Off the record - Craig Box

At Sam's wedding we had the pleasure of meeting Ann, a colleague of Zoe's, and her children Rosa and Callum. Ann very kindly invited us up to her Scottish holiday home and after a day at Stirling, we arrived to a beautiful lamb dinner with her family and some local friends.

The house is right on the edge of Loch Etive and it's hard to explain just how beautiful and tranquil it is. We hadn't been too far off the beaten path until this point, and it was really great to get into the countryside, even if it means we will have to tick the "Yes, my shoes have been on a farm" box when passing biosecurity checks at the next airport.

Unfortunately, Ann had to head back to Cambridge the next morning, so we spent a couple of days relaxing and exploring the region: we went for a walk around the loch, where I very unceremoniously got poo shoes, had lunch in the village, went fishing and dog-walking with Callum.

History in the area was provided by the Bonawe Iron Furnace, where local charcoal and shipped iron ore was turned into bars called "pigs", or cast into cannonballs, from 1753 to 1876.

Exercise was a walk up the "ant trail" on Glen Nant, the forest where the charcoal was grown, starring some absolutely stunning scenery.

I'd like to thank Ann again for her hospitality and welcoming us into her home.

We bid farewell to Argyll and turned the car back in the direction of Glasgow.

Everything I know about Scottish history to this point I learnt from Braveheart, or from our mate Robin at Crichton Castle. Stirling Bridge was where William Wallace beat the English, although the movie forgot to mention a bridge. Stirling itself is right on the edge of the highlands, and it's said "he who controls Stirling, controls Scotland."

Highlights of the castle included the tapestries (This is a castle, isn't it? You have to have tapestries!) of a unicorn hunt, which are being painstakingly recreated from 15th century originals, in a multi-decade project.

We also got to sit in the chairs where the King and Queen would sit in the Great Hall, before the closing of the castle cut our day short.

Some backtracking was required as Calendar was out of goat-food, and then our trip continued towards the West Highlands.

Edinburgh Castle is a well-polished tourist machine, even on a rainy day. We missed the one o'clock gun because we were enjoying excellent Italian sandwiches and friendly banter from Caffe Espresso on Bank Street. If you go to Edinburgh, eat there. Or just go to Scotland to eat there.

The castle contains the "Honours of Scotland", symbols of their thrown: a sword, a sceptre and a stone, which wouldn't really be a comfortable place to sit when being crowned. No wonder they use a throne these days. These are not allowed to be photographed. Why? We also got to hang out in the room where James VI of Scotland, later to become James I of England (and ancestor of our current Queen), was born.

We walked through the courtyard where the Edinburgh Tattoo is held, but tickets for it sell out between seven and ten years in advance.

Two acts of street theatre caught our attention between the castle and the car: The Human Knot, an entertaining hurt-himself-for-our-pleasure act that reminded me a little too much of Sam Wills, and the Daredevil Chicken Club, a reasonably theatrical juggling/acrobatic act. Both had the requisite amount of audience participation and enjoyment provided, although the latter did it dressed in chicken suits, and with more bad puns.

Dinner had the option of haggis, neeps and tatties (turnips and potato) in a whiskey sauce as a starter, so had to try that. It was absolutely fantastic!

We then went to see some free stand-up: Caimh McDonnell (that's pronounced 'queeve', and is the Gaelic for Kevin) and his show "I.D." gave us a very funny look through his wallet. He was a great blend of fantastic humour with the social message of "information is useless without context", as a protest against British national ID cards. He was a capable funny Irishman without requiring Dylan Moran-esque drunkenness. Unfortunately, Pam Ford's All Legs and Ladders, was just an Australian woman who had fallen into the "only make meta-jokes about being a brash woman in comedy, and thus just Not Be Funny" trap.

We stayed with Cathy's friends Mike and Shaw (thanks guys), and the boys repaid them by catching and removing an errant rodent from the flat.

Edinburgh was Tom's favourite place on the trip; he thought it felt like Melbourne. I like Melbourne, but I like New Zealand better, so I preferred Dublin.

We could see a nice old building out our hostel window, so we wandered down to have a look. The building turned out to be the old Melrose Abbey, and the gentlemen at the shop convinced us we wanted to buy a Historic Scotland explorer pass. With this, you can visit all the attractions you like in a (3/5/7) day period. We bought a 3 day pass and decided we'd stop at everything we could.

Melrose Abbey was originally founded by the Cistercian monks in 1136. Richard II burnt the crap out of it, and then felt so bad about doing so he paid to rebuild it.

Just down the road was the Dryburgh Abbey, another Cistercian site - this one with less of the original ruins, but more of the rebuilt architecture intact. On the way to Dryburgh is the famous statue of William Wallace.

Crichton Castle was a wee way off the road, and a wee climb up a hill to get to. This was, in a wee way, reflected in the gentleman working there: a very friendly and unfailingly polite gent named Robin who seemed like he didn't have company all that often. It's unfortunate, because there's a lot of history in Crichton - Mary, Queen of Scots visited there, you know? (Don't worry, every castle can claim that.)

Robin very kindly gave us extensive hand-written directions to Craigmillar Castle (which Tom has kept as a souvenir). Craigmillar is in very good condition, but not all that old, and more of a stately home than an actual military castle. More well preserved latrines, also. It also has a prison just for midgets, and a pizza oven for their use.

The point of going to Edinburgh on that particular night was to see James play at the Edinburgh Corn Exchange. A very friendly bus driver was prepared to wait for me to go buy a 40p chocolate bar so I had exact change, the pick-up of the tickets went without hassle, and Tom and I settled in with some drinks.

Didn't take the camera (no "pics or it didn't happen" call from Drew, please), but I can report that the band was in fine fettle (as they say in Scotland). About two songs in they played "Sit Down", which inspired me to begin in a reasonably trouble-free run to the front, where I stayed on the railing for the rest of the show. A number of new songs were played, and some older ones I didn't know so well, but a good mix, great times, lots of cups of water from security. Dancers picked to go up on stage during Gold Mother - I wasn't interesting enough, it seems, but I did get to rub Tim's head after he sang She's A Star from the front railing, held up by security.

Our bus broke on the way home (what was it with us and public transport breaking?) but a friendly couple who'd been to the gig kindly allowed us to share their taxi.

We went out seeking free Fringe festival jazz, but some weird-ass experimental theatre group ran for longer than they should have. A friend of the group members came out of the performance early saying "I'm embarassed to know them, it's painful".

Something I don't think I've ever done before: three countries in one day. A reasonably good split also: about 8 hours in Ireland, 10 in England and then 6 in Scotland.

If you order a taxi driver for 6.20am, so you can catch an 8am flight with plenty of time to check in, you really don't want him driving like an idiot and puncturing a tyre.  Our Ryanair flight didn't arrive on time, thankfully, so we didn't have a deafening trumpet telling us that we had.  After the first time, I'd prefer that the flights WERE delayed!

First stop of the day was at Ullswater. We might have hired a sailboat if there was one available; there wasn't, so we played some Connect 4 and went for a walk around the lake. Lots of overhead activity also, in the form of both modern and old-fashioned planes!

We stopped at an information centre, that told us the best places to check out Hadrian's Wall. This was a fortification across the entire width of England, designed to keep the nasty Celts out. We stopped at the Housesteads fort, which came with a guided tour in the form of a little show, featuring a Roman administrator and a Celtic lady entirely in character. Very well acted and worth seeing. The most well preserved building in the fort was, for some reason, the latrine.

The information centre also suggested somewhere to stay that sounded a bit more fun than Carlisle. We drove up to the village of Melrose, proclaiming a new king of Scotland on the way by way of rock-climbing. The YHA was a fantastic old building, with really helpful staff that managed to do what we hadn't done all week in Dublin - book us a bed in Edinburgh.

Dinner was at the local pub, and involved some great games of pool with a fantastic local character. This is what traveling is meant to be about.

We now depart from my regular updates to, because I'm a fortnight behind on them. Uploading pictures is the killer.

How's everyone back home? Comment on the blog or drop me an e-mail and let me know how you're doing.

Interesting facts about yesterday's travel:

• 0.5 mile taxi ride from Zoe's work to the bus station: £5
• 60+ mile coach trip from bus station to London: £4
• Day-saver tube pass, three uses: £5.10

The bus also had free wireless internet. You don't even get cellphone signal on the tube. Pity about the two hours it took, and the fact the (cellular 3G provided) internet only worked for about 10 mins.

Being behind on old stories really makes it hard to justify telling new stories.

We had two days in Dublin while Matt and Kat were at work, so we did a bit of exploring.

The first day we went to Phoenix Park, a park created by King Charles Ii's man-on-the-ground as a hunting park in the late 1600s. The park is still the home of a herd of wild Fallow deer. We saw droppings, keep-off-the-deer signs, but no deer. The visitor centre suggested we go stand on the Papal Cross (a hilltop memorial to the fact that Pope John Paul Ii once gave mass there - to one million people!), which lead us finally to our prize.

We then went to the Guinness Storehouse, and did the big tour. I tried some Guinness (to which Greig said "Wow... Just... WOW!" in a later text) - it didn't seem to taste like whatever it is in beer that makes me sick, but it still wasn't enough to make me want to drink the free pint that we were given in the cafe at the top of the building. Want to like the stuff, just can't.

The next day we caught the DART regional train around the city. We went first to the Bree end of the line, where there's some nice beaches and a little coastal village feel. We then went back into central Dublin and had lunch with Matt at Google. Of course my non-disclosure agreement prevents me from telling you anything (read: I still don't know what he does), but I will mention that it was Mexican day, I ate too much, the ice-cream was fantastic, and I'd be twice my weight in a month if I got a job there.

The port in the other direction is Howth - more fishing and sailing here than beachfront, but still some fantastic views. I think this is the smallest dog I've ever seen outside Paris Hilton's handbag! The Irish president lives in Phoenix Park, but I hear Bono has a house at Howth.

We had an 8am flight so arranged a taxi for 6:30am - of course, the taxi driver decides to pass someone on the left and pops a tyre on the way. We were not impressed.

I'd like to thank Matt and Kat for opening their apartment to us and being incredibly generous and hospitable during our visit. I'm sorry we didn't bring any Pineapple Lumps!

Monday was a bank holiday in Ireland, so Matt and Kat had the day off.  We decided we'd catch a train up to Northern Ireland for the day.  Cathy's question of the day was "I wonder how much they pay Stephen Hawking to do the train announcements".  €34 one way if we bought at the train station, or €18 return on the Internet!

The biggest attraction in Belfast is the beautiful City Hall, which we took a tour of.  We all got to sit in the Lord Mayor's chair, but the chair the Queen sat in was out of bounds.

There are two areas we were told to look out for street art; the first was the Falls Road area, where there's lot of protest art and a very anti-Bush, don't-meddle-with-the-world feeling.  You have to walk through some pretty dismal streets to get to Shankill Road, where you're immediately greeted with more British flags than you have ever seen before. It's safe to assume we're not in the Republic any more.  It's a working class Protestant suburb, and I think they like the Queen here more than they do in England.  Patriotism is such an odd concept, but people really want to identify with somewhere.

Belfast had a huge shipbuilding industry around the turn of the century.  They built the Titanic here, but I'm not sure why they're proud of it.

Here's Tom climbing a fish.

We still laugh every time we hear an Irish person say 'potato'.  Apparently everyone else has heard this twice, but I haven't.

A nice meal topped off an excellent day.  The train ride home was quiet and full of sleeping people.

I'm now exactly 10 days behind on uploading photos and writing about the trip!

Liverpool has renamed its airport "Liverpool John Lennon Airport" in honour of it's most famous dead guy. They had security people to stop us from being able to drive anywhere near the terminal, who very happily stepped aside when we told them we were lost and needed to know where the long term car parking was. At this point we had to leave the goat behind and head off to the Republic of Ireland.

Cathy would like to inform you that there was a midget on the plane.

A friendly taxi driver lead us into Dublin central, where we caught up with Matt and Kat. Matt moved here in April to work for Google, and Kat hasn't been working illegally for the last month at all.

I'm told that Saturday was the only interruption in 50 straight days of rain, and of course we arrived Sunday morning. We decided to go the Jameson's distillery tour, which was interesting, although the guide moved us from room to room as if he was being paid by how many tours he did in a day. In Dublin, the most popular way to drink your Jameson's is with cranberry juice; I had mine on the rocks, and it tasted far nicer than I remember it from last St. Patrick's Day.

It dried up while we were at the distillery (the healing powers of whiskey) and we wandered around St Stephens Square and the Iveagh Gardens, a little hidden garden which Katt had heard there was a maze in. We found the maze in the end, and as you can see, it was particularly challenging.

Matt took us to a bordello for dinner. Well, kind of. We had drinks and dinner at a brew-pub called The Porterhouse, who (probably rightfully, seeing as everything else is owned internationally) claim to be Ireland's biggest brewery. Greig would have spooged. It was just next to a club called Lillies Bordello, and had confusing signs. Cathy drank a 14% ABV lager beer named Samiklaus and faked drinking some vinegar in a rather convincing manner.