The Mom and Benson Whirlwind - Part 2

Sunday we all piled in the car and drove to Edinburgh, Scotland.  The drive was pretty, although there were some really weird clouds (or mist or dust?) moving in from the sea so we never really saw the water.  We checked into our sweet little B&B just after lunch and started off walking from there to the famous Edinburgh castle which is perched at the top of a steep hill in the middle of the city.  The views from up there were amazing, and the Stone of Destiny and Crown Jewels (housed at the castle) were really interesting to see. 

Benson looking out over Edinburgh.

From the castle we walked about two minutes down the Royal Mile to the Scotch Whisky Experience.  Our trip to Scotland was prompted by mom wanting to try different Scotches and the Experience turned out to be the perfect way to accomplish that!   It was a unique sort of thing – we basically showed up at our designated ‘tour’ time and spent ten minutes on an amusement park-like ride that illustrated the steps of producing Scotch.  The ride ended at a tasting room where we all sat down in a semi-circle facing a guide and a video screen.   We were educated on the different regions of Scotland and the guide walked us through the smells and tastes of four types of Scotch whisky.  I have to say that Benson was a trooper!  He is absolutely, 100%, a Miller Lite and dry red wine drinker.  He’s hated Scotch his entire life but went through the tour with us and tasted a few different ones (his faces were priceless).  When we got to the one from the Islay region, though, his eyebrows rose to the ceiling and when he looked around the room to see people drinking it he gave up and started handing my mom his taster glasses.  Neither Chris nor I could muscle down the one from Islay. Imagine eating a campfire. That’s exactly what it was like.  It burned, it was smoky, and it made your nose feel like it was on fire.  That ended up being mom’s favorite kind, and it makes me wonder if in 20 years my own tastes will change to the point of liking that sort of thing.  After the tastings we walked through an amazing collection of Scotches and were then taken to dinner downstairs in the attached restaurant. We had ordered a lovely taster menu of many things Scottish.  We ate bits of mussel stew, haggis, lamb, salmon, sticky toffee pudding and finished dinner with coffee and (yep, you guessed it) a dram of Scotch.  We wrapped up with dinner around ten o’clock and even though it was still quite light, the few drams of Scotch over many hours left us tired more than tipsy, especially after the monster of a Saturday we had, so we walked back to the B&B to get some sleep.  

Quite the Scotch collection!

Scotch Whisky Experience tasting room.

What a face! Not a Scotch fan...

Me and Mom on the Royal Mile.

At breakfast the next morning we were sitting in a little dining room with one other couple who turned out to be from Huntersville, NC, which is only a few miles from where mom lives and I grew up!  Talk about a small world, huh?  We left Edinburgh a few hours later after a bit of shopping and a quick peek at the Edinburgh beach.  We were to be in Ilkley, just north of Leeds, for supper and it was supposed to take about four hours.  Little did we know how epic that drive would be....

Lovely photo!

Getting around this island is not nearly as easy but generally much more scenic than getting around the US.  We were going from Edinburgh (quite north east) to Ilkley (sort of mid-central) and so typed the Lawson’s magic postcode in to the GPS and started blindly following that crazy lady’s directions.  Unsure how, but at one point of this drive we were only two miles from the WEST coast of England!  There are just no straight, wide-lane highways traversing the central corridor of this island… instead there are ‘motorways’ that oftentimes are narrow, twisty two-lane roads used indiscriminately by tractors, 18-wheelers (aka lorries), cars, and bicyclists. Chris drove the entire way and said he was a little stressed (but I caught him smiling to himself quite a few times).  We did more passing in that 4-hour drive than I’ve done in the past year!  Oh, and at one point we had to stop for a herd of cows to cross into their new pasture.  As a whole, the scenery was stunning but one particularly dramatic view was of a rolling rapeseed field in its full florescent yellow bloom contrasting with a line of dark green pine trees at the crest of the field.  We’re still teasing Chris that he wouldn’t let us stop to take a picture. (He had just managed to pass four slow-moving trucks and was not ready to get behind them again!)  We made it to Ilkley in time for dinner which never would’ve happened if any of the rest of us had been behind the wheel.

Pretty view on the drive.

Stopping for cattle.

One more pretty vista.

So why were we going to Ilkley?  Fun story:  When I was a baby, our family lived in South Africa in a small town called Honeydew.  Our only neighbors (as we lived on eight acres) were the Lawsons.  Ian and Tamara were good friends with my mom and dad, and their son Bruce was my childhood best friend.  The Lawson’s cow Molly even grazed on our grass and gave us milk every day.  Anyway, sometime after we moved to the States, the Lawsons moved to England and have continued to be in touch.  We spent time with their family last time we visited England, and they came to the States for mom and B’s wedding a few years ago.  Ian and Tamara live in the gorgeous town of Ilkley and their house literally backs up to the Ilkley moor.  The views from their place are absolutely stunning, and I would’ve stayed a week just to walk the footpaths crisscrossing through the moors.  Our few hours with the Lawsons were amazing: We sat on a little bench and enjoyed the moors for a bit, walked around their sweet garden, and explored Tamara’s studio before dinner.  Oh wait, I didn’t mention that she’s an internationally known artist?  She’s been jet setting all over Europe with her latest works, of which one of we are now the proud owners!   For dinner, Tamara bought (massive) steaks from an award-winning local butcher and then topped it off with baked potatoes and toffee pudding.  We felt like royalty. Unfortunately Chris has this thing called work (what a bummer!) so he and I had to head home after dinner. 

The Lawson's back yard leads right out to the moor.

Lovely families with a loooong history!

Tamara trying to fatten Chris up!

Mom and B stayed in Ilkley for a few days while life continued as normal around our place. I popped down to the farm for a day of planting and worked in our garden for a bit but otherwise had a lazy time of it. Mom and B came back on Thursday and finally got a taste of drizzly England.  Farmer Bart had previously mentioned that the elderflowers were in bloom, so we decided to try to make elderflower cordial.  After tracking down some un-waxed organic lemons and citric acid, mom and I walked around the neighborhood and picked about 50 clusters of the flowers. We were absolutely covered in pollen by the end of it!  You can tell that it’s elderflower season because it kept showing up on the menus the next week.  Mom tried a couple different elderflower grown-up drinks and we had some sort of elderflower/berry crumble.  It’s a lovely, unique flavor.

We were totally spoiled on Friday.  Benson, totally unaccustomed to sitting still for more than an hour at a time, offered to do yard work then he and mom cooked dinner while we went to our weekly lake swim!  Benson felt he had to ‘redeem’ himself after a previous imperfect grill session (he’s persnickety about his grilling) and absolutely succeeded in doing that!  We finished off the evening with a really nice drink at a nearby pub.


Saturday we all hopped on a train to go into London.  Britain was in full-on celebration mode for Queen Elizabeth II’s Diamond Jubilee.  She’s been on the throne for sixty years, the second longest reigning monarch in England’s history!  I’d say the English at least are generally a stoic lot, but not this weekend.  Everyone was in full Union Jack attire, waving flags, and so proud of their much-loved Queen. 

Union Jacks everywhere.

Mom and B in front of Big Ben.

Westminster Abbey

We got into London and did a few hours of sightseeing, then took the tube to the Tower of London (the castle downtown).  We had a really fun time exploring the castle and all of its exhibits and couldn’t believe how few people were there – it was almost as if we had the place to ourselves.  We hadn’t planned on seeing the Crown Jewels (basically all the precious metals, gems, swords, crowns, etc owned by the royal family) but on our way out there wasn’t any line so we walked straight through to see them.  It really is astonishing how much there was on display… over 15000 diamonds, for example, and who knows how many pounds of gold.  We were a little sickened by it all – it’s impressive until you think about how many people starve every day and wonder if there may not be a better way to distribute wealth… There was a little donation box at the end of the display (we laughed).  It felt a little wrong to be asked to chip in money for the upkeep of the Tower of London after A. paying for tickets and B. seeing a billion dollars worth of treasure.

Me and Chris in front of the Tower of London.

Something about a guy in a uniform!

The rest of the day was super relaxed… we had a beer at a lively London pub and then took one of those iconic black London taxis to dinner at the Laughing Gravy which turned out to be a great choice.  We enjoyed everything from the ambiance to the waiter and the food was really, really tasty.   We slept so well on the train ride home! 

Cool glass, mom!

The Laughing Gravy restaurant.

Lovely last dinner together.

The next morning we said goodbye over a big breakfast and dropped mom and B off for their last day in London together.  Poor mom and B had to battle wet, windy, and crowded conditions their last day in England, which I’m sure wasn’t the most pleasant way to end the trip, but overall think the trip was really successful!