Driving in Scotland and dual carriageways

Trip Start Jan 01, 2009

143

Trip End Dec 31, 2009

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Where I stayed

Tigh Na Mara Hotel Stranraer

Flag of United Kingdom Stranraer, Scotland, United Kingdom
Tuesday, June 9, 2009

Actually, we were a little south of Stranraer in Sandhead.... The drive down from Ardrossan to Stranraer is beautiful and would have been a lot more fun if it wasn't for all of the "average speed" cameras. We were making the drive a little before sunset too so it was especially pretty. And the Ford C-Max dutifully slung us around the corners I wanted to take...AND THERE WERE NO LORRIES IN MY WAY!!! That makes a drive just about perfect. I had never understood the magic of dual carriageways when the Top Gear hosts always get moist and teary-eyed when they think about them...but dual carriageways are the savior of any motorist who is stuck behind a line of lorries on these awesome back country roads. Because really, any true DRIVER from Pike's Peak to Watkins Glen to the Nurbergring wets his (or her) britches thinking about rising blind corners, s-curves, and switchbacks; which are all abundant in this land... So yes, I finally get it. I get it so much now that I feel sorry when I see a driver behind a lorry coming the opposite way down the road because I know that I was the car that prevented them from overtaking on the only straight stretch of road for another 10 miles. I'M SO SORRY!!!

Enough of that...so we stopped over in Stranraer on the way to the hotel to get some food. Ate at this really tasy Chinese place that I can't remember the name of then headed down to Tigh Na Mara in Sandhead. Good thing its only a few miles down the road because I was so tired after the day of running up and down the hill that I could have fallen asleep at a KISS concert. So the Tigh Na Mara isn't a hotel like I normally think of one...it's more of a guest house attached to a pub and restaurant. Maybe a lot of their business is from those people who just couldn't make it home from the bar?? We had a nice comfy room but the windows don't insulate the sound from the outside world that well. It's a good thing that we were so tired because I didn't hear the pub patrons leaving at the end of the night. Oh, and this place has real shower doors!!!