Visit the island of Iona if you can. Dreamy
The Highlands is doable, but the islands are a bit harder work to access. Yes, with some time put aside for just that, it shouldn't be too much of a problem, but you'd need to co-ordinate some flights, ferries etc.
wildoates said:
What we will likely do is take a few day trips out of Hull, take a couple of longer multi-day trips (Scotland and the Continent), and a few day trips out of Birmingham, trying to cut down on lodging costs (the kids are broke and more than broke, Mom's picking up the tab for the whole trip). We're not interested in night life or shopping, we are interested in history, castles, ruins, archeology, brewing, and distilling and anywhere Mary, Queen of Scots stayed (We're in a re-enactment guild, I can do research and deduct the trip from my taxes*. Heh heh heh).
Ok, so here's the first link......
http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/ would be the place to start having a dig around. They're the "quango" that runs/manages/restores all the places the rich parasites donate to the nation, when they can't afford to run them themselves. There are newish places (Ringo Starr's childhood home has just been saved from demolition - I understand that they'll run that), but most of them are of the "big country house" type, and there's quite a lot of them too.
If the France/Belgium trip sounds good to you, then
http://www.eurotunnel.com/uk/home/ would be the quickest, of if a ferry trip "floats your boat", then
http://www.poferries.com/ is probably the most frequent (some of the other ferry companies also run out of Dover).
Don't discount London, on the basis of the Olympics and how busy it might be, because I'd suggest that the
British Museum is worth it's weight in effort and while this one is guaranteed to be busy, the
Crown Jewels are something that shouldn't be missed. It would seem that the larger number of the planets most prized stones are there. It's hard to explain, but when looking at something like that, you feel that they must be paste/fake, but when the penny drops that they're real - it leaves you speechless. Plus the pomp and ceremony that goes with the
Yeoman Warders are to a man, all ex-military. Honestly, "the Tower" is the mutz nutz.
Plus there's always
Hampton Court Palace. Well actually, it would pre-date Mary QoS, because it was Henry VIII's favourite home, but the link is there.
Birmingham is a bit harder to offer links for, because you could try "Birmingham tourism" for a search string, but that's just gonna get you Birmingham city etc. Yet there's the "Black Country" to the west (Dudley being the focal town for that), plus just up the road, you could "do" the Potteries, etc etc.
And
here, is the obvious place too start for Hull and East Yorkshire area (probably "teaching granny to suck eggs" to post that link if you've family there......)
For this end of the country,
http://www.visitsussex.org/ might be a good start, plus as Rebmac mentioned,
Middle Farm for commercially made meads. Plus Brighton has "
the Royal Pavilion", which is worth a visit (not for me though, I used to work there about 25 years ago).
That's about all I can suggest to think of at the moment. Scotland has a plethora of stuff too, of course - and you might be able to find a list of places that Mary QoS stopped for a kip.
I don't know if you've any latitude of the dates for your trip, but if there is, leave the possible northern part of the trip as late as possible, because of "
this". Now that would be an excellent closing finale for your trip, if you can manage it. All those strange blokes in skirts, carrying their "screaming hand bags"..... brilliant. Definitely worth the effort if you could swing it........
), but I'd be delighted to meetup and taste yours. I'll be there from July 2nd to the 18th, then up to Oslo for a few days to see the fam there, then back to England for another week, departing the 31st.
