Day 8: Glasgow to Liverpool

I hope you've all read the blog I posted earlier today, catching everyone up. While I'm still sleepy, I'm not as sleep deprived as I was. Plus, we didn't do quite as much walking today.

As I write this, I'm sitting in my hotel room at the Mercure Livepool Atlantic Hotel, looking out the huge bay window, watching the sun set over the River Mersey. It's quite lovely.

We started out this morning from East Killbride Scotland (just outside of Glasgow). Our first stop was at a tiny little place called Gretna Green. It's famous for people getting married there. Way back when, Scotland allowed you to get married younger and with a simple hand fasting ceremony, so young couples would elope to Gretna Green to be married by a black smith over his anvil. If you're a Downton Abbey fan, you know what I'm talking about. They had a statue of a large thistle there. I thought it was quite pretty.

After a short pee/coffee break there, we headed for a family run farm out in the English country side.
We continued on our way to Howbeck Lodge, located inside the Lake District National Park. We got to see some Highland Cattle (dad was in his glory), horses, dogs, sheep and lambs. They were all adorable. They then served us a traditional High Tea lunch, with finger sandwiches and little cakes. It was delicious.

After leaving there, we ventured along a very narrow, very winding road though the countryside, passing through a very quaint town with an abandoned red telephone box in it.
We made a side trip to a hidden gem: the Castlerigg Stone Circle. Set in a field, surrounded by mountains and sheep, it's one of Britain's oldest circles, raised somewhere around 3000 BC. It's older than Stonehenge. It was beautiful and you really couldn't beat the views. Our steak of amazing weather continues, so that added to pleasure of the stop.

We continued on to drive through the lake district and passed several gorgeous lakes. It's easy to see why everyone heads there for vacation. It reminded me a lot of Northern and Eastern Ontario.

We arrived in Liverpool around 4:30 and headed out an hour later for a tour of the city with a local guide. She was awesome. Pointed out all the cool sites, all the Beatles stuff (apparently they've from here or something like that...LOL) and some fun tidbits about the city. We had dinner in a traditional pub near the restaurant before calling it a night.

So the sun has now set (it's 10:15pm!) and this girl needs to be up at 6:30am, so it's time for me to sign off and head to bed.

Tomorrow we head for Bristol and cross in and out of Wales a few times. Our ventures around Britain are quickly coming to an end.

Good Night!

Sarah