We’re heading to the Scottish borders, to Dumfries and Galloway. That is the southwestern corner of Scotland. Our first campsite in Sorbie is over five hours’ drive away so we decided to break the journey at Inver Mill campsite near Dunkeld. We’ve stayed there before. On the way down we stopped at the House of Bruar for lunch as we often do when driving by. We got up early the next morning and were on the road at 8:30. We had a pit stop at a service station and had a couple sandwiches and coffee in Bruno. There’s a castle on our way down and we wanted to see the gardens. Drumlandrig Castle is really more like a palace than a castle. It has 120 rooms, 17 turrets and four towers. A fine example of 17th century architecture in Scotland. Someone’s home. The castle wasn’t open for us to visit it. The gardens are Victorian, very formal. We prefer them less formal. There were two routes we could take to our campsite. Bill decided to take the shortcut. Mistake. Arduous, took a lot longer to drive than the longer road. Having said that the scenery was pretty through rain and mist. Arriving at the campsite in Sorbie we soon realized there was no wifi. Here for a week, we’ll be roaming and using each other’s hotspots but even so reception was flaky. 1 July. First day out, we did the Sorbie sightseeing tour. Sorbie village has a population of about 250. There is an Italian restaurant (good reviews but they were having problems with their pizza oven when we called for a take-away), a food shop that no longer operates, and the Sorbie Tower. Sorbie Tower dates back to the 16th century and is owned by the Clan Hannay. They are gradually restoring it. We then drove to Isle of Whithorn which isn’t actually an island at all, any more. It used to be, at high tide. It looks like it’s alive only in the summer. Most houses are probably second homes, certainly by the waterside, by the looks of it. The only local services we spotted was a pub at the waterfront and a village hall with a café. Population around 800 perhaps. We were wondering where people do their food shopping, thinking with our stomachs as we were. For lunch we had a sourdough bacon and egg butty and coffee from the pub. Sitting outside, hoping the seagulls wouldn’t spot us. There was an interesting exhibition in the local church about the village’s history. Smuggling, fishing, trade, Highland clearances, emigration. "Go now then boys, / To the country without want / Turn your back on the land / Where the rent went too high / For the country of milk / For the country of honey / For the country where you'll buy / All the land that you need / In the country without want / Without blight, without limit / Where you will pick more / Than will last the days of your life" Iain MacCodrum - Song to the Emigrants ca 1771. Then we headed to Port William, a small fishing village, population about 500. We had a cup of tea at the seafront. The wind was getting harder. It was actually quite cold but that’s what you can expect next to the Atlantic. "What is this life if, full of care, We have no time to stand and stare?" WH Davies The statue is by Andrew Brown, 1999. Or 2005, I found two dates. 2 July. Garlieston is a short drive from Sorbie. We were expecting to have a beach walk. There was a beach, the tide was going out but it was very wet. We had lunch in Bruno and snoozed off. I was woken by two horses quietly chatting. Garlieston seemed more awake than the other villages we had visited. Population around 350. Small places. Poor parking though. A scattered shower. No food store. In search of a beach we drove towards Glenluce, past Port William. We stopped at Luce Bay. The beaches here are very different to the beaches in the Highlands. These tend to be very stony whereas in the Highlands they are sandy. A sandy beach, now that’s what I call a beach. We could see the Isle of Man in the horizon, just. A heavy rain passed over us. On the way back we stopped at the Port William Spar shop to get some red wine to enjoy with our steaks. I have never seen as many cows as I’ve seen here. Big dairy and beef area. 3 July. Wigtown is the National Book Town of Scotland. There are a dozen or so bookshops or book related shops and an annual book festival. There is a co-op and some anti-ques (private joke). That’s more or less it. We both have read Shaun Bythell’s The Diary of a Bookseller and wanted to see his bookstore, The Book Shop. In the book the shop seemed more spacious. We bought a book on French regional cooking. We then checked out the other shops and bought a picture, a print with Penguin book spines. There is an Airbnb where you stay in a flat and run a bookshop for a week. Now that’s a clever business idea. People pay you to run your bookshops for you. We drove around and found Wigtown harbour, a nice, quiet place to stop on the river. There were no boats around so we don’t know how much it is being used as a harbour. The water level in the river went down very quickly when the tide was going out. There were cows on the opposite bank. First just a few. Then a whole herd came from further away, running. They all ran to one place as if they knew they had to be there at a certain time. Mooing. Come on girls, got to get your steps in! Maybe. Then they all came to the river bank as if expecting something from the other side. Gradually they started to return as a herd, the calves running together, only to return to the river bank, this time for a snooze. We drove back to our campsite by the local Co-op. Chocolate. 4 July. We headed for the Isle of Whithorn again, driving through Whithorn, population ca 800. We were expecting it to be more lively than on Sunday when we first drove through but no. Just as quiet. We noticed a gallery was open. Things made out of glass with colourful designs, stained glass effect. We bought four little mirrors with bevelled edges to hang on our panelled doors. I asked the gallery owner where they do their shopping. Either in Newton Stewart, 17 miles, Sainsbury’s and Aldi, or Stranraer, 32 miles, Morrisons and Lidl. I’d hate to come home and notice I’d forgotten the butter. Incidentally, Newton Stewart has a lovely High Street. At the Isle of Whithorn we parked at the same car park as before and walked around. We could see the mountains of the Lake District. Through our stay we’ve been admiring the beautiful dry stone walls we see everywhere. We decided to drive to Garlieston and have lunch by the sea. Galloway House Gardens was on our way so we though we'd to go there. On our way we passed something quite magnificent “sitting” in a field of barley. It looked like a small woodland enclosed in an astonishing circle of a stone wall. I thought it might be a church and so it was. Cruggleton Church. It looked kind of eerie. The origins of the church date back to the 1100’s. Parking was very awkward and we would have had to walk through someone’s crop. That was something neither of us wanted to do. Yes, you can see a path through the barley, but we didin't want to do it. So, on to the Galloway House Gardens. The house itself is privately owned, the gardens are run by a charity. The walled garden was closed for repairs, Bill was getting hungry so we ended up skipping the gardens. We met an old lady who remembers visiting the gardens as a little girl during the war with her two aunts. They were on the beach when they saw a man walking towards the shore from the sea. He was dressed in a uniform, he was a German pilot whose plane had come down. He held his hands up and said “I come in peace”. The lady later worked in the big house as assistant housekeeper. Galloway House was built in 1740 and later added on. Large estates always have stone walls marking their boundaries. The walls of this estate were built by Napoleonic prisoners of war. Later it became a hospitals for recuperating servicemen. Then it was sold to Glasgow Corporation to enable children from the city to learn in a rural environment. But now, as I said, it is privately owned. 5 July. We drove to Newton Stewart to get another bottle of gas for our barbecue. Just in case. We then drove to Glenwahn Gardens and Arboretum. The place is delightful, it looks like it’s gone a bit wild but in a controlled sort of way. There are plenty of benches for sit-downs to add to the enjoyment. We had a soup and sandwich combo for lunch in the garden's tea room and went back into the garden for another stroll. Afterwards we spent the rest of the afternoon on the Luce Bay. We both had a snooze and then I went for a walk on the long beach. 6 July. We went back to Wigtown. We had missed a few bookshops. Walking into Well-Read Book we found the best bookshop. Both old and new books; we came out with four books. We looked into a charity shop and bought a vase and a double photo frame. We also looked into a furniture and home decor shop and bought a little gift for Fiona, our friendly neighbour who waters our flowers while we're away. I felt my heart flutter when I saw a little dog figurine, the same mother had. My brother has it now. I just had to have it. The man asked £12 for it, Bill talked it down to £10. It is a Rosenthal Dachshund puppy. The man had no idea what he was selling. Online they sell for up to £340. We drove to the harbour. Just before the car park there was a sign warning the area would possibly flood during high tide. The sign wasn’t there before. Indeed, the in-coming tide came quite high and rather quickly as well. We had lunch and then just sat back to read. For dinner we had the burgers we bought in Newton Stewart yesterday from a proper High Street butcher. Should have bought more. It was raining so we rolled out the awning so we could barbecue them outside. We don’t like splattering fat inside. 7 July On to our next destination, Port Logan and the New England Bay campsite. Bill wanted tomatoes so we drove to Stranraer and got some apples, bananas and strawberries as well. We were early for the campsite so we drove to Portpatrick which is on the way. Population about 670. The village dates back about 700 years and used to be quite lively. Now it’s a holiday village having retained its old charm. We didn’t stay long. We made toasties for lunch and as we left we noticed a sign saying no cooking. Our campsite is next to the sea. The beach, a long one, is covered in round stones. Awkward to walk on, good exercise in balance. There is no wifi. They used to have. They are updating their system which is fine but why not have the old system running until the new one is ready? Not that we can’t live without internet but we do like to catch up on news and check out places to visit and their opening times. On the road leaving the site there were signs about this and that café with free internet but no indication even of whether to turn left our right to get there. 8 July. Port Logan is a small village created by the laird of Logan in 1818. There is a small bell tower/lighthouse designed by Thomas Telford and the beach is the first really proper sandy beach we’ve seen on this trip. – Hold on, another website says the origins date back to 1682. It was the laird who developed the harbour. Eventually, Portpatrick took over. There has been some kind of settlement in this area since the Neolithic times. Dinner: fresh salad, steaks, Pinot Noir, strawberries. 9 July. Bill’s birthday. We went to Logan Botanic Gardens. It is a beautiful place with plants from Australia, New Zealand, South and Central America and Southern Africa. Thanks to the Gulf Stream that’s possible. The rarest plant is the Wollemi Pine which was discovered in the Wollemi National Park in Australia. The discovery is the botanical equivalent of finding a small dinosaur alive and well. Previously, it was known only through fossil records dating back 200 million years. The total number of this plant growing in the wild is just around 100. This specimen is the first ever to grow outside in Scotland. The conditions are ideal. It grows about 60 cm each year. We had lunch in the Potting Shed Bistro: potato soup, large salad, cherry pie with ice cream and coffee. Went out to finish seeing the rest of the garden and got caught in the rain. Had a snooze in Bruno until the rain stopped and then went back. 10 July. On our way to our final destination, Solway View Holidays campsite near Kircudbright, we did food shopping in Newton Stewart. In the afternoon it started raining. Lashing, horizontal rain, strong winds. Kirkcudbright is not pronounced Kirk-cud-bright. It is pronounced kuh-koo-bree. Such a waste of perfectly good letters. 11 July. We drove into Kircudbright (pop ca 3400). The town is delightful! There are people walking on the streets looking like they live there. There are shops. There are galleries. There are food stores, there is a deli, there is an art supply store, a book store and one store had a sign saying there is yarn at the back. To name a few. It is awake! in contrast to the smaller villages we visited. The Art Galleries had an exhibition of Joan Eardley’s art. She was a Scottish artist (1921 – 63) known for her paintings of street children in Glasgow and the north-east coast of Scotland. I find the paintings of the children endearing. We bought a book about her and her art. We also bought a woodcut by a local artist. We tried to visit the house of E.A. Hornel, a Scottish artist (1864 – 1933) but it was closed. The garden was open from a side gate so we got to see that. Beautiful. 12 July. Threave House and Gardens. At a round-about I saw a sign pointing to Threave Castle and we drove down that road. A nature reserve. No garden. I mixed up two big buildings, a castle and a house. We checked Google maps and there is a Threave House and Gardens, on the other side of the big road we were driving on. The day was saved. The garden is the only Scottish garden training horticulturalists since 1960, a lovely garden. We spent the rest of the day reading next to Bruno. 13 July. On the day of our return home, Hornel’s house was open so we went there. Hornel bought the house in 1901 and lived there until his death. The garden we visited earlier is very mature and in places looks like the nature has fought back and won.
0 Comments
Your comment will be posted after it is approved.
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorI'm Piisa and I will be sharing with you my thoughts on this and that, maybe even on whatever. Archives
August 2023
Categories
All
|