Articles in Scotland

We stopped at a coffee shop to spend our two hours waiting. Like at Dublin, they only tell you an hour before the flight which gate you are at. We were sitting near gate 6. We would be leaving from gate 24.

Ros’s birthday today. Last trip overseas we were in Paris for birthday celebrations, this year it’s Edinburgh.

Tonight, starting at 9pm, we would be enjoying the Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo. A good breakfast was needed – bacon, eggs and toast; all cooked in the flat. While cooking breakfast we could see people walking their dogs on the grass section behind the building. One guy had a good look in initially. When he came back the second time, I waved at him and he nervously waved back – like he had been busted!

I was up fairly early and decided I would head down to Loch Leven to test out whether I had fixed the issues with the waypoint mission. I had created a small test over land nearby to make sure it would take photos. Success! With that successful test I commenced the real flight – out and around the castle. Everything went perfectly, I was high enough over the castle to get some great shots. When I got back to Louise’s we had a look at the photos and they turned out pretty good, even if I say so myself.

I had talked to David and Louise the earlier night about taking some photos/video with the drone at nearby Loch Leven. There is a castle on an island in Loch Leven called Lochleven Castle. It was where Mary Queen of Scots was imprisoned, escaped and fled to England. Ros and I went down to to the loch. I had set up a ‘mission’ on my drone app that would take photos on one trip halfway around the island and then video on the next trip. It was a 2.2km round trip and would take about 8 minutes according to the app.

We had an early-ish start (if 9:30am is early) to get on the road as there were a number of stops on the way we wanted to make.

The house was like stepping back in time, comfy four poster bed, bathroom with everything you need, including (the softest towels ever) a two seater couch in the room and a view of the mountains really relaxing, being so close to nature we didn’t turn on the TV and feel asleep. After the late arrival the night before, the breakfast spread that they had put on was fantastic. It was all in our room so we didn’t have to leave. We had tea, coffee, croissants, fruit scones, yoghurt, juice etc. Great way to start the day.

Friday started with a twist. We had received an email a couple of hours earlier from Hainan Airlines advising that our flight from Dublin to Shenzhen in September had been cancelled. Uh-oh. We frantically tried to call Hainan Airlines to confirm what our options were. The phone cut out a couple of times, but they ended up ringing back to continue the discussion.

Our last day in Scotland started out with David cooking a Scottish breakfast. It consisted of link sausage, eggs, lorne, black pudding and haggis. It was quite tasty and a good way to start off the day.

After deciding not to have breakfast at the hotel, we checked out and thought we would find some food along the way. It was a long long time … We made our way to Dunnottar Castle.

We were up quite early (around 5am local time). We packed up what we needed for overnight and I went down to the corner store to get some milk and croissants for breakfast. After throwing stuff into the car, we set off. The end destination was Ballater, how we got there was going to be a mystery. We had maps and guidance, but what fun is that when you can just take random roads instead?

After arriving at Terminal 3, we needed to get to Terminal 5. The only way was to follow the throng of people through to where the bus transfers happen. Given it was around 7am, it was quite busy. We made our way through and up to have our passports checked. We had a good chat with the Border Force guy as he checked out our entry card – he wanted to know if the public service situation in Australia was similar to theirs – no pay rise in quite a while and less people.