This trip was wrapped around a canal boat trip in Scotland, in late September. Yes, the canal boat trip is likely to be cool, and wet. A brief summary of our trip:
- 1 day in London with Craig guiding us on an extra long walking tour.
- 4 days Cinque Terre in Italy
- 9 days in Ireland
- 7 days on canal boat (Falkirk/Edinburgh/Glasgow) (photos and trip report are HERE)
- 4 days UK (drive to Isle of Skye, and then London)
Quick Clips
Some quick links to sub-pages
- The Day by Day page can be found HERE.
- The planning for this trip can be found HERE.
- A packing list can be found HERE.
- And another reminder, if you just want to see the canalboating portion, go HERE.
The rest of this page consists of 4 inline photo albums. Relax and give them time to load!
London with Craig
Craig was our host on Air Canada and treated us royally. We still arrived stunned and semi-conscious. Caught the tube, and then a bus to our hotel, where we recovered a bit. Then Craig took us on a long walk around London. Great time, and we saw many things which we had missed on previous trips to this city.
Italy (Pisa, Cinque Terre, Genoa)
We flew Ryan Air to Italy, spent a night in Pisa, then a train ride to Cinque Terre. We spent 3 nights in Manarola, which was a pretty cental location. Then trains and hiking through the other Cinque Terre cities (Montorosso, Venezza, Corniglia and Riomaggiore). It really helped that Kim and Karin had already done Cinque Terre 5 years previously.
Scotland
We arrived in Edinburgh and immediately headed for Falkirk, bybus and train. Canal boat stuff is on another page (click HERE). This section about everything else in Scotland: towns and castles and Edinburgh, and the big drive back to Heathrow. Oh! And the Isle of Skye is covered in the next section. Taigh Sealladh Fèidh, our B&B near Invergarry, and then a hotel in Notingham were our stopping points of the two day drive back south. a couple of hours southe of the Isle of Skye. Our hosts at Taigh Sealladh Fèidh were expecially excellent. Nottingham was okay, and we just barely made it there by 10 pm. Another long day of driving.
Weather was way better than expected, but we still got rained on a lot.
Isle of Skye
In spite of being very short of time, we decided to drive north to the Isle of Skye. This meant that we would be driving for about 25+ hours just to get there, and then WAY back to Heathrow airport. It was worth it.
We pulled into the very nice Loch Eyre House B&B late in the evening, about 8 hours after leaving Falkirk. The drive though the Scottish lowlands, and then highlands, was ever changing and impressive. The next day, we explored the east loop of Skye. And on the day after that, we explored the west loop, the left the island, back into Scotland proper.
Yes, it was windy and rainy, but we also got some sun.
