I have been busy blocking out my schedule for this trip and finalizing hotel reservations, but all is finally done. It is a lot of work to plan a long trip, but I really do not like tours that leave the details up to someone else. For one thing, I have been to the UK several times over the past 20 years, so I have specific places I want to go and specific things I want to do. I'll be returning to spend more time at a few places and also discovering some new ones.
I'll start out with five nights in London, then one more night in Greenwich, which is very close to London. Next will be an express train to Edinburgh for two nights and then to York, where I will pick up a rental car. Rental cars are ridiculously expensive at Heathrow and most other places in the UK, but I spent a lot of time shopping around last fall and found a super deal at Enterprise in York!! Yea! I don't want a car in London or Edinburgh anyways because it would cost a lot to park it and driving in those cities is just plain foolish.
Then I am looking forward to spending a full week in a farm cottage near the tiny church in North Yorkshire where my great-great-grandparents were married in 1845. What is really neat is that this farm was listed on their marriage records as being the farm where I am staying, which is now a B&B and has three cottages for rent. It will be a luxury to have a full kitchen and even a washing machine!! My g-g-grandparents immigrated to Canada with their newborn son a little over a year after their marriage, but I have been able to trace their relatives and our shared ancestors in this little town all the way back to 1600, with about 95% certainty. Besides taking photos of as many churchyard gravestones as I can, I will also visit the county records office and try to get more information from them.
The rest of my trip will be to a lot of small towns in northern England and Scotland, plus the Isle of Skye and Orkney. I have been to Orkney before, but only for a couple of nights about 15 years ago, so I am looking forward to spending more time there this time. Orkney is a World Heritage Site because of the many Neolithic and Iron Age archeological sites, and a lot has been discovered since I was last there.
If you look at a map of Scotland, you will see two sets of islands in the far north--one set are the Orkney islands and the other is Shetland. Both were once part of the Viking's homeland and then part of Norway. They became part of Scotland in 1472 when the king of Norway, Christian I, pledged them as payment of the dowry for his daughter's marriage to James III of Scotland. He ended up not being able to pay the dowry, so Scotland got the islands!
I am all packed, got a storage place set up for my motorhome, and am ready to head out next weekend. I am more than a bit nervous that I have forgotten something, but I think I have everything covered. Looking forward to it all!!