After a three day rest up at Jim’s we got back on the rail and went up to York for a brief walk about and then made our way to Newcastle where we stayed at the Albatross hostel.   NC was quite nice, lots of bridges over the Tyne.  We continued with our debauchery by buying 18 Grolsch from the store, we could not find any NC brown ale.  Then we got lp’ed in the basement of the hostel where boozing was restricted to.  There was free toast and margarine that we took advantage of in the shared kitchen.  After that we went out for a pint at Rafferty’s, a gem of a pub!  And overflowing with brew we stumbled back to our mixed dorm room in the hostel and passed right out until about 0230 when the rowdy’s partying woke us up.  It was Saturday night after all.  Sunday morning when we got up and the streets were pretty well deserted so we strolled about a bit and then made our way to Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland.  We checked in at the Belford hostel, an old converted church.  By then more beer was required so we got a 10 pack of Stella tall boys, 440 mL, and drank them in the park underneath Edinburgh castle.  There was an ad for a guided pub crawl in the hostel that we hopped right on and went out on the town with our good sport of a guide Dougie, pronounced “Doogie”.  And that is when it got messy.  There was only 8 of us plus Dougie, Sean and myself, two guys from Mumbai who told me a lot about India, two guys from San Diego, and two girls from Chicago.  We visited a few different pubs and then a karaoke bar, which by that time we were quite slammered!  First we all got up and tried “Summer of ’69” for a warm up, it was “rubbish” as the dj said.  Then we sang “I Want It That Way”, pure hilarity.  We ended at a club and danced a bit, but soon got bored and tottled off and got a little lost before making the seemingly long walk back to hostel and passed out cold.  Up early and rather hung over we got packed up and got back on the train and travelled along the beautiful Scottish coastline to Inverness where we are staying for one night at the Highlander hostel.  There can be only one!