(Revisit) UK Scottish Highland Cows
UK | Revisit | 9 day |
Ms. Q and I are spending a week and a half in the UK. Late spring and early summer are quite warm, and we arrived during a local long weekend (Bank holiday).
Day 1: Driving to Oxford
Landing late in the evening, our trip begins with a drive up to Oxford from London Heathrow. Driving on the left yet again, we somehow made it. We enjoyed our night at a steakhouse with a 2-course meal.
Day 2: Diddly Squat and Clarkson’s farm
Being huge fans of the Amazon farming TV show called Clarkson’s Farm, Ms. Q and I got a Costa Coffee drive-through and started our drive through the farmlands of Oxford.
Clarkson’s Farm stars Jeremy Clarkson from Top Gear, a popular car show that has ended. We are visiting in May 2026, which is just days from the official Season 5 release of the show.
Diddly Squat Farm was very crowded, with car parks in some very big lots. We waited in line to visit the Diddly Squat Farm shop, which was featured in Season 2 of Clarkson’s Farm.
Being the Bank holiday, many folks were from London and doing a day trip.
Jeremy Clarkson’s Hawkstone beer was prominently featured, along with many of the fan favorite products, like Clarkson’s beef, honey, chips, mushrooms…etc.
Ms. Q and I got a hot dog and burger at the food truck and watched the green farm that we had seen so many times before on the TV show across all four seasons.
Our next stop was the nearby town of Chipping Norton. In the show, Chipping Norton was vilified for being anti-Clarkson’s farm because of the traffic and congestion it created as a victim of its own success.
We walked the main road and a tiny farmer’s market. From a book shop, we snatched a book written by Jeremy Clarkson’s son based on Season 1 of the farming show. The shopkeeper was an older gentleman with white hair, and he mentioned that Clarkson does bring a lot of customers to the town in the summer, but it makes it really hard for folks to get home, especially on the weekends.
Tractor chromed in Season 4 of Clarkson’s Farm
Our final stop was at Farmer’s Dog, about a 30-minute drive away in a neighboring town. Farmer’s Dog is Clarkson’s latest venture in Season 4 of the show, operating for almost 2 years.
This was a busy restaurant, built with a Grand Tour tent from Clarkson’s other show, with tons of Jeremy Clarkson memorabilia to celebrate British farming.
That evening, Ms. Q and I got back to LHR and rode the underground to see her ballet show.
We stayed in East London and saw a huge number of Arab folks on a crowded road.
The show (from Ms. Q’s account) is about a rich girl who wanted to marry a farmer boy. Many folks were dressed brilliantly for the Royal Ballet and Opera show.
Day 3: Gallery, Museum and Westminster
We spent the full day visiting the National Gallery and British Museum.
Me taking a picture of Ms. Q taking a picture of her replica of Van Gogh in front of a Van Gogh
The National Gallery featured quite a few wonderful paintings from Claude Monet, Van Gogh and Botticelli. We listened to the audio guide and spent a lovely morning there.
We spent the afternoon at the British Museum. We marvelled at how many Chinese antiquities were taken to the British Museum, as well as other artifacts like the Easter Island statue, the Egyptian antiquities, and parts of the Parthenon from Greece.
After the museum closed, we visited Westminster to see Big Ben, as well as Parliament. We sat in on half an hour of service at the church (thinking that we could tour the church)…
We also visited Tower Bridge, before heading back to Marylebone, a village-like neighborhood, where we spent the night.
Day 4: Cambridge Punting
We took the underground to King’s Cross and had our Harry Potter moment in front of Platform 9¾.
The train to Cambridge was only around 45 minutes, and we arrived at the famous university town.
University of Cambridge has 31 colleges, and we visited quite a few like Downing, Trinity, King’s, Queen’s, St John’s and more. Unfortunately, during finals week, we could only glance from afar.
Our highlight was punting along the River Cam. Our driver was a student at the other university in Cambridge and told us stories dating back to the founding of Cambridge in the 1200s.
King’s College
Stories of Stephen Hawking, Charles Darwin and Alan Turing were told, as we meandered through the canals, watching students watch us go by.
Day 5: Edinburgh Harry Potter
Pronounced Edin-bura, not ber-g, because of Scottish pronunciations.
Taking the long train from Cambridge to Stevenage, then to Edinburgh, our anticipation grew as we saw the ocean and the farms from our train window.
Livingstone, the African explorer, is in the backdrop; he was also Scottish.
We stepped out of Edinburgh station and were immediately captivated by the bagpipes and dramatic scenery.
The Royal Mile is a Scottish mile (1.84 km) between Edinburgh Castle and Holyrood Palace.
Ms. Q and I attended the walking tour and listened to tales of the Scottish Enlightenment of the 1700s. We learned about famous Scots who contributed many ideas:
- David Hume on philosophy
- Adam Smith on economics
- John Knox, the really Protestant preacher
Our walking tour guide had a wonderfully Scottish accent that sounded cheerful. He told us about the Scottish spirit of freedom—for almost a thousand years, Scotland tried to be independent from England.
We walked through Makar’s Court. (Makar means artists in Scottish). We walked through the old town, which is a giant castle pretending to be a city.
The Royal Mile and castle are situated above a giant extinct volcanic rock, with the highlands and ocean surrounding it.
The Elephant room where JK Rowling worked on Harry Potter. The store today mostly trades on that fame and sells Harry Potter Scottish butter beers and merch.
We then visited the Black Friars cemetery, which contained graves of supposedly hundreds of thousands of people.
Some names here like Tom Riddle and the Potters would become featured by Rowling in the Harry Potter series
We also heard the story of Bobby the dog, who guarded his deceased owner’s grave for 14 years.
That evening, Ms. Q and I tried some traditional Scottish food. Haggis is a traditional dish of mixed spices wrapped in sheep stomach, and Cullen Skink is a clam chowder with fish.
After dinner, Ms. Q and I went to Carlton Hill, where we saw a gorgeous sunset.
Right: Scottish monument
Day 6: Edinburgh Dramatic Scenery
Ms. Q and I had a late start to the day, and had a Black Sheep Coffee, a popular Scottish chain as of 2026.
Our first stop was to visit the Castle, and we walked down the Royal Mile.
This entertainer reminded me of the Braveheart movie with the traditional Scottish face paint
We briefly visited the National Museum of Scotland and bought some cute sheep plushies.
At the end of the Royal Mile, we visited Holyrood Palace. It has been the home of many kings and queens.
Ms. Q and I learned about the royals who had lived here, including Mary, Queen of Scots, and Charles I, as well as all the annual royal events that occur here every year.
The Duke of Edinburgh hosts the Duke of Edinburgh award that I participated in many years ago.
Irn Bru, pronounced Iron Brew, is a very popular Scottish soda
The garden at Holyrood Palace was immaculate, and Arthur’s Seat, a famous hike on a volcanic rock, brightened the background.
Ms. Q and I spent the evening visiting Dean’s Village, a popular tourist place that still preserved the small-village feel.
We visited the University of Edinburgh that evening and ate some university student Chinese Tianjin food.
Day 7: Glasgow Highland Cows
Ms. Q and I took the train from Edinburgh to Glasgow. Our first stop for the day was at Pollok Country Park, to see highland coos, as they are affectionately called.
After a short walk, we arrived at the feet of these gentle creatures.
Right: the tiny babies were probably born a few months earlier, as we were visiting at the end of May
These cows over the centuries have adapted to the Scottish (terribly rainy) weather, and developed long fur with double coats.
We witnessed friendship, excretion (big wet poops), happiness and the joys of spring season that afternoon.
After a brief visit to the museum at Pollok Country Park, we visited the University of Glasgow next.
University of Glasgow has quite a long history (as with most British universities), with a campus that mixes centuries-old cathedrals next to 15-story-high scientific buildings.
After having some fish and chips, Ms. Q and I made our way back into central Glasgow. The city of Glasgow is a bit underwhelming from a tourist perspective when compared with Edinburgh.
Day 8: Back to London
Ms. Q and I had slight delays at Glasgow Central on the train back to London, but we were ready to explore London again in the late afternoon.
We strolled through Hyde Park, visited Harrod’s, the popular department store, and got ourselves a JellyCat, a popular plushie maker based in London, as well as a Paddington Bear.
We had dinner at Gordon Ramsay’s Street Burger near Trafalgar Square. Being avid watchers of Gordon Ramsay, I had the Next Level Burger (an homage to the show Next Level Chef).
We watched the play called Oh Mary, which was a take on Lincoln’s wife and Lincoln around his assassination and his wife’s dreams of being a cabaret performer.
As we ended the day to get water and soda, a convenience store owner refused to take my £10 Scottish note and asked if I had an English £10 note instead. It turns out that three Scottish banks make their own design of the notes, which are widely used in Scotland, but not always accepted in England.
Day 9: Champions League finals, Notting Hill, dinner with Ms. Q’s friend
Ms. Q and I woke up to visit Notting Hill. The Portobello Market was full of people. We took pictures in front of the colorful houses and of the Julia Roberts movie posters.
We then visited Paddington Station, and paid homage to the bear statue from the movie.
We briefly visited the Victoria and Albert Museum to check out the jewelry and the crown.
That evening, we went to Chinatown to have dinner with Ms. Q’s friend (and former neighbor from Beijing).
During the dinner, Ms. Q and her friend caught up on her journey studying and working in the UK.
This was the Champions League final for the season, between Arsenal (London) and Saint-Germain (Paris). It was tied and intense for much of the game. (All the pubs showing the final were booked full, and we couldn’t get into one, so we had to go to a Japanese restaurant instead.)
Unfortunately, Arsenal lost 3-4 in extra time. Ms. Q and I expected some kind of reaction in downtown London, but did not see too much.
That evening, Ms. Q and I watched a musical called Cabaret at the London Playhouse Theater (KitKat club). The musical was about Berlin in the early 1930s, where an American writer got caught up with a British girl while the N_z_ party rose in the background.
It was a great musical, and Ms. Q was happy to have seen a ballet, a play, and a musical during our wonderful week and a half in the United Kingdom.
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