Cpow

My husband and I are going to Scotland for the first time in May. What
kind of weather can we expect? What is the best way to make golf
reservations? Where is the best place to golf? Are there any good
tours that include both golf and site seeing? What is the best way to
get from London to Scotland? Where is a good place to stay. I would
appreciate any recommendations.


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Cpow
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Martin Rich

On Mon, 7 Feb 2005 23:15:41 -0600, Cpow
<[email protected]> wrote:

    >My husband and I are going to Scotland for the first time in May. What
    >kind of weather can we expect?

Weather in Scotland is always unpredictable and there is always a
significant chance of rain. However May gives you a good chance of
clear weather, you will have the benefit of long summer evenings, and
you will probably be early enough to miss the worst of the midges.

Summary weather stats for Edinburgh at
http://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/world/c...ml?tt=TT003780

    > What is the best way to make golf
    >reservations? Where is the best place to golf? Are there any good
    >tours that include both golf and site seeing?

Don#t know about the golf - sorry

    > What is the best way to
    >get from London to Scotland?

For Glasgow and Edinburgh I usually prefer train to plane, even though
it takes a little longer overall: personally I like the east coast
route (GNER) from Kings Cross and recommend that you sit on the east
side of the train for the best views! Alternatively low cost
airlines, notably Easyjet, offer flights. There is a huge range of
fares for both trains and planes: for best fares you will need to book
in advance and usually commit to a particular time.

Personally I'd only suggest driving if you want to take several days
over the journey and/or really want your own car, and bus/coach only
if you really want the cheapest method possible

    >Where is a good place to stay. I would
    >appreciate any recommendations.

Hard to say without knowing where in Scotland, but again I find the
best scenery tends to be around the west coast.

Martin

Phred Bear

http://www.visitscotland.com/

Keith

"Cpow" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
    >Where is the best place to golf? Are there any good
    > tours that include both golf and site seeing?

Although we didn't play, we really enjoyed visiting St. Andrews, down by the
water, etc.

http://www.standrews.org.uk/

I remember the pro-shop being extremely over-priced, as one might expect.
If you walk along some of the side streets, in addition to cute cafe's, etc,
there are plenty of golf shops that sell exactly the same merchandise for
about half the price.

    >What is the best way to
    > get from London to Scotland?

We drove. There are so many sights to see along the way, and the highways,
if time is an issue, are quick! There are plenty of those brown(I think!)
historic signs which point to places along the way. Driving really gave us
the freedom to say, "hey that looks fun", etc.

Unrelated to golf, Edinburgh is a fun place too with Edinburgh Castle, the
infamous "Royal Mile", and Holyrood Palace. Drive to Edinburgh, park the
car, and forget about it. Driving there is crazy.

Good luck.

Keith
Pittsburgh

Stanislava

Cpow Wrote:
    > My husband and I are going to Scotland for the first time in May. What
    > kind of weather can we expect? What is the best way to make golf
    > reservations? Where is the best place to golf? Are there any good tours
    > that include both golf and site seeing? What is the best way to get from
    > London to Scotland? Where is a good place to stay. I would appreciate
    > any recommendations.

I would recommend the golf courses along the ayrshire coast at places
such as prestwick, troon, turnberry and Irvine. Ryanair do cheap
flights from London stanstead airport to prestwick airport. There are
good rail links to prestwick, troon, irvine ayr and glasgow from the
airport. The scenery in Ayrshire is beautiful and the weather should be
quite mild in May. It is easy to get from ayrshire to other places of
interest such as glasgow, edinburgh and stirling by train. I recommend
'www.visitscotland.com' (http://www.visitscotland.com) for info on golf
and sightseeing trips, hotels etc. i hope this will be of help to u.


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Mark Hewitt

"Keith" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
    > We drove. There are so many sights to see along the way, and the
    > highways,
    > if time is an issue, are quick!

Good from London to Leeds. Okay from Leeds to Newcastle, crap from Newcastle
to Edinburgh.

> There are plenty of those brown(I think!)
    > historic signs which point to places along the way. Driving really gave
    > us
    > the freedom to say, "hey that looks fun", etc.

Quite so, and it also means that you have the car when you get there and
have space to carry luggage etc. But don't underestimate the distance
involved. Driving from London to Edinburgh is not the work of a couple of
hours. It usually takes me about 6 hours to get from London to Newcastle,
and Edinburgh is another 3 from that.

    > Unrelated to golf, Edinburgh is a fun place too with Edinburgh Castle, the
    > infamous "Royal Mile", and Holyrood Palace. Drive to Edinburgh, park the
    > car, and forget about it. Driving there is crazy.

But parking there is also crazy! Make sure you have somewhere to park!
ps. I don't find driving in Edinburgh too bad, it's one of the better cities
to drive in, IMO.

Phred Bear

<< Unrelated to golf, Edinburgh is a fun place too with Edinburgh Castle,
the
infamous "Royal Mile", and Holyrood Palace. Drive to Edinburgh, park the
car, and forget about it. Driving there is crazy.

But parking there is also crazy! Make sure you have somewhere to park!
ps. I don't find driving in Edinburgh too bad, it's one of the better
cities
to drive in, IMO.>>

Could we have an endorsement from you in "Scotsman" in favour of the "No to
congestion charging in Edinburgh" campaign whilst postal voting is going on
for the next two weeks. If the loony council get their way, you will look
back with nostalgia on the present situation.

Jack Campin - bogus address

    >> Drive to Edinburgh, park the car, and forget about it. Driving there
    >> is crazy.
    > Could we have an endorsement from you in "Scotsman" in favour of the "No to
    > congestion charging in Edinburgh" campaign whilst postal voting is going on
    > for the next two weeks. If the loony council get their way, you will look
    > back with nostalgia on the present situation.

The "loony council"'s proposal is the only measure that has a prayer of
dealing with the insane level of traffic in Edinburgh. In the last year,
the level of congestion has increased to the point that I have to get a
bus half an hour earlier every day to get in to work, this despite part-
dedicated bus lanes - there are only two alternative roads into the city
from where I live, both near the point of total gridlock every morning.
If congestion charging isn't introduced I'm probably out of a job, the
buses won't be able to get through at all. (I've lived in or near the
city for most of the last thirty years, so I have some idea of what a
saner level of traffic feels like).

The negativistic campaign the previous poster is advocating is presumably
promoted by the car industry, who have nothing at all to lose by selling
people cars they can't actually use. The NO campaigners have *nothing*
constructive to suggest that would get people around the city any faster.

The charging scheme proposed is basically the same as London's, which
has worked as well as could be expected considering how feeble it was.
Far more drastic measures to discourage private car ownership are really
needed - a massive increase in fuel and vehicle taxation, to the point
that at least half of all local car drivers were forced off the roads,
would be the quickest fix.

============== j-c ====== @ ====== purr . demon . co . uk ==============
Jack Campin: 11 Third St, Newtongrange EH22 4PU, Scotland | tel 0131 660 4760
<http://www.purr.demon.co.uk/jack/> for CD-ROMs and free | fax 0870 0554 975
stuff: Scottish music, food intolerance, & Mac logic fonts | mob 07800 739 557

Jack Campin - bogus address

    > I recommend 'www.visitscotland.com' for info on golf and sightseeing
    > trips, hotels etc.

I don't. All the facilities represented by that organization have paid
to be there. No matter how good an attraction is, and how many tourists
might want to know about it, they won't get to find out about it unless
somebody crosses visitscotland's palm with silver. The result is an
image of Scotland which is insanely commercialized and thoroughly
unattractive. Get a paper guidebook instead.

============== j-c ====== @ ====== purr . demon . co . uk ==============
Jack Campin: 11 Third St, Newtongrange EH22 4PU, Scotland | tel 0131 660 4760
<http://www.purr.demon.co.uk/jack/> for CD-ROMs and free | fax 0870 0554 975
stuff: Scottish music, food intolerance, & Mac logic fonts | mob 07800 739 557

S Viemeister

Jack Campin - bogus address wrote:

    > Far more drastic measures to discourage private car ownership are really
    > needed - a massive increase in fuel and vehicle taxation, to the point
    > that at least half of all local car drivers were forced off the roads,
    > would be the quickest fix.
    >
Providing more effective public transportation options (bringing back
trams, providing park&ride facilities outside the centre, etc), and only
THEN forcing people off the roads, would be more likely to work than simply
making it difficult to use private transport.

ENcouraging the use of public transport is at least as important as
DIScouraging the use of private vehicles. IMHO.

It amazes me that so few car-drivers support public transport initiatives -
if more people can be persuaded to leave their cars at home (or not even
HAVE cars), the easier it will be for those who, for whatever reason,
choose to drive private vehicles.

Sheila

Keith

"Mark Hewitt" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
    > Quite so, and it also means that you have the car when you get there and
    > have space to carry luggage etc. But don't underestimate the distance
    > involved.

For us crazy Americans, 9 hours is a walk in the park. Although I *did*
break that trip up, and saw a bunch of sights before I entered Scotland. I
know people who drive to Florida one way 2250km (1400 miles) from Pittsburgh
across two days. There are some "tough guys" who claim to have driven it
straight-through.

The couple references I've seen show London - Edinburgh to be about 350/400
miles (600+/- km). Does it really take 9 hours to cross that distance?
Must be some slow patches....

    > But parking there is also crazy! Make sure you have somewhere to park!
    > ps. I don't find driving in Edinburgh too bad, it's one of the better
cities
    > to drive in, IMO.

In my case, I was lucky enough to have parking at the hotel...... It really
wasn't the roads perse -- it was really all the traffic. It was bumper to
bumper with lots of buses, etc. People walking all over the place, etc. I
think we must have arrived during rush hour or something. But for the
couple days we were there, there was lots of traffic. No matter where I'm
at in Europe, I use the car for the city->city runs, and then either walk,
or use taxis for moving around the city.

Keith
Pittsburgh

Phred Bear

<< I don't. All the facilities represented by that organization have paid
to be there. No matter how good an attraction is, and how many tourists
might want to know about it, they won't get to find out about it unless
somebody crosses visitscotland's palm with silver. The result is an
image of Scotland which is insanely commercialized and thoroughly
unattractive. Get a paper guidebook instead.>>


You really are a little ray of sunshine, arn't you Jack

Owain

"Jack Campin - bogus address" wrote
    | > I recommend 'www.visitscotland.com' for info on golf and sightseeing
    | > trips, hotels etc.
    | I don't. All the facilities represented by that organization have paid
    | to be there. .... Get a paper guidebook instead.

A much higher proportion of hotels and B&Bs in Scotland are registered with
the tourist board than in England and particularly in London, and I believe
this is the reason why basic standards of accommodation are more consistent
in Scotland. I've stayed in hotels in London which simply would not operate
in the tourist sector in Scotland.

The tourist board registration does include a measure of inspection and
control - far more than that practiced by the paper guideboooks. Moreover,
the helpful listings from the tourist board are free to the tourist and
probably far more comprehensive than hotel guidebooks -- which, with I think
one remaining exception, now ALL charge for inclusion in their listings,
even if their inspections are anonymous.

Owain

Martin Rich

On Tue, 8 Feb 2005 14:32:31 -0500, "Keith" <[email protected]>
wrote:


    >The couple references I've seen show London - Edinburgh to be about 350/400
    >miles (600+/- km). Does it really take 9 hours to cross that distance?
    >Must be some slow patches....

It's just about 400 miles. I think 9 hours is realistic - it's a long
time since I've driven London-Edinburgh in anything like one go,
rather more recently that I've taken 7 hours Newcastle-London, which
was in heavy traffic but I've seen worse.

However I've done London-Edinburgh as a leisurely trip with one
overnight stop in the Peak District and another in the Scottish
Borders, and it was a delightful way to spend a few days.

As I said earlier in the thread, driving makes sense if you wan to
spend a few days on the way and/or you want to use your own car (as
opposed to a rented car). In Scotland, outside the cities, there is a
lot to be said for using a car, but you can always rent a car in
Scotland.

And the train journey also includes scope for stopovers: York is an
obvious possibility but you could also consider getting off the train
in Newcastle or Berwick and exploring Northumberland

Martin

Chancellor Of The Duchy Of Besses O' Th' Barn

Martin Rich <[email protected]> wrote:

[]
    > It's just about 400 miles. I think 9 hours is realistic - it's a long
    > time since I've driven London-Edinburgh in anything like one go,
    > rather more recently that I've taken 7 hours Newcastle-London, which
    > was in heavy traffic but I've seen worse.

I don't drive any more, but in the mid-90s I had to drive overnight from
Stirling to London, and that took around 6 hours. That was with a
minimal stopover somewhere (20 minutes max) and basically no traffic. I
think I was driving over the limit a lot of the time, but not by that
much- probably around 80mph.

    > However I've done London-Edinburgh as a leisurely trip with one
    > overnight stop in the Peak District and another in the Scottish
    > Borders, and it was a delightful way to spend a few days.

Yes. From around Lancaster up to either Glasgow or Edinburgh, it's
really a very pretty drive.

    >
    > As I said earlier in the thread, driving makes sense if you wan to
    > spend a few days on the way and/or you want to use your own car (as
    > opposed to a rented car). In Scotland, outside the cities, there is a
    > lot to be said for using a car, but you can always rent a car in
    > Scotland.
    >
    > And the train journey also includes scope for stopovers: York is an
    > obvious possibility but you could also consider getting off the train
    > in Newcastle or Berwick and exploring Northumberland

Durham too. The train route is also a railway enthusiast's dream- the
sublime stations at York and Newcastle (the latter having the most
dramatic approache from the south) and the bridge at Berwick, etc.)

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