Carlisle Edinburgh and the Rugby Match

Our weekend started at 4pm when Sue and the girls picked me up after work on Friday. Its funny the type of assumptions you make when you don't know whats coming up. North West England is one the the most populated areas of the country. So driving between Liverpool and Manchester this time of the day can be somewhat arduous even on the motorway.

We moved off the M56 onto the M6 heading north to come to an abrupt stop. Four lanes and going nowhere. Its usually bad apparently, but a sign saying accident ahead brought us to a complete stop. It gets dark at about 4.30pm. Next to us was an off ramp luckily so off we went. Its hard to image this unless you have been there but there are roads in all directions kind of like a maze. We headed for Warrington. At times we would hit lights waiting five green lights before we could advance through. We travelled about 10 miles and rejoined the motorway 6 miles down the road and it took well over an hour. Luckily we had past the accident.

It was a reasonably present drive after that and we arrived at our Travel Lodge by about 8pm near Carlisle. The Travel Lodges are a nationwide institution in the UK providing cheap accommodation along motorways. We had one room with a double bed and pull out couch. It came with a TV though and it what a nice evening chilling out. Holly was entertained by climbing up and down the cupboards.

We got up early the next day to see a couple of sights around Carlisle. We first visited the Castle which had a war museum attached. It was built around the 12th century and had some good history of the Scottish revolution.

The war museum gave the kids an opportunity to see what it was like in World War One with trench bunkers and an array of weapons on show. 

Later the same day we ventured into Furness Abbey and checked out parts of Hadrians Wall. We then travelled across land to Edinburgh. Again a useful lesson. It is so much slower off the motorways as it took 2 and a half hours to travel 90 miles.

We stayed in our second Travel Lodge on the outskirts of Edinburgh and met with Jean Hamilton that night. It was a bit of an effort as we were trying to find a park in the middle of Edinburgh on a Saturday night. So nice to see Jean!

The real action was for the next day with the test match. We took the morning slowly and painted the kids faces outside the stadium. It was great to see all the Scots in there kilts and wearing their flags. We joined the throngs and entered the stadium of 76000. 

The Scots certainly showed us up when it came to the anthems. I wasn't even sure we were supposed to be singing when they were playing ours. The Scots brought the house down after entertainment by the Hot Chilli Pipers. 

Our journey home was without incident once we got out of Edinburgh which took about one and a half hours with the match traffic.