Wednesday 10th to Sunday 14th December 2025
We decided to have a few days away on a city break, leaving Fufu, our motorhome, behind. Sometimes it is nice to not have to do the chores associated with a home on wheels. Instead, we travelled by train and stayed in the Holiday Inn Express which was very handy for Dundee city centre.
Wednesday 10th December:
The train journey is a fairly long one and so we arrived in Dundee, mid afternoon. At this time of year, this meant that we only had about an hour of daylight left, so after checking-in at the hotel, we had a wander around the city centre as it went dark.
There was a Christmas Fair in the City Square:
Thursday 11th December:
Dundee is a compact city, with a prosperous history, which means there are many old and impressive buildings.
There are also some that are new and quite avant-garde, as well as many works of art which reflect the culture and history of the city.
The V&A Dundee:
The V&A is an impressive building, both inside and out:
We enjoyed the exhibition of embroidered dresses from Palestine very much. The work is of an amazing quality with intricate detail. Some examples are the result of the efforts of women of several generations, each adding to the embellishment over time.
A particularly moving exhibit, pictured below, was explained as follows:
“What do people take with them when they are forced to leave home? This installation is based on conversations the artist had with refugees from Syria, resettled in Huntly, Aberdeenshire, whom she met during an artist residency at Deveron Projects.
Many of the women Haidar worked with described taking only a hastily-packed plastic bag when they fled, to avoid drawing attention to their leaving.
Period pads and falafel makers, needle and thread, heart medication and a beloved rakweh (coffee pot)
– even the tray of stuffed vine leaves one woman had spent all day making – have been embroidered on the surface of similar bags. These mixtures of practical and sentimental items attest to the human reality of displacement in Syria, Palestine and beyond; the experience of leaving home with only a few physical ties to a former life.”
HMS Unicorn:
We also walked to the east along the waterfront to the Victoria Dock and City Quay, where HMS Unicorn and the North Carr lightship are berthed. The Royal Navy frigate, HMS Unicorn looks like it is in a poor condition. There are no masts and the hull has been roofed-over, presumably to offer some protection, but although there seem to be plans in place for conservation, there is obviously much work to do. The hull on the far-side from the quay seems to be in particularly poor condition.
The 46 gun frigate HMS Unicorn was launched in 1824, over 200 years ago in Chatham Dockyard. It arrived in Dundee over 150 years ago in 1873 where it has been used as a training ship for the Royal Navy Reserves until the 1960s. It is now in the care of the Unicorn Preservation Society, a charity set up to protect and preserve it.
St Paul’s Cathedral:
We briefly paid a visit to St Paul’s Cathedral in the city centre. Construction on the church commenced in 1853 and it was opened for worship just 2 years later, in 1855.
Friday 12th December:
We spent much of Friday along the waterfront, visiting the Discovery ship and exhibition, then walking along to the Tay railway bridge.
RRS Discovery:
Discovery Point Museum is very interesting. It gives a real insight into the lives of the early Antarctic explorers and the conditions they endured.
The museum also includes a tour of the RRS Discovery which was launched in 1901 and was the last traditionally build three masted sailing ship to be built in the UK. She was built in Dundee to a very high specification to withstand being ice-bound. This ship enabled Robert Falcon Scott and Earnest Shackleton to complete their first, and highly successful Antarctic expedition (known as The Discovery Expedition) from 1901-04.
Onboard the ship, it is quite claustrophobic:
A sign in the wardroom states:
“This was one of the chilliest area of the ship. When the engines were shut down during the winter, the boilers in the space next door became very cold and ice would form in the cabins overnight. When the kitchen ovens were started in the morning, the ice would melt, causing condensation to drip down the walls.
The Officers would also hang their damp clothing in the wardroom to dry, resulting in an unappetising aroma of damp wool and animal fur. Wilson would often defrost animals in front of the wardroom stove, which gave out its own unappealing smell.”
The Tay Railway Bridge:
The Tay railway bridge is one of two very impressive rail crossings in eastern Scotland, the other being the Forth Bridge.
It is the second bridge across the Tay, the first one fell into the river in 1879 during a violent storm as a passenger train was crossing. There were around 75 lives lost as a result of failing to take into account the wind-loading on the bridge.
Saturday 13th December:
We spent much of the day visiting the McManus Museum and Art Gallery, then did some shopping. The McManus is a huge building which is also pictured near the top of this blog post.
It is an interesting visit which covers the geological, geographical and social history of the area. One exhibit is a whale skeleton which is suspended above the display cases on one of the galleries.
Sunday 14th December:
With the news that a large number of rail cancellations had occurred for our journey home on the west coast mainline, we left the hotel early and spent most of the day on various east coast lines. We changed at York, where we encountered the Flying Scotsman steam engine which was delayed at the station:
It was a very long day’s journey, but we made it home in time for Strictly.
That is all for now. TTFN and See-u-Later.
"See-u-Later" 
Nice photos. We spent a weekend in that area last year and we really enjoyed it. The weather wasn’t great unfortunately and we had our dog so we couldn’t visit museums.
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