This time last week

I'm back!  Hard to imagine that this time last week we were in Scotland.  It seems like only yesterday and at the same time seems ages ago.  We spent a couple of days in Carlisle, a city that I really liked, on the way into Scotland.  I'll write more about what we saw there in a later post.

First stop in Scotland  Gretna and Gretna Green both with a very different history.  That's me standing under the sculpture by Ray Lonsdale perhaps you'll remember him from my post a few weeks ago on the Filey Fisherman?  The sculpture is close to the famous old Blacksmith's Shop and museum at Gretna Green.  We didn't go in the museum but later in the week we did visit a nearby museum which tells of the very different reason behind the building of the nearby town of Gretna.  Again this deserves a post in its own right so I'll write more later.

We were staying on the outskirts of the town of Dumfries, where the poet Robert Burns spent the last years of his life.  Unfortunately, his statue was fenced off due to road works the evening we had a stroll around the town. There was so much to see in this part of the country.  Here are just a few glimpses of the places we visited.

Caerlaverock Castle - I just loved this castle so much it was stunning...

....from every angle you could photograph from.  Paul saw a brown hare on the woodland boardwalk here - I missed it as I was too busy looking at butterflies in the opposite direction.

Sweetheart Abbey in the village of New Abbey.   Lady Devorgilla of Galloway, founded the abbey in honour of her husband John Balliol after his death in 1273 and was buried here clutching his embalmed heart which she had carried around wherever she travelled in an ivory casket - so the monks called their monastery Sweetheart Abbey. John de Balliol was an adviser to Henry III and also Sherrif of Nottingham from 1261 to 1262.  After his death his wife, Devorgilla, gave many endowments in his name including Balliol College, Oxford.

  Just a short walk to the other side of the village and you can find the corn mill.

 the people working here were lovely and so welcoming and friendly we had a great time wandering around.

The fish pond near the Mill was formerly the fish pond used by the monks of Sweetheart Abbey.  Apparently red squirrels can be seen in and around the mill's car park and picnic area. I think they were hiding the day we visited or perhaps just not tempted by our picnic lunch.

 However, we did see a red squirrel the next day at the RSPB's reserve at Loch Ken.  It was a long walk from the car park to the bird hides overlooking the loch and I kept thinking we can't expect to walk into the hide and see a red squirrel straight away - but guess what?  We did! It stayed around long enough for us to admire it and photograph it.  

We saw lots of woodpeckers too.  On the loch itself there were many gulls and a few ducks.  There is also a goose viewing platform for when they visit during the autumn and winter. Loch Ken is also on the Galloway Kite Trail and we saw several Red Kites in this area.

We also visited Southerness and walked along the banks of the estuary of the Solway Firth. You can see the Cumbrian hills on the opposite side.

I even managed to bring a bit of family history into the holiday.  My great, great, great grandfather John Young left Scotland sometime in the 1820s and came to work as a tailor in Loughborough in Leicestershire. He married Maria Parkinson there in 1826.  All their children were baptised at the Dead Lane Primitive Methodist Chapel in Loughborough.  He was born in 1803 in Limekilns, Kirkaldy, Fife the son of Alexander Young also a tailor and his wife, formerly Ann Brash.  My great great grandfather was named Alexander as was my grandfather.  So you can see that when I saw the little book and coaster showing the Young tartan I had to make a modest purchase as a souvenir.

I could show you far more photos which I will eventually in future posts and I still haven't told you about our day at the St Anne's Allotments in Nottingham when we were taken on a heritage tour of this most interesting and historic part of the city.  Again another post calls to give full justice to the topic.

For now I'm off to catch up with what has been happening around here and also what you have all been blogging about whilst I have been away.  Since I got back I've been feeling more like the tortoise than the hare so it may take me some time to catch up with everything.  I'll get back to normal very soon I hope.

Memories and Intentions

For the last four weeks I've been roaming all over the world with the locations on people's mail. I won't go into the technicalities of the job but suffice to say it has been very hard but interesting work. From 6a.m. in the morning the post I was dealing with came from all over. First in was usually Teeside which took me around Gateshead, Newcastle and Middlesbrough. York and North Yorkshire would join in giving me happy memories of Christmas visits to York and summer holidays on the coast around Whitby, Robin Hood's Bay and my favourite places on that coast Staithes and Saltburn. The west coast would then join in and off I would travel around Morecambe, Southport, Blackpool and Formby (again more holiday memories) and then to Liverpool and Manchester. Scotland would soon follow and my imagination was captured by some of the place names, although I've never been into Scotland further north than Edinburgh and Glasgow. I've directed mail to the Isles of Mull, Lewis, Islay and North Uist, to Glencoe and Culloden and places like Kirckaldy, Auchtermuchty, Muckle Flugga and Bridge of Don as well as Edinburgh with it's regions of Morningside and Portobello. I'd never felt any connection with Scotland leaning rather towards Wales in the knowledge that ancestors on my father's side came, way back in the 18th century, from the Forest of Dean and the Welsh borders but a few years ago I discovered that my great great great grandfather on my mother's side of the family was, according to the 1851 census, born in Fifeshire. I've since done more research and using naming patterns and family occupations I think I'm sure this ancestor was born in Dunfermline. I was particularly taken with names which I later discovered were in the Kingdom of Fife, places like Cardenden, Pittenween, St Andrews and the gloriously named Coal Town of Wemyss and Coaltown of Balgonie. So memories and intentions all in one through a computer screen and I've now decided that one day I want to visit all these Fifeshire places and see what they are really like. I hope the Christmas mail I've dealt with gets to its destination - I think the one addressed to 'No 4 Callanish' will but I'm not so sure about the one addressed to 'Robin Hood's Well, in the layby, on the A1'!!