Going on a weekend away is always fun, right? What about when it is all planned out for you and you don’t know where you’re going?
Caledonian Travel offers this unique experience where you pack your bag, unaware of your final location, get on the bus and go.
With a range of pick up points across Scotland, at each stop you are given another clue as to where your final destination is.
This leads into a fun guessing game and after a couple of hours the driver finally reveals where you are going to end up, so you can do a bit of research before your arrival to decide what you want to do and see.
This Mystery Tour is the whole package, you get your bus trip there and back, a three course dinner at your hotel, bed and breakfast, as well as having your daytime destinations chosen for you, all for an amazing price ranging between £69 and £89 depending on what time of year you go.
So, I decided I had to test it out for myself and see if the Mystery Tour was really as thrilling as it sounds.
Celebrating my Auntie’s 80th birthday, eight of us clambered onto the bus at 8am on a Saturday morning.
The bus had already stopped at Paisley so one clue was already revealed: “We are heading down South,” the driver told us.
Our second clue was given to us after our bags had been loaded and everyone found their seats: “We are not crossing the country, we are staying on the West Coast.”
Our third and final stop in Hamilton revealed the last clue: “We are staying in a different country from the one we are visiting.”
No more was revealed, as we were left to make sense of the clues whilst the driver drove us down South to our rest stop at Gretna Green.
“Staying in a different country from what we are visiting?” Was the question being flung around the bus, did this mean we were visiting a town in Scotland then staying at a hotel in England? Or did it mean we were staying in Wales and visiting England? We had to hold on for an hour and a half for all to be revealed.
Before departing the services at Gretna Green we were finally told the plan.
We were to travel down to Chester, where we would spend four hours. Then we would go on to our hotel in Mold in Wales and on the Sunday we would depart and visit Liverpool, where we would have three hours to explore before getting on the bus and heading back home to Scotland.
To have everything planned out for you was so easy and refreshing. Being an 80th birthday party all we had to do was pop open the Prosecco and wait for the driver to get us where we had to be.
I had never visited Chester before other than to go to Chester Zoo, this city was picturesque and bursting with history, it was crowded as the sun was shining and people sat out on the streets enjoying meals, coffees and drinks, it was such a lovely atmosphere.
We didn’t get to see much of Wales as we stayed in the hotel for the evening but having never been to Wales it was something to tick off the bucket list to say that I had visited and stayed.
I had visited Liverpool for weekends away twice previously but I still really enjoyed it this time round with different people and doing different things. With the limited time we had, we decided to do the open top bus tour around the city which lasted 50 minutes and was really informative.
So all-in-all, if you’re not fussy about where you go and you are happy with someone else being in charge of where you end up then this is the perfect trip and great value for money, highly recommended.
Featured Image Credit: Anya Diggines
