By Norma Meyer

The obsessed chap who has hunted the Loch Ness Monster full time for 23 years wasn't in his wonky trailer parked at the shore. So I set off Nessie-stalking on my own. Like a B-horror flick, it was a misty, brooding morning when I sailed the murky abyss of Scotland's infamous lake wait! Was that a wave's crest or a humongous serpent's hump?

"It depends how many whiskeys you have," smirked a crew member on my cruise boat.

Oh, what a jolly, awesome adventure I had in the United Kingdom. Stunningly scenic, Britain boasts it all a legendary beast, shimmering emerald hills, age-old architectural wonders. And what history! In Scotland, I encountered 17th-century bubonic plague victims (they were wax) in once-teeming underground streets. I ogled Princess Di's floating honeymoon suite. I felt possessed by the severed-head ghost of Mary, Queen of Scots in a bed-closet in grandiose Edinburgh Castle.

In England I devoured the chocolate-box villages of the countryside Cotswolds. Then I plunged myself into the elaborate temple-spa remains of Bath, where ancient Romans pampered themselves.

During a trip that started and ended in lovely London, I discovered, by George, that as the Brits would say, these four parts of Britain are brilliant.

The Cotswolds in England were great fun. My husband and I had to trek through two sheep pastures (zigzagging around bleating woolly critters) to get from our farm-style Broadway Manor Cottages to town and the pub. Returning at night, we opened the pens' gates by the beam of our solar flashlight, then laughingly (and gingerly) strolled back in darkness surrounded by stereophonic "baaaaaas."

Just like other idyllic Cotswold villages roughly 100 miles from London Broadway is a quintessential English, stone-walled fairy tale of gabled manors, thatch-roofed cottages and sloping meadows. You couldn't cast this: One morning on our walk, a shoulder-to-shoulder pack of 60 foxhound-hunting dogs came galloping down the narrow lane with three flat-cap-wearing, bicycle-riding trainers in their midst. Another time, ambling to the Crown and Trumpet for a half-pint, Jacket Wedges and Spotted Dick and Custard, we ran into Prince Harry.

"We call him that because he gets into mischief and can't keep trousers on," an elderly gent quipped about his golden retriever.

In nearby quaint Snowshill, bursting with dazzling lavender fields, we rambled through quirky Snowshill Manor, home of late eccentric collector Charles Wade, who stuffed it with 22,000 items, including fiercely posed Samurai suits of armor. Scores of other picture-book villages beckon with names like Bourton-on-the-Water (called "Venice of the Cotswolds" for its charming arched footbridges over a river) and Chipping Campden (known for its ongoing, 1612-founded Shin-Kicking World Championship).

We nearly drowned in the rare beauty of honey-hued Bath, England, designated a UNESCO World Heritage city with 5,000 listed architectural gems. I began by mentally vaporizing at the Thermae Bath Spa in the outdoor rooftop hot-springs swimming pool that was bubbling with Roman-worshipped waters. The view killed. Floating on a foam noodle, I gazed at the majestic Bath Abbey church towers and rich skyline of Georgian buildings.

Later, a block away at the Roman Baths, I padded across the same uneven stone that toga-clad hedonists trod more than 2,000 years ago. Once an ancient spa town, the impressive ruins and excavated artifacts from gravestones to bracelets fascinatingly detail Roman life. I liked the written curses recovered from the Sacred Springs one asked a goddess to avenge the stealing of two gloves: "Docimedis says the thief should lose his mind and his eyes."

Above the baths is the aristocratic 18th-century Pump Room, where you can enjoy lunch, live piano music and a glass of the hallowed warm spa water packed with 43 minerals. Onetime Bath resident Jane Austen and her novels' hoity-toity characters hung out here (there's also an Austen museum in Bath).

To get a glimpse of that Georgian Era when ladies wore lofty powdery wigs and huge hoop skirts tour the elegant, restored townhouse at No. 1 Royal Crescent. Who knew that beauty-crazed Georgian women wore false eyebrows made from mouse skin and applied with gum?

In Edinburgh, Scotland, kilted bagpipers and fire-juggling street performers mingled on the magnificent medieval Royal Mile, book-ended by the British monarch's baroque Holyrood Palace and 900-year-old fortress Edinburgh Castle, spectacularly perched on a craggy volcanic cliff. Savor it all, then experience how the wretched lived in the 1600s among rats.

For this, you go under the Royal Mile. Our costumed guide on the Real Mary King's Close tour led us to a dank subterranean maze that once bustled with shops, pubs and flats. In candlelit quarters, he re-enacted sanitation of olden days. "Gardy loo!" he yelled, flinging a bucket of fake feces out a window.

We lingered in a historically accurate dim room among the stricken Craig family, actual victims of the 1645 Black Death. It smelled funky, and the mannequins spooked, especially the sickly son getting his boils lanced.

Afterward we reveled in Edinburgh Castle, which houses both the glittering Scottish Crown Jewels and a soldiers' dog's cemetery. Conjuring up her messy life (murdered husband, murdered secretary, her own imprisonment and head chopped off), I dallied in the closet-sized room where Mary, Queen of Scots in 1566 gave birth to her heir.

Moving to modern monarchs, we trolled the berthed Royal Yacht Britannia, once the seafaring toy of Queen Elizabeth II. I couldn't get over Her Majesty's little twin bed with floral cover it looked like Baby Bear's (husband Prince Philip's adjoining stateroom had a twin, too). It was weirder seeing the double bed where Prince Charles and Diana bunked on their honeymoon with their beaming photo nearby.

I finished my day being hung from the gallows. The Edinburgh Dungeon attraction relives the city's grisly past of public executions with flair! After living through the (literally) hair-raising "drop ride," I knew how celebrated hanging survivor Maggie Dickinson felt in 1724.

A bucolic bonanza, the Scottish Highlands' kelly-green, sheep-sprinkled hills sparkled. We stopped at Scotland's most historic glen.

"It was here that the entire MacDonald clan was massacred by government forces in 1692," intoned Mav, our guide with Rabbie's minitours. In a doleful drizzle, we gaped at haunting Glencoe, "the Glen of Weeping," where redcoat soldiers turned on their villager hosts, murdering 38 men, women and children.

We also hiked to a forested hermit's cave from 1760, admired the United Kingdom's tallest mountain and heard Mav ponder if Nessie was a gigantic eel or a boat's rippling wake.

Since 1933, there have been 1,000 reported monster "sightings" in frigid 24-mile-long Loch Ness. It kind of makes you wiggy. As our Jacobite Cruise boat slowly passed Urquhart Castle's battle-ripped ruins, I'd have bet a lifetime supply of haggis that the long-necked leviathan would pop up. The cruise company took out a $1.5 million Loch Ness Monster insurance policy last year just in case Nessie attacked our boat.

WHEN YOU GO

For more information, check out www.visitbritain.com, www.visitscotland.com and www.visitengland.com.

The pace is slow in the village of Broadway in England's picturesque Cotswolds region. Photo courtesy of Norma Meyer.

. The Roman Bath complex in Bath, England, dates back 2,000 years. Photo courtesy of Norma Meyer.

A street-performing juggler entertains passersby on the Royal Mile, the most historic section of Edinburgh, Scotland. Photo courtesy of Norma Meyer.

Norma Meyer is a freelance travel writer. To read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.