Caravaning

Family Tour 2018 Day 3-4

Continuing on our family tour, Our next visits are a day at Edinburgh Zoo, followed by traveling over the third Forth Bridge (Queensferry crossing) and up into the Cairngorms

See also Family Tour 2018 Day 1-2

Day 3: 24/09/2018, Edinburgh Zoo (20 miles)

After letting the dogs have a bit of exercise and chatting with our neighbours, we headed over to the Zoo to meet up with my brother in law and his family who were down in Edinburgh for the weekend to meet up with us.  It was great walking through the enclosure with the Lorikeets, and my daughter also loved watching the penguins swimming around.  We spent pretty much the whole day there, and there was more than enough to keep 4 adults and a 4 year old and 9 month old interested.  

Hopefully embedded below are a selection of some of my photos from the zoo

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Lunch for me at the zoo was haggis pizza.  I'm sure thats a 100% authentic local dish....  It was tasty!

After that, we headed back to the caravan to check in on our dogs, and let them have their tea, before we headed out to find food at the near by retail park.  The places we looked at eating had a bit of a wait, so we split up and left one of us holding a position in the wait for food, while my wife and sister-in-law did some shopping, and I looked for a hammer or a hex drive as I couldn't locate the one that should have been with the awning for the normal or screw pegs.  Halfords didn't have much without buying way more than I needed, but Argos had a tent spares kit which as well as a rubber mallet, had spare wire pegs and rope.  

We all eventually reconvened at Frankie and Benny's, and enjoyed a nice meal together before we went our separate ways

Day 4: 25/09/2018, Edinburgh to Carrbridge (155 miles)

A driving day today, up into the heart of Scotland.  First though, a trip to a nearby Asda to get a few essentials, and also to fill up, to avoid any range anxiety getting into the Cairngorms.
While parking at Asda, I couldn't help but notice an interesting SUV, a white Lamborghini Urus.  I asked if we could have it as our next tow car, but apparently the wife doesn't think a £160K SUV isn't on the cards any time soon!

Anyway, before camp was packed up, I made sure a photo of the campsite was taken:

So we packed up and set out on our way up towards Carrbridge.  As part of figuring out timings for our trip I'd put together a spreadsheet of possible camp sites, distances, costs, facilities and so on.  So as I looked at the spreadsheet to put the destination postcode in, I realised that I'd not got round to sorting out the booking for that site.  Unfortunately I couldn't get through on the number given, so left a message and my number, and we got on our way.

Next landmark on the trip was the newest crossing at Queensferry, or as I like to call it, the third Forth bridge.  Being in the back of the car, and on the wrong side to the bridges I wasn't able to get a very good picture, but this was my best effort:

It was a bit of a blustery but it didn't seem to bad on the bridge crossing.  We made steady progress up the A9, and stopped at a convenient lay-by for a bit of lunch, near the river Truim.  The wind really felt like it was buffeting us much more than when we were on the road, and was making a bit of a draught in the caravan when Hannah popped in there to get sandwiches out of the fridge.  Although not quite as convenient as a motorhome, we found it very useful having it us with us, when needing comfort breaks in places with no facilities!

With no call back from our "planned" site, I had come up with a backup camp site at Oakwood Caravan and Camping park. We stopped by site hoped to stay at,  Bogroy Croft CL,  and tried to see if anyone was about.  No one was there, and with 4 of the 5 pitches occupied, we didn't want to assume, so set off towards our backup site, Oakwood.  Just as we got ourselves to there, we got a call saying "yes, we do have space, please do come by"

So we back-tracked and got ourselves set up.  After we had almost finished reversing into our pitch, carefully avoiding the old ploughs and other agricultural equipment that marked pitch boundaries, the person with a car at the very front of their pitch which reduced our maneuvering angles offered to move it out of our way!

The dogs having not had the most interesting of walks the last day or two, so then got taken to stretch their legs.  A very pleasant path along side the river lead us to the centre of the village, past the famous packhorse bridge:

We took advantage of the shop to stock up on bits and pieces for breakfast and a few other meals, before continuing on past the campsite and enjoying the autumnal scenes:

 Of course, just as we got back to the caravan and started cooking, we realised we had no cooking oil, so a quick run back to the shop, and on with cooking tea!