Heading for England

Thursday, 1 July, 2010

Loch Lomond to Minnigaff

When we looked out the window this morning over Loch Lomond it was raining steadily, probably the most consistent rain since we arrived in Scotland. The first part of our trip today was on major roads so we also had to cope with the spray thrown up by the traffic, however by 11:00 the rain had eased so we didn’t have to cope with wet conditions.

We made a quick stop at Ayr and then drove on to Alloway, the birth place of Robbie Burns who incidentally shares his birthday with Ann, though not the year. The Scottish National Trust now looks after the Burns family cottage and has a large visitors’ centre down the road called the Tam o’ Shanter Experience which plays a film adaptation of Burns Poem Tam o’ Shanter every hour. Next to the centre they are building a large Burns Memorial museum which will open in November and replace the centre.

The cottage which was Robbie’s and three sibling’s birthplace and he lived there until he was seven years old. The cottage has four rooms, one was the kitchen, dining and sleeping room, the next the good parlour, then the stable and cow room and the last room was the feed room. Each room has an audio playing with voices and noises applicable to that room; one visitor was startled when a rooster crowed in the stables as she was looking at a saddle.

From the visitors centre we walked over to the Auld Kirk Alloway which is now just a shell and the churchyard contains the grave and memorial to Burns’ father, the memorial also mentions his mother who is buried elsewhere. Crossing back across the road we entered the Burns Memorial Gardens which contains the Burns Memorial and inside a bust of Burns, also in the gardens is the Statue Room. This room contains life size statues of Tam o’ Shanter, Souter Johnie and Nance Tinnoch all who feature in the poem Tam o’ Shanter as does the Auld Kirk and Brig o’ Doon, the bridge which is just outside the gardens was the one Tam had to cross on his horse when pursued by the witch and as witches can’t cross running water he had to cross past the middle of the bridge to be safe which he did but the witch made a last minute grab and removed the horses tail.

Leaving Alloway to drive to Newton Stewart we decided to drive along a minor road which follows the coast instead of using a major road, this turned out to be a stroke of luck because looking across a small bay, perched on the top of cliffs was a large imposing castle. This turned out to be Culzean Castle and Country Park which is owned by the NTS so we decided to exercise our NT Life Members card for the second time today. Every building is built on a grand scale from sandstone and even the farmyard square and the castle stables could pass as mansions.

Surrounding the castle is around 600 acres of grounds and an earlier Earle is reputed to have planted 5 million trees and plants, many imported from around the world. The park has been declared the first Country Park in Scotland and receives funding from several sources. In the grounds is a walled garden which is the largest we have ever seen and was used to produce fruit, vegetables and flowers for the castle, it also contains several glasshouses which contain grape vines and stone fruit trees.

Some of the earlier Earls also built their own gas works and a small railway to deliver coal. There is a large Camellia House, two ice houses to store winter ice to be used during summer and a 16 acre Swan Pond.

The estate was given to the Trust in 1945 after the 90 year old Earl died, leaving three elderly sons, the new Earl decided to gift the estate when it was worked out that following his death the 74% inheritance tax imposed by the Labor Party would cost the family 2 ½ times the value of the estate. He placed one condition on his gift and that was that during his lifetime General Eisenhower was to have the use of the top floor in the castle any time he wanted to use it. The castle now has a permanent display devoted to “Ike”.

As we didn’t arrive until 3:00 we didn’t have the time to explore all the grounds, this would require at least a full day so we had to be satisfied with a quick two hour visit. Leaving the castle we had a forty mile drive to our hostel and as we had been driving on wider roads with fewer bends all day we expected a quick trip. Wrong! We were soon confronted with a very narrow winding road allowing a top speed of 40 mph, so it was after 6:00 when we arrived when we arrived at the Minnigaff Hostel.

Tomorrow we cross the border into England.

Friday, 2 July, 2010

Minnigaff to Once Brewed (Hadrian’s Wall)

Minnigaff didn’t live up to its’ reputation during the day “Come to sunny Minnigaff and watch it rain” but when we looked out this morning it was obvious that it had rained during the night.

Today was easy driving for most of the day, fairly wide roads and gentle bends and we drove through the largest expanse of flat ground we have seen in two weeks in Scotland.

Heading towards Gretna Green, Ann noticed on the road map that we would soon pass an NTS property, Threave Estate, so we decided a small detour was in order. Threave has a Boronial style house and several hundred acres of grounds and 64 acres of gardens and was given to the Trust, like many others, when the family was faced with a large death duties bill.

The gardens, walled garden and glasshouses are probably the best maintained we have seen at any NTS property and there seemed to be a large staff of gardeners and we later found out that the Trust runs a one year post graduate course for horticultural students, so that explained the apparent large staff numbers. Throughout Scotland at most of their properties the Trust has halved the number of gardeners and the gardens have suffered as a result.

Turning off the main road we followed a little coastal road towards Gretna Green and decided to stop for lunch in a park in a little village, the gardens in the park had a beautiful display of tuberous begonias, however as the wind was strong enough to blow a dog off it’s chain we retreated back to the car.

Arriving at Gretna Green we decided to by-pass visiting the old forge where run-away couples were married as it has been turned into a tourist production and is nothing like the place we saw many years ago, so we crossed the border into England and dropped onto the M6 and drove for about ten miles before leaving it to drive towards Hadrian’s Wall where our next hostel is situated.

A little over 2 miles from our hostel are the ruins of Homestead Fort which was built by the Romans against Hadrian’s Wall about 128 AD to provide living quarters for the troops guarding the wall; previously they had been stationed many miles away. The fort covered several acres and contained around ten barrack buildings, each provided accommodation for 80 troops, there was a hospital, the commander’s house, a bath house, granary and many other buildings to support around 1000 people living there. From the ruins of one of the turrets on the wall we could see the wall winding away into the distance, this made us realise the massive job entailed in building the wall as the stones came from quarries miles away and each Roman troop was responsible for building and manning a section of the wall.

The Lakes District is our destination tomorrow.