I’m Back from the UK!

I am once again taking a break from our regularly scheduled programming to tell y’all about the vacation I just took.

I graduated college in 2022, and my parents promised me a trip to Scotland. However, life events kept postponing things and we finally got to go, two years late but it was worth it. I’d never been to Europe before, and I had no idea what to expect. Honestly, I wasn’t expecting the trip to happen at all, especially when my grandfather passed away in late April. But we made it happen.

We flew into London on the first of July and started sightseeing. In eleven days, we saw London, Oxford, Shrewsbury (where one of my favorite book series, The Cadfael Chronicles, is set), Edinburgh, Glencoe, and Loch Ness. We toured so many castles and historical places that they started to blur together–the Tower of London, Edinburgh Castle, Holyroodehouse Castle, St. Giles’ Cathdral, Shrewsbury Abbey, John Knox’s house in Edinburgh. We caught the tail end of the Changing of the Guards ceremony at Buckingham Palace on our way to high tea at a fancy hotel.

I took more pictures, walked more miles, spent more money, and drank more alcohol on this trip than I have probably ever in my life. (As it turns out, beer that doesn’t taste like pee actually does exist, but you have to go to Scotland for it.) I went with just my mom. I’m very grateful to her for letting me drag her around places. She walked a mile and a half round trip so I could buy some authentic Scottish sock yarn, then hiked up a hill in her good white shoes and new wool sweater. She put up with my complaining and fretting while we were running late to our tour of C.S. Lewis’s house (thanks to our train passes not working as expected).

Yes, we went to C.S. Lewis’s house in Oxford. We missed the last half of the tour, but we still got to see his bedroom, kitchen, and dining room. We went to the church he attended, saw his grave, and had a drink at the pub nearest to his house (mostly because we were lost and needed their WiFi to help us find the nearest bus stop.) We also went to Shrewsbury specifically because of the Cadfael Chronicles, but I have to say that it was a highlight of the trip. It’s a beautiful town with a charm that I’ve never seen before.

Both Oxford and Shrewsbury are in England. Scotland, surprisingly, I was a bit less impressed with. It was probably because we were staying in Edinburgh, which is nearly as busy as London and significantly less refined. The Royal Mile (a street connecting Edinburgh Castle with Holyroodhouse Castle) was lined with restaurants, bars, and about 75 nearly identical tourist trap shops selling variants of the same souvenirs. Our day trip through the Highlands up to Loch Ness was a breath of fresh air and a welcome relief from the bustle.

If I ever go back to the UK, I want to spend more time in Oxford and probably avoid Edinburgh entirely. However, all future plans are a bit on hold at the moment. The day after we returned from the UK, my father had a preventative scan which showed several blockages in his heart, and he will be needing open-heart bypass surgery. My main focuses right now are on supporting my family and getting my sleep schedule back to normal (thanks, jet lag). If you could please pray for him, I’d appreciate it.

And now, hopefully, I’ll be getting back to our regularly scheduled programming.