Mega Scotland 2010… What must the residents of the town have been thinking of all this.
Dinner was quite exciting, it started off by the piping in of the Haggis followed by the Ode To The Haggis with a slight variation to bring into it a bit about Geocaching. The ‘show’ before dinner was served lasted about 10 mins, very entertaining to say the least.
Gord and I both opted for the Haggis. It was over heard that the Haggis was by all accounts was top quality. it was Gords’ first time ever having Haggis, I had had it before however I think it was canned so that’s not real Haggis ๐ We both loved it, it was spicier then we’d expected, not hot spicy but just pepper type spicy.
After the Ceilidh it was back to the camp site for more much needed sleep.
Sunday, Aug 1st, we didn’t really know what to do, the weather took a turn for the worse on Sunday after a couple of nice days. We headed to Edinburgh to have a walk about. The weather really went to hell about after 90 mins of us getting there. We’d stopped for Pizza in a nice but hot little Restaurant… Outside were 100’s of people attending the big buskers festival that was going on.
After lunch we’d started to wander the streets to see what we could find.. This is when the contents of the Firth of Fourth stated to drop on the city. We took refuge in a Whiskey shop and even managed a sample of something that Gord bought to take home for a friend. I bought a couple little pocket sized bottles, just enough to fill the nice little MacKenzie key ring flask that I picked up ๐ We had managed to find one geocache in town before heading back to the car and returning to the camp site to attend the ‘Yorkshire Day Away’ Geocache Event being held just about outside of our tent.
Monday, Aug 2, we had to return to Perth to return the kilts. It was an exceptionally lazy day due to the typical Scottish weather. Before leaving the camp site for the day we had attended yet another Geocache Event, ‘Bun and Brew to recover from the post Mega blues’. nearly everyone from the camp site was there along with the Scottish weather, no one invited that though.
We decided that since the showers at the camp site were sub par and long queues at time, that we would go swimming instead. We’d gone to the Leisure Centre next to the Mega Scotland venue. We were attracted to it because of the water slides that took you outside of the building, no we didn’t get on them haha.
Finished with the swim it was off to the kilt shop to drop everything off followed by a nice slow drive back to the camp site by the slow country roads. We’d managed to bag another 6 or 7 caches before returning to the site including Gords 500th cache!!!
After a bbq dinner of burgers and having had a chat with another cacher in the camp about a cache that he could find, we all decided to go and blitz the area looking for it. Nothing at all. Even a local dog walking muggle gave us a suggestion of where it should be, but nothing was found. After around an our we had to give up the search out of frustration and failing light, it was after all after 10pm by now.
Tuesday, Aug 3rd. It was time to back up and say good bye to Scotland and lead back south of the boarder again. Stopping for a breakfast just outside of Edinburgh we found a local cache near by. Next stop was the boarder for some photos and a rest and, yup you guessed it, another cache on the boarder. From there it was on to Hexham. We’d found a tourist info place to get a list of camp sites. Gord liked the sounds of one place, Hadrian’s Wall Camping and Caravan Park.
We opted for using the small tent, we got it set up then went for dinner at a local pub. Excellent food it was too. We went for a small walk along a segment of Hadrian’s Wall. We did about a mile of the wall I suppose. We had to share the path with a lot of cows, that was a bit exciting as some of them weren’t interested in sharing the path and wouldn’t move out of the way.
That brings us to now… It’s time for bed.
Wednesday, Aug 4. Well, it was and uneventful night in the small tent. There was just a touch of rain during the night was short lived so no bother at all. We were packed up and out of 950 so not bad going really ๐
We struck off for the ruins at Vindolanda and managed to get the just in time for one of the guided tours of the site. It must really have been impressive in it day. There were apparently some 500 soldiers and 1500 or so civilians in the area of the fort. There are many photos which Iโll get uploaded at some point..
The admission to this site also provides us access to the Roman Army Museum, which will be next on our tour before heading back to Cambridge.
Weโd made it back to Cottenham just shortly after 7pm, sat for a few mins then got the car all cleaned out and got the tents out and hung up to dry out.
Thatโs the end of what was a most excellent adventure to Scotland for my largest Geocaching evening, well OK fine, my FIRST Geocaching event, hopefully not my last either.
So glad you both had a great time. Lookin good in the kilts. Granny would have been proud of you. Enjoy the rest of your holiday Gord.
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