This leg of the trip was from June 7th until July 17th! We flew into Heathrow London and basically got a bus straight up to Manchester. We settled straight into Kirstys flat with her flat mate Charlie Though there was no time to rest as we had Parklife music festival straight away for the next two days. It was great meeting all KPs friends and catching up with Nadine at the festival aswell and likewise meeting her friends. For the next two weeks we went out with girls and seen the sights manchester had to offer and even squeezed in a train trip over to Liverpool to do a Anfield tour.
Once we finally left Manchester we headed north to Edinburgh, Scotland as our first stop. An amazing city which we both thought was stunning, with the Edinburgh Castle in the heart of the city how could you not love it. Throw in the erray of Monuments and churches whilst sleeping in a church converted into a Hostel, Edinburgh was a real winner. Another bus up to Inverness next and although we were the furthest north of this leg the weather was easily the best! Not getting dark until 1am was also pretty weird. Inverness was our port to check out Loch Ness in our search for Nessie, our approach to seeing the loch was a local bus out to the town of Drumnadrochit and a 32km 6.45hr hike back to town. Although small Inverness still carried the old Scottish charm of Churches, Castles and Old Long Lasting Architechure we saw throughout Scotland. We then left for Glasgow our last stop in Scotland! Glasgow was not as spectacular as Edinburg, good hostel we got free biscuits! Yeah thats the highlight, free biscuits. Once we were happy with what we seen from Scotland we hopped on a ferry to Belfast, Northern Ireland! Belfast and Northern Ireland was filled with history, we managed to do a few tours which gave us a good understanding of the ever present tension that they deal with. At this point we are running a budget of £30 a day, allowing 20 for acommadation and £10 for food and tours. To combat this we decided to stay in belfast for 8 days and work at the hostel for a free bed! The staff were great and we all got along well and really enjoyed our time. After ofcourse getting fanastic references we had our foot in the door to the sister hostel in Dublin and we basically did the same down in ireland for the remaining 6days. The work was only ever for 3hrs max and we were able to get out and still make a day out of the city. In both Belfast and Dublin the hostel ran free tours to the north coast from Belfast and west from Dublin. So we got full days off to appreciate these tours which allowed us to see a few other bigger cities throughout Ireland! Dublin was a great way to finish off Ireland, the work was a little harder but still not anything over 3hrs. Our day trip went out to Kilkenny, which a lovely old city where we sat in a pub because for the 20th day in a row in was raining! We also got to see Brownshill dolmen which are basically Irelands version of stonehenge, believed to be 5000 yrs old, they are tombs aswell and just like stonehenge a mystery how they managed to get them there without machinery and the modern tools we have today. Dublin was alot bigger and really had that extra european feel. Trinity College was grand, Croke Park was great but the Fish n Chips at Howth  was our favourite of all of Dublin. We got a cheap Ryan Air flight back to Manchester where we had the flat to ourselves this time. We managed to repack a few things, leave some things behind before we boarded a bus down to London. We only had the one night out in London which we spent with Ben (Niks friend from home) who also let us crash on his couch before flying out to Athens to start our 5 week Mediteranian leg!