Travelling again – 3. A long drive further north

Tags

Bridge of Cally, Forth Rail Bridge, Forth Road Bridge, Glen Shee, Grant Arms Hotel, Grantown-on-Spey, Langholm, Queensferry Bridge, Rock and Roll Politics, Steve Richards, Visit Scotland

The idea was that I would join Tom and Ally for a relaxed coffee before setting off for Grantown-on-Spey, Highland, but, especially since I had decided not to take the quickest route, I realised that I would only have time before my departure for a quick visit to their house, in order to have a good tour of Ally’s wonderful garden, and that earlier than planned.

Tom’s daily blog always includes pictures of the wonderful results of his wife’s efforts, so here are just a few impressions I took away on that day.

I set off from their house in Langholm at about 10.00 and arrived at the Grant Arms around 5.00. My aim was to minimise mileage, which as I looked at the map meant not taking the M74 but crossing the Southern Uplands pretty well due northwards, skirting round Edinburgh rather than Glasgow, then not taking the A9 round the Cairngorms westwards, but going almost straight through them south to north on the A93. So I programmed my satnav to do just that. When I told Tom that I was going (I see now, unnecessarily) via a place called Ettrick, he warned me that that meant lots of potholes. What I hadn’t realised is that the first part would mean several miles of single carriageway over fabulously beautiful moors.

It was a lovely drive, and I met scarcely a soul. Tom was right about the potholes, but fortunately nearly all of them had been filled in!

As I lost altitude, the mist cleared. At 11.14 a partial eclipse of the sun was at its peak, but honestly I wouldn’t have known.

And in due course, I could see that I would have to join a major road. View ahead not too bad though.

Once on such a road, it was much more difficult to stop to take photos, which was perhaps as well, or else I would have made slow progress.

It was tedious going round the various motorways to the west of Edinburgh. At one point I found myself alarmingly on one signposted for Glasgow, but trusty satnav knew wat it was doing, and to my enormous pleasure I found myself swept over the beautiful Queensferry Bridge, with the famous Forth Road and Rail Bridges to my right. The traffic went slowly enough for me to glance over to them from time to time. I would have loved to have taken pictures of and from the new bridge, but it was absolutely impossible to stop, for no doubt very good safety reasons. But here is a beautiful picture of all three, taken from the north side, courtesy of Visit Scotland.

Around lunchtime I stopped at the Kinross Services, then set off north again. I really had to stop myself from stopping too often. I had had neither talk nor musical distraction up to then, as I had just wanted to enjoy the scenery, but for the next 50 minutes or so, I did plug my favourite podcast into my ears, Steve Richards‘s latest ‘Rock and Roll Politics‘. That took me through Perth, and somewhat beyond, and I continued onwards undistracted through places which until then had been just names to me: Blairgowrie, Bridge of Cally, Spittal of Glenshee (not that I had ever heard of these last two before), Braemar, and eventually to Grantown-on-Spey.

The Bridge is the flat road curving right. It’s over the River Ardle.

The next three photos are of beautiful Glen Shee.

The road to myself, as it was most of the way!

Through the Grampians

I could not get a better view of this very steep bridge, as the wire fence was in the way. Protecting me from these Greylag geese!

These last three were all taken from the same spot, just a few miles from Grantown.

And after a good dinner in the restaurant, I went to a talk on the wildlife of Guatemala by the hotel’s celebrity speaker, about whom more next time.

Travelling again – 1. Friends

Tags

blue tit, Eskdale Hotel, goosander, grey heron, grey wagtail, Langholm, Langholm Castle, Langholm Church, Noble fir, oystercatcher, Tebay, Tootlepedal

It was so wonderful to be travelling again, and so weird to be mixing ‘naturally’ (almost) with people again. I could scarcely believe my holiday was happening as I set off, having not stayed away overnight since early March 2020, and now I’m back I can scarcely believe it has indeed happened. It is lovely to relive it through my photos, and here beginneth the recital of 13 days’ travel, roughly up the left-hand side of England, the right-hand side of Scotland, and vice versa on the way back. The first couple of days were comprised of close-packed visits to friends.

First stop from Somerset, on Monday 7th June, was Stafford, in time for lunch with Ellie, a former probation service colleague, and her two cats. Here she is with Skimble, who passes most of his time on the ironing board.

(I should have used flash (1)!)

The following morning, I left quite early, to have coffee with Stan, with whom I used to make music when I lived in Staffordshire.

I was delighted to learn that his son, for a long time himself a professional musician in the Netherlands, was shortly getting married. This in fact happened three days ago, while I was on the road, nearly home, and I was very happy yesterday to watch a video of the music- (and musician-) packed event, which took place in the Anglican church in The Hague. The couple will shortly be coming to the UK for a church blessing here.

I had had the mad idea of meeting up with Peter, to have lunch with him in the Manchester area. Thank goodness he was not going to be free. Time and traffic constraints would have meant that I would have to have cancelled at no notice my diversion eastwards to visit 97-year-old Brian in Mytholmroyd, near Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire.

I stopped for a bite of lunch by my car high on the moors, about 15 minutes’ away from Brian’s, on the Halifax road. This photo does no justice to the beauty of the area, but I could not park where I would have liked to.

I had known Brian and his family when we both lived in Reading, Berkshire, in the 1970s. They had, as it were, adopted me when I moved into Quaker circles there. I used to make music with their daughter, Hazel, until she moved on marriage to Hebden Bridge, many years before her parents followed her. Sadly Hazel had been called away on urgent family business just before my arrival, but her husband, Jim, was on hand to welcome me, and took this photo, possibly the first of Brian and me together since we had a narrowboat holiday together, with his late wife and another friend, in the 1980s.

There followed a long drive all the way to Langholm in Dumfriesshire. I stopped briefly at the Tebay Service area,

and was pleased to find that the rather heavy traffic I had encountered thitherto thinned considerably from then on.

I checked into to the Eskdale Hotel for two nights at around 6 pm.

Tom and Ally, brother and sister-in-law of my London friend, Mary, joined me for dinner there.

(I should have used flash (2)! I promise you they are not really purple.)

I spent the next day with them. Tom writes a blog every day(!) and I asked first if we could just have a wander around the town so that I would be able to envisage the various places he mentions in it. As ever I snapped away, and here are some of the photos I took.

Their (Church of Scotland = Presbyterian) church

Its great – especially from a musician’s point of view – interior. Covid-necessary cleaning going on.

They have local birds to die for:

Oystercatcher

Grey wagtail

Goosander

I think this is ‘just’ a Lady’s smock/cuckoo flower, but if Mr Tootlepedal disagrees, perhaps he would say so in the comments. (I’m not sure why I took it.)

Sawmill Bridge

All that remains of Langholm Castle

Noble fir

I was pleased to catch this blue tit emerging from its nest in the tree trunk (not of the fir), which it did with great frequency, having bought food to its chicks.

This heron may or not be Tom’s Mr Grumpy, who appears regularly in his blog posts.

Elements of both primary and senior schools, not to mention the seniors looking on.

And a sneaky peak at Tom and Ally’s garden, of which more anon.

Dumfriesshire Part 1, a ‘Grand Tour’

Tags

Douglas Hotel Langholm, Dumfriesshire, Eskdalemuir, Grey Mare's Tail, hen harrier, Hermitage, Langholm, Loch of the Lowes, Lockerbie, MacDiarmid, Moffat, The Hub, Tootlepedal, Townhead Hotel

Lockerbie’s Townhead Hotel, where I was to stay for four nights, turned out to be another good one.  After breakfast the next morning, Wednesday 22nd July, I was picked up by Tom and his wife.  Tom is a brother of my very long-standing London friend Mary.  They very kindly looked after me for the whole day, and took me round to see just some of the wonders of their part of the world, near Borders country.  (I had thought to offer to do the driving in my hire car, but I was very happy in the event to escape the BWB for a day.)

We went first to the town of Moffat,

where I was able to buy a new umbrella to replace the one I’d left on a Glasgow bus, and where I singularly failed to notice the Moffat Ram monument.  You can see that on Tom’s (Tootlepedal’s) own blog.  Over a very welcome coffee (coffee is always welcome) we talked about blogging for a long while.  Not for the only time in the day. Poor Mrs Tootlepedal.

We drove north, to a once sinister place called the Devil’s Beef Tub, where raided cattle used to be hidden at the time of the Border Rievers. The hollow was pretty impressive, even in today’s more peaceful times.

I saw several of these old sheep pens in Dumfriesshire

Then on to a waterfall called the Grey Mare’s Tail.  Mrs Tootlepedal and I took a short walk to get nearer to it while Tom pottered below taking lots of pictures (though these are mine).

So did I at the slightly elevated position we were in, and I practised focusing with my bridge camera on further things when the auto focus wants to concentrate on the nearer object.

It was never really warm during the day, but we were pretty lucky with the weather. Not though just as we got to our next stop, the Loch of the Lowes.

So we didn’t even try to stop at the adjacent St Mary’s Loch.  For lunch we drove on to a community café in Eskdalemuir, the Hub, about which I had read much in Tom’s blog, and where I was able to admire examples of his camera club’s work on the walls.

After lunch the sky started brightening.

A pause to draw breath and admire the garden at their home in Langholm followed.  Most days there are some beautiful photos of Mrs Tootlepedal’s amazing horticultural achievements on Tom’s blog.

We didn’t linger for long, but were off again after a cup of tea, this time  to see – it was too late to go in – the outside of Hermitage Castle, on the Riever Trail.

I just can’t resist a river under a bridge

To return to Langholm we crossed a moor, where we stopped for a while, got our binoculars out, and watched a hen harrier quartering for prey. No successful photos, regrettably. The next and last stop of the afternoon was at the MacDiarmid Memorial

where I took advantage of the afternoon sun to take a couple more pictures of the beautiful Dumfriesshire countryside.

I can’t resist a nice gate either

A meal at the Douglas Hotel in Langholm rounded off a really enjoyable day with my friend’s brother and his wife.