May 27th -- Leaving Scotland, Lake District

Maxine was driving and got pulled over for running a red light...

But, remember the Scottish are nice.  So, after the 2 police officers talked to her in their squad car and a)determined that it was an innocent mistake, and b)that she was American and that (I'm guessing here) it would be inconvenient to try to give her a ticket, not only did they let her go, they drove ahead of us to guide us on to the freeway!  Seriously nice people there.  And, maybe the glorious weather throughout the Scotland segment of our trip helped.

But, we were leaving Scotland.  One last sight thanks to our friend who sold us the National Historic sights tickets back in Elgin.  We stopped in at Caerlaverock Castle.  More old ruins.  I should digress and mention that a friend of Maxine's told her that's what we should expect in Scotland.  The history is amazing.  At Caerlaverock not only was there the ruin of  the castle, but there was the ruin a couple hundred yards away of the predecessor castle from the 1200's.

From Caerlaverock, we drove across the border, stopping at THE border, Hadrian's wall.  We were near the town of Carlisle at Birdeswell  Fort.  The wall, and the fort were built when the Romans controlled the region.  I'm paraphrasing here, but it seems that the Romans felt that they could work with the British, but that the Scots were just too out of control.  So, rather than expend the effort, they build a long long wall to keep them on the other site, away from 'civilization'.  It's part of history!

I should mention that although we don't have any photos, the SINGLE Sheltie that we saw was at Hadrian's wall.  We'd expected wild packs of them roaming the Scottish countryside, or at least herding Scottish sheep, but it wasn't until we were back in Britain that we saw one.

Some very winding single lane roads through the Lake District and we were at our last sightseeing hotel, Cragwood House in the town of Windermere.  Beautiful place.  Great room.  Views onto the lake.  Good dinner.  And, yes, I did try the local beer -- Coniston Brewing's Bluebird Bitter.