Belfast, Northern Ireland.
The Weather Channel gave us the grim news of strong wind blowing at 60 to 80 mph and torrential rain across Scotland and Northern Island where we were heading. The weather channel has been quite accurate in its prediction so far. Moderate to strong wind, rain and temperatures as low as 2 degrees Celsius accompanied us the past days, thus we were anticipating a rocky ride across the northern channel between Stranraer ( located at the northern most tip of scotland) and Belfast. It was going to be a 2 hour boat ride and I was hoping I can hold my undigested food in throughout the ride.
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| Our Ride.. |
We left Glasgow Scotland past 3 pm and halfway through, TomTom ( GPS monitor) directed us out of the motorway towards an unnamed road that gave us the countryside view worth every congested nostril and aching muscle!
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| Breathtaking... |
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| Posing for me... |
Rolling hills, castles, cows, horses ( interestingly with trunks wrapped with a cloth) and most of all... the sheeps! I had to get out to the shivering cold and take a picture of the sheeps!
When we got to Stranraer, we found out that our trip was delayed because of the strong gale that afternoon. We used the extra time recapitulating our trip and realized we actually covered the 4 countries of UK!
I only found out that UK has four countries when I was filling up my form for my UK visa and got to the question 'what country are you visiting?'. It striked me as odd why I would be asked this when I was applying for a UK visa and therefore must be visiting UK. I was told later that UK has 4 countries: England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Liverpool, which was my first stop was in England. Ahaaa.
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| Interior of Stena Lines |
The Stena Line ship was amazingly big, luxurious and impeccably clean. It was the first ship I ve been on that did not smell of diesel. The trip across the channel was serene. I barely felt any rocking. and when we got to Belfast, the night was comfortably cold and we celebrated by stopping at a chinese restaurant for take-out. It was our first RICE meal after a week and every bite was very much appreciated.
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