Visiting Scotland in October

Status
Not open for further replies.
dsanch1120

dsanch1120

Puritan Board Freshman
Hello everyone,
My family and I will be visiting Edinburgh, Scotland this October for roughly 4 weeks. I'll be working 3 of them, but will be taking 1 week off.
Does anyone have any tips or suggestions for visiting Scotland? i.e. things to know/good things to do? My wife and I want to visit the Isle of Skye, but we're not too sure what else to do while we're up there.
I'm also looking for a good church to attend while we're there. We likely won't have a car and will be staying a few minutes north of Edinburgh Castle, so if anyone knows of a good reformed church, we'd love to check it out.
 
Hello, you'd be very welcome to visit the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland congregation at Gilmore Place in Edinburgh!

Edinburgh Congregation – Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland

www.fpchurch.org.uk www.fpchurch.org.uk

Also very welcome to come and visit us in Glasgow.

Skye is a lovely place, with a congregation there as well if you're up during any of the services. Depends what you're interested in seeing but there's lots to see in Edinburgh, and there are many places with great religious and historical significance throughout Scotland. One such place which is also beautiful is Dunnottar Castle, many covenanters were imprisoned there.

Hope you have an enjoyable and profitable trip!
 

Reformation History

reformationhistory.org

Isle of Skye has dinosaur tracks if you're into that!

St. Andrews is beautiful and right by the sea.

Fish and chips come highly recommended as a dish to try.

You could try this church: https://www.freechurchcontinuing.org/congregations/edinburgh-st-columbas/

Looks to be around 2.5-3 miles distance. Maybe someone at the church can give you a ride if you need it.


Look into the bus and train system carefully and get some bus apps to pay for the tickets. The system is pretty good!
 
St Columba's Free Church and Charlotte Chapel would be the closest to the castle but I'm sure you'd get a warm welcome at any of these suggestions.

In Edinburgh itself there is plenty of church history. In the centre there is the Grassmarket, Greyfriars churchyard inc the Covenanter Memorial, Magdalen Chapel, St Giles Cathedral, John Knox's house. The National Museum of Scotland has things like Sandy Peden's mask, communion ware, John Knox's pulpit. Also the Free Church College on the Mound is worth a visit, and its bookshop, and if you(r family) are okay with visiting cemeteries, the Grange is full of Disruption worthies. The cemetery next to St Cuthbert's has the grave of James Haldane (think it's James anyway, not Robert?) and Archibald Maclean, both Baptists.
 
CathH said:
Also make sure you're sitting down before you check the price of petrol.
Click to expand...
Maybe if they had access to crude oil prices would be better. It's not like they have huge offshore reserves in the North Sea.

(Actually, the numbers seem to be all over the place. They probably need to turn all their oil and gas work to Texans. I found 2014 numbers saying 15 - 24 million barrels remaining in 2014, 24 billion barrels remaining in 2014, 20 billion in 2018 and 800 million barrels in 2021, and an idiotic policy (ok, "presumption") against new exploration.

In comparison, the Permian Basin had 5.5 billion barrels of reserves in 1976, by 2022 after over 45 more years of pumping, reserves are at about 71 billion barrels.
 
CathH said:
St Columba's Free Church and Charlotte Chapel would be the closest to the castle but I'm sure you'd get a warm welcome at any of these suggestions.

In Edinburgh itself there is plenty of church history. In the centre there is the Grassmarket, Greyfriars churchyard inc the Covenanter Memorial, Magdalen Chapel, St Giles Cathedral, John Knox's house. The National Museum of Scotland has things like Sandy Peden's mask, communion ware, John Knox's pulpit. Also the Free Church College on the Mound is worth a visit, and its bookshop, and if you(r family) are okay with visiting cemeteries, the Grange is full of Disruption worthies. The cemetery next to St Cuthbert's has the grave of James Haldane (think it's James anyway, not Robert?) and Archibald Maclean, both Baptists.
Click to expand...
Sounds great! I’ll look into all of that, we definitely want to do some learning about church history in Scotland
 
dsanch1120 said:
We’re planning on taking a train to Inverness and maybe a bus to the Isle of Skye from there, I’d love to see the highlands though, I’ve heard they’re beautiful
Click to expand...
I definitely recommend Skye! If you're there on the Lord's Day or Wednesday, visit the Free Church Continuing in Snizort!

Also, check out Leakey's Bookshop in Inverness.
 
Try some haggis for sure. Just make sure you eat it together with the English turnips and mashed potatoes. It doesn't taste very good by itself. PS - I lived in Aberdeen for a year. The Isle of Skye was my favorite trip from there.
 
DanSSwing said:
Try some haggis for sure. Just make sure you eat it together with the English turnips and mashed potatoes. It doesn't taste very good by itself.
Click to expand...

I’m both excited and terrified to try haggis (my wife probably just terrified, my daughter will eat anything I put in front of her), so that’s good to know!
 
I did my last year of college at the Univ. of St Andrews ( Botany). I loved the castle there, way more than Edinburgh even though it is smaller. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Andrews_Castle ( interesting history). If you've seen Chariots of Fire, that opening scene where they are running along the beach by the sea is St Andrews.

I would agree with the above comments about the highlands. I think the most beautiful place I have ever seen, except Grand Canyon, was riding a bus all day through the highlands. If you have time maybe you can hike there.

We honeymooned in Orkney ( my old pastor and family from Dundee had taken a pastorate in Kirkwall). Orkney has the oldest ruins in Europe so we were told. This is one: https://www.britannica.com/place/Skara-Brae, and there are Viking ruins and standing stones. You can't do it on a very tight plane schedule because if the airport fogs in ( happened to us) you have to get a ferry to the mainland and then get to your airport. It should work with a rental car. Good for archaeology and history lovers. My pastor said they have green winter and white winter- we went in July which meant a winter coat sometimes for green winter.

Haggis is disgusting. Really disgusting. I had to be polite and eat it a few times. Ugh. We are not under the kosher dietary laws but there is a good reason God said not to eat blood. It isn't healthy- what toxins and adrenal hormones get dumped into the blood as the animal panics at the last minute? You can eat lots of fish and chips, and steak and kidney pie, to go native. Forget haggis!

When I was there so long ago the only place to eat out was the pubs. The food was very cheap because they made their money off drinks. I don't know how it is now, or if it would bother you to take your children into pubs, but its the easiest way to get good meals cheap unless you go to a "chippy" on the street.

Hamburger is mince. A hamburger in St Andrews was made of ham. Fries are chips and potato chips are crisps. In St A there was a gourmet food shop in town that occasionally got in peanut butter for the Americans. If it was me I'd pack peanut butter.

Inverness is gorgeous, we did a boat ride on the loch.

I hope you will post some pictures here after your trip. Or during. I am sure you will have a wonderful time.
 
Turns out our plans may be changing, our trip was to be in October, however, the website we used for booking is suspending services starting October 1st due to a new short term letting lease law in Edinburgh. We’ll probably have to figure out new plans now. Thank you all for your suggestions though!
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Similar threads

D
Visiting London in October.
Replies
14
Views
1K
LilyG
LilyG
D
  • Locked
In Honor of October
Replies
1
Views
1K
VirginiaHuguenot
V
Bookmeister's Wife
  • Locked
Visiting Raleigh in September
Replies
1
Views
1K
ChristopherPaul
ChristopherPaul
scottmaciver
  • Locked
Ecumenism in Scotland
Replies
7
Views
2K
scottmaciver
scottmaciver
Kerem
  • Locked
Visiting Michigan
Replies
2
Views
1K
Kerem
Kerem
Back
Top