I hope you had a great Fourth of July holiday…if you live in the U.S.!
I figured this report would be good for the Finance/Travel group because my review covers a good deal of touring in Scotland. It should also satisfy the Racing/Travel group because I was able to see racing at four tracks in Scotland.
I’m going to change up my format a wee bit. Yes, I began to learn the lingo of Scotland about the time I was leaving. I’m going to have far fewer photos imbedded in the review itself. That will save me some time. I will continue to provide the photo albums (all captioned) and YouTube video. If you haven’t click on a photo album give it a try. You’re going to see some great pictures in high definition. Of course a picture is worth 1,200 words (inflation!). Ready? Let’s go!
Tuesday, May 31, 2022 Today is the day that I head towards Scotland. I’ll fly tonight from New York’s JFK airport over to London’s Heathrow airport. Then on Wednesday morning, I’ll take a short flight from London to Edinburgh, Scotland. I am very much looking forward to this trip. I packed as much as my carry-on luggage including my army field jacket sleeves could hold. I think I brought too much. Normally my strategy is to pack my existing luggage with as much stuff as it can possibly hold with the thought that I “might need it”. For this trip, every bag I have is jam-packed to 110% capacity. I took advantage of the TownePlace Suites by Marriott laundry room in Tarrytown yesterday. I have only been on the road for four days. Nevertheless, I figured if I washed those four days’ worth of dirty clothes that would easily get me to the end of this trip with enough to wear. I regret I didn’t bring less clothing with me. What I brought is much too difficult to schlep. I had just enough time today to take in a Trackchasing Tourist Attraction. I searched for things to do in Tarrytown, New York. The #1 attraction was the Lyndhurst Mansion in Tarrytown. I couldn’t go inside the mansion today. You can only do that on weekends. Nevertheless, it was fun just to tour the grounds. Absolutely beautiful. The place overlooks the Hudson River and the Tappan Zee Bridge. In some ways the Lyndhurst Mansion reminded me of Hearst Castle in northern California but of course on a smaller scale. I love seeing how the ultra-rich used to live more than 100 years ago. That must’ve been grand. As I was walking around, I ran into a gentleman who was a “member” of the museum organization. We took some time to chat. He lived locally. We talked politics and even though we weren’t exactly on the same page we were both able to fully understand and appreciate the other person’s point of view. It was really nice talking to Mr. O’Connor. From there it was a relatively short drive down to JFK airport. The roads in this part of New York are absolutely terrible. Rough with huge potholes! It just looks like life is a struggle to live in some of the boroughs of New York City. I wondered why the people didn’t all immediately move to California. Then I thought about that some more and realized that many of them did! If I didn’t live in Southern California my first choice after that would be in Manhattan. I love the city and all that there is to do and see. I’ve actually thought about trying to stay in New York City for a month or two just to get the vibe of what actually living here would be like. I don’t think Carol would sign up for that.
At JFK I checked in for my flight to London. I will be connecting tomorrow morning into Edinburgh, Scotland. Because I am a lifetime platinum member of the American Airlines’ frequent flyer program, I could use the British Airways Lounge while I waited for my flight. What a great perk! Once inside all I had to do was scan a QR code. Shortly thereafter a server would bring me anything on the food and drink menu which included all kinds of free alcohol and dessert. No charge! I tried to act in moderation but when everything is 100 hundred percent accessible like that it’s difficult to do. Soon I was on a flight to Europe for the second time in about the last 10 days. See you in Scotland. Wednesday, June 1, 2022 Today I was still trying to get from point A to point B to point C. I’m not really sure that people who see me at a race track and marvel at the number of places I’ve been really get the idea of what it takes to move around. It takes a lot. I have a passion for this. I never complain. It’s a mental challenge for the most part. I like that part of it. Carol and I often look at each other and smile and nod in agreement and say, “People have no idea. They really have no idea!” Flying time from JFK airport to Heathrow airport was a little bit more than seven hours. This morning we landed at 9 a.m. We landed a tad early. There were no gates available for us to park the airplane. By the time we did park it was too late for me to make my connection from London to Edinburgh, Scotland. This was actually a minor blessing in disguise. If I had made my connection, I would have landed in Scotland at about 9:30 a.m. That would have been too early to check into my hotel. As it was, I landed in Edinburgh and was ready to go at about 2 p.m. I must tell you that getting “re-connected” was a bit of a challenge. Most reconnecting is automated at Heathrow. However, when that didn’t work, we had to resort to working with real people! What a thing of the past. While I was waiting in a line of about a dozen people a young man rushed up and essentially cut in line. When the agent called him out on this behavior, he stayed at the front of the line kibitzing with the people already at the front of the line. I kept my eye on this guy. When the line began to move, I did what any rule-abiding person might do who had some time on his hands. As loud as I could I yelled at the guy telling him I knew he had cut in line. None of the other people in line or the two airline agents wanted to get involved. The young man shrugged his shoulders as if to say “what don’t you let me slide, man?” Nevertheless, I felt I had done my civic duty for the day. About a half-hour later I saw the young man again. He was ahead of me in a very long line but not by much. When I passed, he stared at his shoes. I felt good about one thing. If this is reflective of his typical behavior, he will pay for that many times over in life! I grabbed a taxi and for about €18 (Scotland used the British pound as their currency) took the short ride from the Edinburgh International Airport (EDI) to the Marriott Courtyard West hotel on the outskirts of Edinburgh. I have a rental car reserved but won’t pick it up until day three of this seven-day trip. People who booked this hotel were paying about $250 U.S. per night. I didn’t pay that. I rarely and virtually never pay retail. I wouldn’t want to embarrass anyone by saying what I actually did pay. I soon discovered the hotel was located on the campus of the Heriot Watt University. I didn’t know that in advance. The entire area is heavily forested. It’s very picturesque I have vacationed in Europe, most of the time with Carol but not always, more than 100 times. There is one classic travel mistake that I never want to make but I almost always do. Depending upon where we are stopping in Europe the time zone change is going to be eight or nine hours difference from California. It’s much better to land in Europe later in the day. I know I am going to be very tired when I land. If I land at 7 o’clock at night it will be time to go to bed. However, if I land at 7 o’clock in the morning I’m gonna be just as tired but will have to stay up all day to make things work. Traveling east is much more difficult than traveling west. Veteran travelers know that. I pulled into my hotel room at about 3 p.m. I was tired. I told myself I would take just a one-hour nap. When my iPhone alarm rang after one hour I just couldn’t get up. I slept for three or four hours waking up about 7 p.m. My longer than planned nap didn’t do any good for my wanting to go to sleep later on tonight. When I woke up from my nap, I did have a funny experience. This is what I told my Facebook friends.
“I’m staying at a very nice hotel on the outskirts of Edinburgh, Scotland. The hotel is actually on the campus of Heriot Watt University. This is a heavily forested area. I asked the hotel desk clerk to give me some directions so I could go for an evening walk. It doesn’t get dark here until after 10 PM. She gave me a routing that would take me out and back over adistance of 3 miles or so. Off I went. Then I started to get hungry. I saw what looked like a little eatery on the campus and I stopped in. My server asked me if I wanted to charge my restaurant bill to my hotel room. Charge it to my hotel room? How did he know I was staying at the hotel? When I finished eating, I thought I had probably another 2 miles to get myself back to the hotel. I looked around and things seemed to be a little bit familiar. I wasn’t at a campus eatery. I was all the way back to the hotel restaurant! I had left the hotel from one door and come back into the restaurant from another door. I didn’t have 2 miles to walk to get back to the hotel but only about 15 meters to take me to the elevator to my room! What did I learn from all of this? When you absolutely think you know what you’re doing and you’ve got it all figured out quite a bit of the time you’re not even close! That was a pretty good lesson to learn from a simple evening walk here in Scotland.” Oh my. I’m blaming this on jet lag. Thursday, June 2, 2022 I scheduled this trip so I would have a full day of touring before the racing started in Scotland. Then the plan was to have a full day of touring when the racing was finished. I will be trackchasing on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. I will have full days of touring on Thursday and Monday. It might be better crowd wise for the touring to take place on weekdays rather than the weekend. I will travel back-and-forth to Europe on Wednesday and Tuesday. This is my “classic” European trackchasing plan. Today I had yet another hotel breakfast buffet by staying at a Marriott branded hotel. Because I stay so much at Marriott properties the hotel gave me a 15 British pound credit each day to use for food and beverage. That’s about a $20 U.S. benefit each day. I guess all of my travel over several decades is still paying dividends. When breakfast was finished, I hopped on bus #25 and road it from the hotel to the city centre of Edinburgh. The one-way fare was 1.80 British pounds. Right now, one British pound is the equivalent of about $1.25 U.S. When I look at something that costs £10, I almost think that it costs $10 and the price seems reasonable. Then when I have to increase the British pound price by 25% to get the U.S. price things don’t seem so cheap anymore. In the past the exchange rate for Americans has been much worse. I remember when one U.S. dollar was nearly equivalent to TWO British pounds. Something that went for 10 British pounds was actually $20 dollars U.S. For as long as I’ve been coming to the United Kingdom which dates back well over 20 years, I’ve always thought of this as being a very expensive place. Edinburgh is the capital of Scotland. Edinburgh is a city of about 500,000 people with about 1.4 million people in the general area. There’s a lot of history that comes from Edinburgh. They’ve got an excellent public transportation system. I had a beautiful weather day to see as much as I could see. I thought a very good way to do that was to get a “hop on hop off” sightseeing bus ticket. I did just that. I met a friendly young Scotsman name Steven selling the bus tickets. He explained that the hop on hop off bus had three different tours. They were called the red, green and blue tours. One tour would cost me 15 pounds and three tours would cost 19 pounds. How could I pass up getting all three tours? Essentially, I rode around on the top deck of a very modern sightseeing bus that had an excellent audio system via headphones supplied by the bus company pretty much all day. I got off the bus a couple of times just to stretch my legs. I did buy a ticket for tomorrow morning to tour the Edinburgh Castle. The castle is probably the highlight of the city centre. The castle tour is expected to take two or three hours. When I’m finished, I’ll head out to the airport and pick up my rental car. I figured I didn’t need a rental car for the first couple of days of this trip since getting a bus into downtown Edinburgh is so cheap and easy. I wouldn’t have to worry about parking the car this way either. The weather is perfect for sightseeing. The temperature was probably in the low 60s with a few clouds here and there. I wore a hoodie sweatshirt and shorts and felt perfect all day. You are definitely going to want to check out my photos of Edinburgh’s downtown area. To cap off the day I stopped at a Sainsbury Local grocery store. There I picked up some fruit, vegetable and meat supplies that should last me for the full six nights I’ll be at the Marriott. Right now, I’m supporting the Nutrisystem eating plan. What I bought at the store today should help me meet and exceed my weight loss goals. I did notice that the lunchmeat offerings were in much smaller quantities by probably about half than what you would find in an American grocery store. The fruit and vegetables didn’t look as good either. It was hard to compare prices because the sizes are in grams and the prices are in British pounds. After a long day of touring, it would pretty much fry my brain to figure any of that stuff out. Nevertheless, it was a fine day of visiting a major foreign city. The logistics of doing it were easy. The day didn’t really cost me very much money. I saw virtually every site that was worth seeing and did my share of people watching. Yes, I would highly recommend that you take a look at my photo album from today. If you’ve never been to Edinburgh or if you have, I think you might find it entertaining and interesting to see. Friday, June 3, 2022 This morning was reserved for a tour of the Edinburgh Castle. From the looks of things, the crowds at the castle made it the most popular attraction in all of Edinburgh. I kind of think of mid-evil castles as art museums. I enjoy them when I’m visiting but probably couldn’t tell you much about things when I’m finished. The Edinburg Castle was huge. Of course, it is made out of stone and located on the coast high up on the hill which seemed like it would make it pretty much impenetrable. Rather than tell you much more about that visit I’ll simply ask you to look at the Edinburg Castle photo album. If you do that, you’ll feel like you were there. When I finished the castle tour the next thing on my daily agenda was to ride the Edinburgh tram out to the airport and pick up my rental car. I was amazed at home modern, inexpensive and easy to use Edinburgh’s public transportation was. I hadn’t needed a rental car up to this point. I was able to take buses and trams to see everything in Edinburgh that was of interest. I use a company called AutoEurope when I’m renting cars in Europe. This company lets the traveler select all of their options such as automatic transmission, air conditioning, unlimited mileage and the like. Then the site shows how much each of those options would cost when renting from any of the major rental car companies in the area. It’s a very slick operation. Today I was picking up a full-sized SUV that I had reserved a few weeks ago. My car was going to be a Volkswagen T-Roc. This car would fit the bill. There was only one surprise. I thought I had reserved a car with an automatic transmission. In point of fact, I had not. It was as clear as day on my reservation that I had reserved a car with a manual transmission. This meant I would be driving a right-side steer car with a manual transmission and its left-handed gearshift on the left side of the road. Did you know that about 42% of the world’s population drives on the left side of the road? Most of those countries were ruled by Great Britain at one time or another with Japan being a notable exception. This driving situation wouldn’t be a problem. In the past I have driven well over 10,000 miles on the “wrong” side of the road. My trip to Scotland was going to include visits to four different race tracks. Three of those tracks were less than a one-hour drive from where I was staying in Edinburgh. That would make things easy. The fourth and final track was way up in Crimond, Scotland. Crimond is on the northern tip of the country and about a three-hour drive from Edinburgh.
If you missed that chance to check out the Scotland – Part 1 touring photo album here’s a second opporuntity.
Lochgelly Raceway When I finish up this trip, I will have seen racing at 66 different tracks in the United Kingdom which includes England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. I have made about 10 separate trips to the U.K. doing this. There are several things that I really like about racing in the United Kingdom. They have full contact racing amongst most of their divisions. They rarely wave a yellow flag to stop a race. In the U.K. it rains a lot but they almost never cancel a race because of the rain. They simply race in the rain. The starters are animated showmen and the announcers are just as good. There is so much to like about racing in the U.K. My favorite racing class in the United Kingdom is the F1 BriSCA stock cars. If you imagined a sprint car and a super dirt modified getting together on a romantic Saturday night their offspring might be an F1 BriSCA stock car. That paints an unusual mental picture, doesn’t it? Again, I will leave you to the photo album and the YouTube video to see what the racing was all about at Lochgelly. I liked it a lot. Click below for the Lochgelly photo album.
Lochgelly Raceway – Lifetime track #2,787 As usual it is the people that make these trips the most memorable. Here I was standing along the fence watching the racing when the guy standing next to me tapped me on the shoulder. He showed me his phone. His phone had a picture of the homepage of my website! He asked, “Is this you?” It was! I was pretty impressed that someone had picked me out of a crowd in Scotland! It turned out that I was meeting Chris Cartmel and his son Jimmy. They work up at the Crimond Raceway. They knew I was coming to their track this on Sunday. Chris and Jimmy were down at the Lochgelly Raceway on a busmen’s holiday. Tonight, they were fans. Tomorrow night Chris would be working the show at Cowdenbeath Racewall. It was nice talking to those guys but there was one more major surprise to come. I mentioned to Chris that I had been trackchasing in Scotland all the way back in 2000, some 22 years ago. During that trip, I met the Cowdenbeath Racewall starter, Graham Alexander. I remember Graham inviting Carol and over to his home after the races for some refreshments. Let’s think about that. It was probably ten at night when those races were finished. Graham gave his wife a call. “I’m bringing a couple of Americans I just met over to the house. Can you scramble up something for them to eat and drink!” We had a lovely time at their place. At that time, we met Graham’s wife and their eight-year-old son, George. Chris knew that Graham was working at the track tonight. He texted Graham and soon both Graham and George were coming down to meet me. It had been 22 years! What were the chances that I’m standing at the fence at a track in Scotland and someone recognizes me that I’ve never met? They come up and introduce themselves and then makes arrangements for me to meet just about the only people I know in Scotland who I haven’t seen in 22 years. Often times truth as much stranger than fiction. I had a great time meeting up again with Graham and George. We agreed to see each other again tomorrow night at the Cowdenbeath Racewall track. When the races were finished, I said goodbye to Chris knowing that I would see him again on Sunday at the Crimond Raceway. I felt like I was not part of the “Scottish family”. Saturday, June 4, 2022 Today I planned to see racing in the afternoon at the famous Knockhill Racing Circuit, a permanent road course in Scotland. Then this evening I will stop over at Cowdenbeath Racewall which I consider to be the most competitive track in all of Scotland and one of the best I’ve seen in the United Kingdom. I would put Cowdenbeath in the top 50 tracks that I’ve seen at this point. That’s saying something since I’ve seen racing at nearly 2,800 tracks. The food concessions at the race tracks in the United Kingdom are always excellent. They have a lot of items on their menus that we don’t have in the United States. Today at Knockhill I knocked down (pun intended) an order of mini pancakes and a foot-long hotdog amongst other things. Yes, I’m trying to eat a healthy low calorie diet but sometimes caution must be thrown to the wind. I have played some golf in Scotland. I have played the famous old course in Saint Andrews, Scotland. The Knockhill Racing Circuit reminded me just a little bit of Scottish golf. The facility had a lot of rolling terrain, a good deal of wind and lots of green and brown patches of uneven grass. If you missed a fairway at the Knockhill Racing Circuit you would have a hard time reaching the green. The good thing about watching racing at a road course is that you can walk all over the place. I took advantage of that opportunity and spent a lot of time in the paddock taking pictures of the race cars. Today they were racing legends, caterham racecars and touring cars. Again, please take some time and look at the photo album and the YouTube video.
Knockhill Racing Circuit – Lifetime track #2,788 From there I rushed over to the Cowdenbeath Racewall race track. This track is located pretty much in the center of the small town of Cowdenbeath. As I mentioned I first came here in the year 2000. I might not have come back tonight except for a couple of things that drew me to the track. First of all, I was going to meet up with Graham and his son George Alexander after seeing them last night. Graham used to be the starter at Cowdenbeath Racewall. That’s how I met him 22 years ago. Additionally, the F1 BriSCA stock cars, one of my most favorite UK racing classes, was competing tonight. This group hadn’t been to Scotland since 2018 as much because of the Covid pandemic as anything else. One of the best things about U.K. racing is that when you buy your general admission ticket it normally includes admission to the pit area as well. That is almost never the case in the United States. I took my time walking through the pits getting up close and personal with all of the unusual UK racing machines. Don’t miss the photo album. Then I sat in the grandstand with Graham and George and we watched the races and we talked racing. These guys are avid racing fans. They’ve been to the United States and seen NASCAR races at Charlotte and toured all of the race shops. They know just about as much about NASCAR as I do. Every NASCAR race is a night race for them because with the time zone difference a 3 p.m. eastern time start is 8 p.m. their time. It was fantastic seeing these guys.
Cowdenbeath Racewall – First visited 2000 – Lifetime track #452 Sunday, June 5, 2022. I was really looking forward to today’s trackchasing. I was headed three hours straight north to Crimond, Scotland. Crimond is a very small town and home to a track that’s been racing there for more than 50 years. I will call the Crimond Raceway a country track. Often times I will contact a race track in advance letting them know that I’m going to be there. Many times, when that happens, they will arrange for some form of hospitality upon my arrival. This might include a complementary race ticket, maybe an interview at the track and even once in a while, which first started in England, the opportunity to drive a race car in a race. The folks including Chris and Kelly Cartmel could not have been nicer. They gave me full access to the racing facility. I started by going into the pit area and taking photos and getting up close and personal with racers and race cars. The weather was Scotland perfect…sunny with a breeze. Then during the course of the day, I had an excellent interview with the track announcer. He was friends with Spike and Linda Rixon, U.K. fans I met many years ago. I got to ride around the track in the pace vehicle. One of the highlights of the day was being able to interview several of the key people who work at the Crimond Raceway. You’ll see and hear those interviews with the Crimond YouTube video. Toward the end of the day Chris the track manager gave me a beautiful Crimond Raceway stocking cap aka “Tammy”. Inside the hat were two pieces of the most delicious Scottish fudge I’ve ever tasted. I promised Chris that I would take that hat and wear it at different tracks I visit in the future to help promote the Crimond Raceway. That plan was working really well when I took my Crimond Raceway hat to the Eldora Million late model race. They were paying $1 million to win a 100-lap dirt track race in Rossburg, Ohio. Then something really bad happened with this idea. I stuffed my tammy in the pocket of my sweatshirt. When I went to get the hat and take some pictures with it in front of the Eldora Speedway signs it wasn’t there. I lost my Crimond Raceway hat! You could ask Greg Stuart who was sitting with me at Eldora if I wasn’t pretty well bummed about this. I guess I was just too careless. The ride home on Sunday night would get me back to the hotel late. I didn’t care. I was thrilled that I had pulled off the idea of seeing four different race tracks in Scotland in just three days. I asked Lee Milligan in charge of the pit gate at Crimond where I might be able to stop for a nice dinner and be at a waterfront location. He recommended the town of Arbroath. Arbroath was a little out of the way but not all that far. Off I went. When I got there, I spent a little bit of time admiring the North Sea. Then I did a Yelp search for best Indian restaurants in the area. Soon I found a place called the Saffron Restaurant. There I enjoyed one of the most delicious Indian restaurant meals I’ve had in a long time. I arrived back at my hotel with a huge smile on my face.
Crimond Raceway – Lifetime track #2,789 Monday, June 6, 2022 When I head out on these long-distance international trips, I will often ask Carol, if she’s not coming along on the trip, to help me out with local currency. It’s common that she will have currency left over from one of our previous trips that she can give me. When I headed to Scotland, she gave me a huge cellophane packet of British pounds. At one point I went to buy a postcard with a 5 pound note. The clerk wouldn’t take my cash. I soon learned that “paper” currency in the five and ten pound variety had been discontinued in the United Kingdom about five years ago! All of the fives and tens I had were of no value. I also learned that the twenty and fifty pound notes would suffer the same fate in September of this year. Oh my. This is not the first time this is happened. Just before the Covid pandemic began I made a trip to Sweden. There I learned that I had “old” currency. It took us about six months of communicating with the Swedish government to get our money back on that one. I read somewhere that if I went to a UK post office, I might get them to exchange old currency for new. I had a devil of a time finding a post office on this Monday morning. I finally found a post office that was operating inside a drugstore. This drug store was about the size of my garage. They did exchange the 20s and 50s but wouldn’t help me with the fives and tens. They recommended I go to the Bank of Scotland. Off I went, following their directions, to a shopping mall that had a Bank of Scotland. I was turned away there. The bank representative told me that they don’t carry “cash” in banks anymore! She recommended I go to a money exchange place located on the other end of the shopping mall. I tried there as well but was turned away. Ultimately when I got back home, I explained my situation to Carol. She took the paper British pounds back to our local bank and they exchanged them for good funds. I have learned on these trips that if it isn’t one thing it is commonly another. I now had the afternoon, my last full day in Scotland, available for touring. I’m a big one for taking boat rides or cruises on these kinds of trips whenever I can. Soon I located just that kind of an opportunity. I would board a small boat called the “Maid of the Forth” for a tour of Inchcolm Island. Of course, the island had a castle, Inchcolm Abbey, and lots of birds and a little bit of an area to hike around. However, they left us on the island for about two hours when there was about 30 minutes of things to see and explore. It wasn’t the best tour but it kept me busy. On the way back to the hotel I filled up my rental car for the very last time. Gas in Scotland goes for about nine dollars a gallon right now while in the United States the average price is about $4.50. European petrol has always been one and a half to two times whatever the going price is a United States. I didn’t get very great good gas mileage with my VW R-Toc SUV either. Tuesday, June 7, 2022. This morning I was up bright and early at the Courtyard Marriott here in Edinburg. I had enough time to go out into the forest and grounds of Heriot Watt University for a good morning walk. Then I returned my rental car without a hitch. The Edinburgh airport was absolutely jampacked. Travelers are back after the pandemic. One of the best things about flying British Airways on this particular vacation was that I could use the British Airways airport lounge in London. There they offered all kinds of drinks and food. It was a great place to relax before the long flight back from London to the New York JFK airport. I’ll have the opportunity to spend a couple of nights in New York. This will give me a full day of touring in New York City a place that I’ve been at least 100 times. I’m looking forward to seeing a couple of Broadway shows. I’ll get my steps in with a tour of Central Park and whatever else catches my fancy. As I look back on my trip to Scotland, I will simply say it was in one word, “perfect”. You should know that I have never ever met a trip that I didn’t like. I really liked the visit to Scotland.
