A thank you to all who shared some great ideas for our first trip to Scotland. I wanted to share how it's gone so far, starting with our arrival in England.
We flew into Heathrow in mid-December, and after a few days in London took the train up to Durham to spend a week visiting our son who's at university there. We had been to Durham before, but hadn't really had the opportunity to explore as much as we did, visiting the Castle (which is the student accomodation for University College, where our son is), the Cathedral and several really nice countryside walks. We stayed at the Hotel Indigo, which I can definitely recommend. One of the highlights was Beamish, an outdoor museum about 30 mins drive from Durham. It's an incredible reconstruction (in many cases a relocation of the original buildings) of England in different periods, as well as an original coal mining pit and miners' village.
Another train and on to somewhere we hadn't been before - Scotland. We spent a week in Edinburgh over Christmas, saw the Scottish Ballet's Nutcracker (a day before it was sadly closed due to COVID restrictions) and explored the city (loved the Palace Of Hollyrood in particular) and visited the spectacular Christmas market. It's a beautiful city and we'll definitely be back.
We then hired a car and drove up to the Cairngorms, where we have also spent a week, staying in a lovely little pub in the beautiful village of Tomintoul. Hogmanay celebrations (the official ones at least) were cancelled, but we've enjoyed numerous muddy, icy country walks, seen snow, castle ruins (Drumin and Blairfindy) and eaten a lot of great food at numerous pubs. We've driven up to Inverness, but most of the time has been spent enjoying the surprisingly warm weather.
On Monday we're back to London, and off home at the end of the week.