Stu's great-grandfather, John D. Wilson, is the most-recent documented arrival in North America among his ancestors. He departed Glasgow in 1864 around his 12th birthday. James Duckworth, Janet's third great-grandfather, arrived in New York from Lancashire, via Liverpool, in 1827 at age 21. We extended our stay in Britain at the end of our Road Sch...

The Sinclair family are the hereditary Earls of Caithness, the northernmost mainland Scottish shire. Caithness is just opposite Orkney, and also boasts a significant Viking or Norse influence. We were pleased to stop at the port of Scrabster here because the county is also the traditional home of Clan Gunn, of which Stu's Wilson family are a sept.&...

We had Maeshowe all to ourselves. Boarding the shuttle with seating for 23–the maximum number of visitors allowed at one time in the neolithic chambered tomb–we found 23 vacant seats. It seems a tour bus failed to deliver its passengers, so we ended up with a private tour of a 4,800-year-old World Heritage Site!  Nearly three days earlier our ...