Day Two - Manchester, England to Stirling, Scotland - Friday, 30 August, 2024 

Weather: Fine - 19º max.

Accommodation: Hotel Colessio, Stirling

We woke early and needed to decide where our next destination would be so we could get closer to catch the ferry to the Isle of Skye on Monday. We settled on Stirling as I’ve never visited this small historical city and Henk had only visited it briefly about forty years ago. It was to be a four hour drive and a good choice. 

With Henk’s navigation and with the help of Google Maps it was an easy drive out of Manchester despite the peak hour traffic, some spaghetti loops and junctions and many roundabouts to eventually get onto the busy M61 and then the M6 to Scotland. The speed for the entire journey was 70mph (110kms) and all cars seemed to stay at this speed and the traffic moved well.

We passed many exit signs to places where we had walked through on either the Coast to Coast walk or our Land’s End to John O’Groats walk. It brought up a lot of wonderful memories. After two hours we stopped at a roadside service centre just south of the Scottish border and had a thirty minute break and had lunch. As we crossed the border Henk took a photo.

When we approached Stirling at 2.00pm we could see in the distance the impressive Stirling Castle sitting high above the city and the tall Wallace Monument on nearby Abbey Craig. We quickly checked into our hotel which turned out to be a beautifully restored Victorian mansion, 

We walked the short distance to the old town centre and immediately liked the city with its old stone buildings, quaint speciality shops with their lovely window displays, the cobbled streets and the many hanging baskets and flower pots. 

Stirling hosts the International Crime Writing Festival in mid September and it looks fabulous with many of Scotland’s major crime writers to be in attendance. I’m sorry to be missing it as it has many of my favourite authors. The bookshop had a display of the many Scottish crime novels and there were posters throughout the town.

We passed a pub called The City Walls with a roof terrace and we booked a table on the terrace for dinner. The pub occupies the original 16th century defences and an ironmongers warehouse. It was a pleasant, sunny evening on the popular terrace with ideal weather to be outdoors. I ordered Haggis Fritters which were hand-battered deep fried haggis slices. It was very peppery and my arteries may never recover!

We made the most of the lovely evening and walked up steep Spittle St, passed our hotel to the Church of the Holy Rude, walked through the Old Town with its many medieval buildings and onto the entrance of Stirling Castle overlooking the church. The church was the place where James IV, son of Mary, Queen of Scots was crowned in 1567. It has a huge graveyard alongside and beneath the castle. We will visit these historical buildings tomorrow morning before making our way to Oban.