25-05-03 : Scotland Back to Belfast today in order to catch the 12:20 ferry to Stranraer, Scotland. We had a pretty good ferry crossing all apart from getting on and off! The monkeys that design these ferries have absolutely no idea about motorbikes and seem to place the motorbikes in the most difficult and inaccessible places almost as an afterthought - we're pretty sure there was a pool being run by the loading bay staff as to how many bikers they could have off in one shift. The bay area wasn't so bad, however, the floor surface was shiny gloss paint, which had just been rinsed down due to an earlier problem with the deck being covered in horseshit from a leaky horsebox…Uuugghh! Anyway that was their story. To make matters worse the floor parking area was lower than the deck by about 4 inches with smoothly painted gradient connecting the two surfaces, wonderful. Like ice skating only with half a ton of motorbike. We ignored all the directions of staff that were enthusiastically waving us in and just did the best we could. Three other bikers who were boarding were having the exact same difficulties. The bikes strapped down, we went and grabbed a few comfy chairs to enjoy the short crossing. The weather was looking better as each hour passed.We arrived in Scotland to glorious weather!! We took the coast road up to Ayre, which is great for motorbikes - we would recommend it to be ridden! Arriving at 18:30 at our friends Mike and Clare's house in Bathgate, just outside Edinburgh, we flopped after frightening (not deliberately!) all their children, Michael, Patrick and Laura. The next few days were spent catching up with e-mails- as we hadn't yet sorted out our international and roaming connection via the mobile - and collecting an assortment of parcels which had been forwarded to Mike and Clare's - we must thank them again for being our post office! We spent the whole day on 26th with Mike, Clare and children in Edinburgh - which brought back a few memories as we used to live (for a few months) just outside the city in Linlithgow. After a glorious sunny day Mike treated us to the movies (!) and more food.The next few days were spent much the same with us using their home as our office, post office, restaurant and hotel - what a great time spent with good friends - thank you both so much! . 30-05-03 After leaving Mike and Clare's we headed North towards Aberdeen. Taking a few detours we ended up in the small town of St Cyrus. Found a great site and after chatting with the owners Paddy and Gill Tully they offered us a free pitch due to our fund raising efforts for charity. Their very clean and beautifully kept site is East Bowstrips St. Cyrus Caravan Park and you can email them at tully@bowstrips.co.uk and find details of their site at www.caravancampingsites.co.uk/aberdeenshire/eastbowstrips.htm - thank you Paddy and Gill.On our regular trip to the local supermarket we met up with the owner Dougie, another motorbike enthusiast who very kindly gave us access to his shops DVD's FOC! People around here are so friendly and trusting - it's great! We then had the amusing scenario of hooking up our mini laptop and CDRW/DVD player to the AC/DC converter which was then connected to Simon's motorbike - and watching a DVD whilst in the middle of a field! Every so often we would exchange stupid grins with one another and take turns at saying "…this is so cool"! Anyone who is going away and who wishes to keep in contact with the outside world may wish to use this kind of set- up, if so visit our equipment and kit page which will give you the low down on all our gadgets! 31-05-03 We had loads of time to make our way up to Aberdeen this morning as our ferry for Lerwick in the Shetlands left at 17:00. We made our way to the centre of Aberdeen. What a wonderful City much akin to Edinburgh - big city with a local town atmosphere. Aberdeen has a wonderfully gentle European 'feel', where the lazy shopper and the well-heeled businessman make lunch last an afternoon, whilst kids on jet propelled scooters whiz through traffic. Well that's how it appeared anyway. We rode around for a while trying to suss out Aberdeen's parking protocol…is it cool to park up on the pavement or do you run the risk of looking like a prat as you peel the parking ticket off your screen? Lunch was the order of the day and being in Aberdeen we thought we'd go for something really traditional…Italian? We thought better of parking in the pedestrian zone as no other bikes had done similar. We ended up parking them within eyesight of the small restaurant we'd chosen. Eating prior to boarding was a good plan, as you need a mortgage for the ferry food prices - captive audience!We spent an hour and a half loitering about the ferry terminal - luckily the weather was great. We were last to board but once on, the boarding staff bustled around us trying to work out how best to secure our bikes, they didn't seem sure? This was not confidence inspiring.Upstairs we quickly found a couple of seats and familiarized ourselves with the ship. The ship is very new, very clean and very expensive. We settled in for the long sailing ahead of us.Lisa tried to sleep in the seats; I chose the floor (the seats aren't designed for anybody taller than Willy Carson). All in all we had a crap nights sleep as a few seats down, some guy was doing his Harley Davidson meets the giant tractor impression. I didn't know it was physically possible for anyone to snore that loud, to make it worse he slept from about 6pm through to docking. Nothing but nothing would wake him. Trying to sleep was useless and dawn came round very, very slowly.   ok this part is over click here to go to the Shetland chapter       click on the pics for bigger images Mike and Clare   Paddy and Gill Tully coast road up to Ayre Edinburgh hi tech! low tech