Day 7: Yorkshire Dales, Lake District, and Scotland!

Here’s the sixth post sharing our adventures in the British Isles and Ireland from September 29 to October 17, 2025, for genealogy, business, and sightseeing. Hope you enjoy it!

Sunday, October 5, 2025

I was very excited to visit the Lake District because, having been an English major, I spent some time studying the works of Lake District poets William Wordsworth (“Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey”) and Samuel Taylor Coleridge (“Rime of the Ancient Mariner”). This is a major reason I favored the Trafalgar tour vs. a similar Collette tour. The Collette tour stopped at Hadrian’s Wall, though, and I was sorry to miss that.

From the coach, we passed RAF Menwith Hill, a listening center for incoming missiles in cooperation with the United States. We couldn’t help but notice it, because it looks like an array of giant golf balls!

On the way to the Lake District, we drove through the Yorkshire Dales, a national park encompassing thousands of square miles in northern England. The Viking word “dale” means valley. We heard Londoners pronouncing it “dell.”

Regarding Great Britain’s national parks, in the 1950s, the government realized they needed to protect the beautiful parts of the country from development and farming. Within the national parks, though, there are many privately owned properties, because they existed before the parks were formed. Landowners, however, are restricted from new development or changes to their homes. Private land in these national parks is often owned by the aristocracy, with the pastures rented from them by farming tenants. 

On our drive, we passed many sheep, which generally have lots of room to roam, but no shelters that I could see. A few days prior, we observed pigs in a small pasture, with little huts to protect them from the elements. We also saw many cows, some that were black with a white stripe circling their bodies. I learned later that these are known as Belted Galloways, originating in southwestern Scotland.

Many paddocks (pastures) are surrounded by stone walls, which are fitted together without mortar. Sometimes, they use hedges to separate the paddocks. These are all quite pretty when viewed from afar.

Also interesting were the ruins of castles just hanging out along the road and in the distance. We also saw huge estates, but many were hidden by hedges along the road as I explained in the first post from this trip.

Before long, we reached the Lake District, which is a national park and UNESCO World Heritage Site. John, the travel guide, said the Lake District is a harsh place to live in winter, but it’s beautiful in summer. We were there in the fall and it was gorgeous.

The Lake District was a major source of inspiration for poets, such as William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Robert Southey, known as the Lake District poets. Wordsworth praised the beauty of the Lake District. Beatrix Potter (The Tale of Peter Rabbit) loved this area, too. She owned Hilltop Farm. Potter and others worked to protect this area. 

The Lake District National Park contains 16 lakes formed from glaciers. All, but one, end with “mere,” an Old English word meaning “lake.” So, there’s no need to say Lake Windermere, which is the one we cruised as an optional Trafalgar experience. The day was overcast and windy, but the sights were dramatically beautiful.

After the cruise, straight to Scotland!

Immediately after we disembarked from the Windermere cruise, we headed north for Scotland, an hour’s drive. Along the way, we learned that mountains and hills are known there as “fells.” This is a Viking term.

There was no formal border crossing as we left England. Like our state borders in the US, there was just a sign that read, “Welcome to Scotland.” 

John told us that Scotland has far fewer people than England, with most living near Glasgow and Edinburgh. Even though England is only twice the size of Scotland, it has ten times as many people. England has around 58.6 million people, while Scotland has around 5.5 million. 

Romans ruled England from AD 43 to the early fifth century, but they could not conquer Scotland. The Scottish people are very proud of this. Instead, the Romans named it “Caledonia” and built Hadrian’s Wall in 122 AD to protect themselves against the Celtic tribes, mainly the “Picts,” who fought naked and covered themselves in blue die. See the movie Braveheart, which is very entertaining, but apparently contains some historical inaccuracies. 

Once in Scotland, we stopped in Gretna Green, just over the border, where many underage English couples eloped in the mid-18^th century. At that time in Scotland, girls could get married at age 12 and boys at age 14. Today, many people still choose to marry there for the legend.

Regarding the ceremony, a clergyman or other official wasn’t necessary. The couple could just go to a blacksmith, and he’d join their hands as he pretended to strike them with a mallet, the way he would metal. The statue in the background of the photo below is symbolic of that practice.

We grabbed a bite to eat and did some shopping in Gretna Green before hopping back on the bus for Glasgow. John said Glasgow sprung up in the 1700s along with the Industrial Revolution. It’s known as a “modern city.” They’ve used it for filming movies a lot, including for Spider Man. In fact, a movie that was set in Pittsburgh was filmed in Glasgow because of its resemblance to the steel city.

In Glasgow, we checked into the Novotel and shortly after, headed for Stirling Castle, located on a volcanic crag, where we would meet a bagpiper named Kevin. He would give us a talk about the castle and then “pipe” us into the town for dinner at Hermann’s. It was almost dusk as we stood in a chilly huddle outside the castle. This was one of those tour group visits where you can “say” you were at a castle, but you didn’t actually “go” in the castle. It looked nice from the outside though. . . 

Stirling is one of Scotland’s greatest stone castles, and it figures prominently in the country’s history. The Royal Palace was the childhood home of Mary Queen of Scots, and the Great Hall is the largest medieval banqueting hall ever built in Scotland. Kevin told us that the movie Braveheart is based on Robert the Bruce, a Scottish king, and William Wallace, a Scottish knight and landowner. Both men led Scotland to independence from England.

Our dinner at Hermann’s was held in a second-floor banquet room. The food was delicious and while we were eating, Kevin came piping into the dining room, followed by one of our tour companions holding a platter of haggis. This is a dish made from a sheep’s heart, liver and lungs, mixed with oatmeal, suet, onions, and spices, traditionally cooked inside the animal’s stomach.

We had the option of trying haggis, but we passed after some consideration. The woman across from us gave it a go and said she “didn’t hate it.” The haggis did not smell, or look, good at all to me, so I can’t imagine I would have given it the same evaluation. Also, haggis is illegal to import into the U.S. because it contains sheep’s lung, which was banned by the USDA in 1971 due to contamination risks. So, if you want to try the traditional version, you’ll have to travel. You can find lung-free haggis in the United States, but, why would you?

We slept at the Novotel Glasgow for two nights. The most-important hotel factor for me is cleanliness, and this hotel ticked that box. We’ve found that properties in this chain can be a bit tired, and this one is middle of the road in that regard. There were two elevators, one of which was out of service when the 45 of us arrived. Some people took the stairs, but our room was on the 5th floor and we weren’t about to lug our suitcases that far. We had enough of that in Germany, once even up three flights on a narrow spiral staircase. Still, we were inspired to take the stairs for the rest of our stay (when we weren’t lugging luggage). I mistakenly thought this would counteract all the delicious food we ate on vacation. The scale said otherwise when we returned home.

At this hotel, the toilet was in its own little room, which some people like. I don’t care for having to exit the toilet to wash my hands. I could have brought some hand sanitizer into the little toilet room, but there was also no place to set anything down other than on the toilet roll dispenser.

Also, let me mention that for some reason, all over Great Britain, the only outlet in the bathroom is for shavers only, and I’m not even sure what kind of plug would fit. Maybe a European one, but not a UK plug for sure. 

Finally, on this trip, some hotel bathrooms had washcloths and others did not. We weren’t surprised, because European hotels don’t usually offer them. I’m glad we brought our quick-drying microfiber washcloths along.

Tomorrow, Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland, and an actual tour of Edinburgh Castle!