For your viewing pleasure, I’ve added some photos of both my trip to Scotland and the little visit me and @Glitterboots took to Elvaston Castle.
So we have Scotland:
And we have Elvaston Castle:
Enjoy!
Well, that was that. I’m typing this back in Derby at my parent’s house. All did not go as planned today, but don’t worry it will all be explained.
I stuck to my original plan to be up and out by 5:30. At 5:40 after the ice had melted from the windows in the car I headed out to get some petrol. Unfortunately at a time like that on a Saturday morning in a town like Dumfries, there was no petrol to be had. I couldn’t find an open station. Never mind, I headed out anyway. The petrol gauge and the computer both told me I had more than enough fuel to get me to Edinburgh and I was sure I’d be able to get some more whilst I was there.
So I set off. What struck me was that when you come off the motorway, it’s tiny little A-roads right up to Scotland’s capital. Well, unless you’re willing to drive all the way up to Glasgow and then across to Edinburgh on the M8. Which I wasn’t.
It wasn’t long before the snow started to come down. Lightly at first, but then it picked up the closer I got to my destination. After about 70 miles I hit a road that was completely white, with just the odd bit of ice showing where the few cars that had ventured that way had driven. I carried on (very) slowly along the route through a couple of very nice-looking villages until I came upon some flashing lights and a sign that told me the road was closed. So I carefully turned in the road and headed back. It turned out that there was another blockade once I got back to where the road turned white. It looked as though it had blown away with the wind and someone had come back to replace the signs.
It was extremely slippery and very dangerous. I’m just glad I managed to get out in one piece.
I decided not to go on the diversion route and thought that it was probably a bad day to consider making the trip at all. I headed back to Dumfries. After listening to several weather reports en route I took the decision not to hang around in Scotland any longer. There was much more snow on the way for Scotland and probably some for the rest of the country too. So I got out whilst I could. I collected my things, dropped off the key, explained to the receptionist that I was checking out early (and that my cold-water tap had been running very hot that morning) and headed into the Little Chef for a Scottish breakfast (involving bacon, egg, lorne sausage, tattie scone, haggis, beans and toast). Very nice it was too.
The drive back to Derby was uneventful and in the end I’ve driven about 380 miles today. Which is something of a record for me. And although I really don’t rate Astras in the slightest, this one was extremely comfortable for the whole journey and I didn’t feel tired in the slightest once I got back. My feet didn’t even ache.
It has to be said that the entire weekend could have gone better. I didn’t get a huge amount of photos, though I’ve hopefully learned something about the technicalities needed to photograph in such conditions and about how I’d cope travelling alone. I did rather enjoy my weekend and my photo-trip around Galloway. It’s a nice part of the world – not as spectacular as I’d hoped (nowhere near as nice as the snow-covered Lake District I passed which turned out to be even more stunning when travelling from the north) but nice nonetheless. I think I’ll head a bit further north on my next trip to Scotland. Somewhere in the Highlands but I think it’s best done during the summer.
I’m not sure whether I’ll head out anywhere tomorrow. After the long journey I fancy doing precisely nothing at all.
P.S. I’ve just noticed that in total I’ve written more than 3,000 words on my trip (I’m using Word to jot everything down before posting it all to the web). I haven’t written that much since my university days!
I thought I’d post a short addendum to my earlier message. I went to the Little Chef and I have to say I wasn’t at all disappointed with the food. Mainly because I had set my expectations so low it would have been impossible for them to have got it wrong. And they played a blinder. The chicken in my chicken burger was so small I’d finished most of the bread before I’d hit any poultry. And the chips weren’t much cop either. The pudding was even worse and I wish I hadn’t started it. Apple pie with custard turned out to be pastry mush with yellow lumps. And the whole thing cost the Earth to boot.
The only real surprise was that there wasn’t a big fat greasy bloke in sight (at least not behind the counter). Instead the whole operation seemed to be run by two young and surprisingly attractive women. There wasn’t a middle-aged lass in a tabard to be found. Of course, they were both miserable as sin and clearly didn’t want to be there, but you get that anywhere you go these days.
So all-in-all it was both a surprising and predictable trip. I’m not sure what I’ll do for food tomorrow as I now appear to have been to both of Dumfries’ eating establishments – Morrisons and Little Chef. Perhaps I’ll take a trip to Spar and stock up on snacks. Then again I’ll hopefully have made it to Edinburgh for the day, so perhaps by the time I get back here I’ll be too knackered to want to eat anything. My weight appears to be increasing again, so perhaps that would be the best option anyway. I must return to the gym on Tuesday.
Actually (this post seems to be growing somewhat in length!) I’ve been thinking about not going back to the gym. From the effort I seem to put in I don’t think it’s worth the £40 a month I fork out for it. I could try harder, but I just find the whole thing tediously dull. I’ve enjoyed my walks into work in a morning much more than a session at the gym, although I don’t suppose I’m getting as much from that as twenty minutes on the cross-trainer. Trouble is it’s never twenty minutes on the cross-trainer. It’s five minutes on there before I get ridiculously bored.
So perhaps it would be better if I spent a couple of month’s gym membership on a decent set of dumbbells and started going running. I do think it’s the tedium that stops me from really accomplishing anything. There’s nothing to look at apart from early-morning television without the sound, or perhaps an album on the iPod I’ve heard a thousand times. At least if I’m outside I’m actually heading somewhere and there are the surroundings to look at as I go. OK, it’s Bedford so it’s not spectacular but at least it’s something other than the four walls of the gym. One idea I’ve had is to get someone to drop me off a set distance from home and then I’ll run back from there. If I do that there won’t be any excuses once I get half-way and decide I don’t want to do go any further. I’d have to push myself to do it. And if I did get tired and decided to walk, well at least I’ll still have that to do.
Anyway, I’ve gone completely off-topic enough and whilst my laptop tells me it’s only ten past nine in the evening I really should get going. I’m setting my phone to wake me very early again so that I can get a head start on my trip to Edinburgh. According to the map it’s only about seventy miles, although Google continues to inform me that it’s likely to take me over two hours to do. An average of thirty-five miles per hour on a trunk road can’t be right, can it? I shall let you know tomorrow (or actually in a few minutes when I finally get around to posting all of these onto the blog!).
P.S. I’ve also noticed how much more I’m writing for this blog when I don’t have the distraction of the Internet or CSI on DVD. An I really enjoy the writing. You never know – perhaps the next time we have a power-cut I shall write a novel! Right, time for bed!
It’s currently 3:30 in the afternoon and I’m back at the hotel and I’m a little tired. I didn’t do much walking today, but I did do a fair amount of driving. The day started rather early. I had planned on getting up at around 5:30am, which is the same time I normally get up to head off to the gym. I ended up waking an hour earlier and after a bit of a read I’d left the room by the time my alarm went off.
Last night I programmed a route into the sat-nav which was to take me on a circle around Galloway Forest Park and the outlying villages. It went thus:
Dumfries -> Castle Douglas -> New Galloway -> Newton Stewart -> Creetown -> Carsluith -> Gatehouse of Fleet -> Bridge of Dee -> Dumfries
I didn’t know what these places were like or how big they were, but they formed a very rough circle which looked as though would give me a good day out. And it did for the most-part, although I did make a couple of changes and diversions en route. For example, Bridge of Dee was pretty much a nothing place and I didn’t bother stopping. I also added a trip to Kirkcudbright which turned out to be rather nice, with small port and a top-notch fish & chip shop. In fact, here’s a picture I took there!
Anyway, back to the morning!
I followed my route in the dark to begin with and probably missed out on a huge amount. But just as the first rays of light were beginning to appear over the hills I hit upon a truly stunning loch. The hills in the background were covered in snow and the water was still and peaceful. Few cars passed by whilst I was there and the whole valley was deathly quiet. It was lovely. Hopefully when I post this to the web I’ll be adding a photo just below!
As I’ve said, much of the rest of the day was spent driving around looking for photo opportunities. The only time I really got out the hiking stick was on a route called The Queens Way (without the possessive apostrophe – terrible), part of which led to a waterfall and an obelisk. I’ll add a photo of one of those below.
By around 1:30 I made the decision to head back to the hotel, despite it still seeming quite early. But I had left quite early so I guess I can be excused. Whilst on my way back however I spotted some wind turbines on the horizon and fancied getting some close-up snaps of those. Unfortunately after what seemed like an age of driving, I still hadn’t found them. I got quite close, but they always seemed to be just over the next rise. However, all was not lost. As I climbed higher and higher, the roads got icier and more dangerous. It was worth it in the end as I rounded a corner and came across a completely frozen lake with a layer of ice on it. I neglected to stop on my first pass but was so interested in getting some photos of it I travelled back five miles in order to get them. It was truly stunning.
Well, that was my day. I’ve not really got anything planned for the evening because there’s very little to do around here. But I do plan on getting served at the Little Chef this evening!
Tomorrow I’m planning on something a little different. I’m thinking of leaving at roughly the same time, but heading up to Edinburgh. This area really is lovely, but there are only so many photos you can take of forests! I do quite fancy seeing the big city before I head back to England.
I’m currently writing this on the evening of Thursday 5 February, but it’s not going to be posted until at least Sunday. I’m not going to cheat and change the date because that’s just silly! But at the minute I’m in a hotel room without an Internet connection. That’s not strictly true; there is an Internet connection, but it costs £10 a day and there’s no way I’m paying that! I could always draft this using my iPhone and then send in the hope that I somehow manage to get a good enough connection for it to go via 3G. At the minute that’s not happening out here in the hills and it’s much easier to type of here anyway.
Right, that’s enough build-up! So far the post has been about nothing at all!
I’m in Dumfries. Well, I’m in a Travelodge just outside Dumfries. It’s your average Travelodge fare – nothing more, nothing less. Bed, sofa, telly, shower and a tiny kettle. That’s about it, but that’s all you really need. Well, I could have done with cheaper Internet connection but I’m not going to go back over old ground here!
I’ve come up to take some photos, and so far I’ve not got off to a great start. Of course the trip my well have picked up by the time I post this to the blog, but I’m not going to be changing any of it to suit the time of posting. Right, time to really get on with the post and stop this nonsense!
Firstly, picking up the car turned out to be a bit of a hassle. It took ages to get to Enterprise to collect it due to the adverse weather. And once there it turned out the car had to picked up from the last person who had it. That person turned out to be a DC who had misplaced the keys. So I had to sit in the police station carpark for quite a while whilst I waited for the copper to lay his hands on them. Once that was sorted and I’d managed to get the six inches of snow off the car, I set off to my parent’s house, collected my stuff, dropped some sweeties off at @Glitterboots’ house and then left for Scotland. Fifteen minutes later I returned to my parent’s house because I’d forgotten my coat!
Once I’d left the icy roads of Derby and hit the trunk roads and motorways, I had no problems with the weather at all. In fact the only issue I really have is that I seem to have left the snow behind me in England as there’s hardly any here at all, and from the look of the weather forecast on my phone I doubt I’m going to see any here over the weekend. Which is a real shame. I’m beginning to think that I should have stopped in the Lake District instead as the snowy hills I passed by on the M6 were absolutely stunning to look at. So stunning in fact that at one stage I wasn’t paying attention to what I was doing and I believe I was probably caught on camera going perhaps a little faster than I should have been. So I fully expect Enterprise to contact me in due course to let me know a speeding ticket will be winging its way to me!
Once here, I headed over to Morrisons (found very easily thanks to Vicinity on the iPhone) to pick up some supplies as I figured I should take some snack food with me on my travels, just in case I happen to get stuck somewhere and I’m in need of sustenance. Then it was to the Travelodge for just after 3pm. I unpacked, had a snack and a shower, watched some Lost on my laptop and then decided I couldn’t be bothered to sit around in here all evening. So I jumped in the car (after waiting five minutes to be seated in the Little Chef without a member of staff at all making an appearance) and headed off for a bite to eat in Dumfries. I stopped first at a place called the GD One Leisure Complex which I figured probably had a cinema in it and possibly somewhere I could grab a bite. Turned out to simple be a swimming pool and gym, so not really what I was looking for. After another little drive I discovered there was literally nothing whatsoever to do in Dumfries on a Thursday evening and I ended up going back to Morrisons for tea.
So I’ve not had the greatest start to my little holiday, but it’s not been too bad. The facilities here are average but not awful and it’s not costing me too much either (unless you add-in the cost of the speeding fine!). I just wish I could get this machine connected up to the web without having to spend a fortune. I’d be more than willing to pay a fiver a day, as I’m sure would other people. So why not drop the price to something more reasonable? Doesn’t it make better business sense to have several people connected at a cheaper price than no-one connected at all? Perhaps it’s just me!
Anyway, this post wasn’t supposed to be a moan about the price of an Internet connection (which, lets be honest, should be free everywhere in this day and age) but rather an observation that although not terrible, my trip could have started off a little better than it has. I’m hoping tomorrows post with feature some shots of the fabulous Scottish countryside. 
