How delightful to see and hear English everywhere!We are in Scotland and loving the familiarity of everything. Our backpacker accommodation in Edinburgh is tucked away in a little lane way of steps and has Australian receptionists. Everyone understands what we say, and the food is familiar and not as expensive as Iceland and Scandinavia. Biggest bonus of all is that cars drive on the left hand side again.We have an excellent first night when we catch up with Nikk...

 We spent a week in London getting our Indian visas sorted, studying up on India and catching up with our friends Graham and Rachel and meeting Dave from Melbourne who was also staying at Graham and Rachel's. We spent time with our son, Daniel and heard about his travels in Mexico.  On a Sunday we headed off by train for a day visit to Bath and Stonehenge. In Bath we met up with daughter, Ebony and her friend Mike who are staying at Exmouth (near Exeter)....

A 13 hour bus trip took us from Edinburgh to London via Glasgow. A company called Megabus runs double decker buses on an Internet booking only no frills service for only 10 pounds each! We arrived back in London later than scheduled due to really bad traffic jams as we entered the centre of London. Then while walking to the tube station we saw a man get arrested and we puzzled over the fact that there were a lot of people milling around bus stops and walking at ...

For our last full day in Scotland we took a 12 hour bus trip right up to Inverness and back taking in Loch Ness (no we didn't see the monster!) Urquhart Castle, and Ben Nevis the highest mountain in UK. We were slightly disappointed that the heather was not in bloom.

When you fly Ryanair for the cheap prices, you have to take what you can get. Getting up at 2.30am to get first to the airport bus stop, take the bus and then get to the airport for a 6.00am flight,really has k*** on it but keeping travel costs down is paramount.Arriving into Edinburgh we caught the airport bus to the city centre and walked to our hostel - all before 9.00am. The bad news of course was we couldn't have our room until 3pm, We were, however ...