Sunday 9th September we flew from Toulouse to spend time with our friends Ray and Fay who live in Edinburgh, to be joined by Bob and Jenny from Birmingham. Leaving home in the mid-30's, we took vests and jumpers to cope with Scotland's temperatures of 15 or 16 !
Ray is very knowledgeable about Edinburgh and so we benefited from a detailed personal tour of the city centre, its buildings and their history.
The next day was the Botanics (the Royal Botanic Gardens), and Wednesday Sue and I went to the Museum of Modern Art.
Thursday we went to a 'conceptual' garden/art installation called Little Sparta which contains sculptural works, philosophical inscriptions and land art; the work of the Scottish artist Ian Hamilton Finlay. When we arrived at the car park it was raining and, as we had to walk about a mile to the entrance, we waited ... until we convinced ourselves that it was easing off. The walk up to the garden was 'interesting' as the track led us up through a herd of cattle with a bull (at least that's what Sue maintains) and she was very uncomfortable (scared). Once in the garden we waited in a conservatory of Hamilton Finlay's house waiting for the 'easing off' to materialise. A bleak site.
In the evening, Ray had booked a walking tour of the 'Hidden Gardens of Edinburgh'. This was an evening tour of the private gardens (which are small parks) set in the middle of some of the large Georgian terraces in the centre of the town.
Fortunately it had stopped raining and we visited about 5 gardens in all, some with a 'municipal garden' style and others given a naturalistic 'wilderness' treatment. The tour ended in the dark in one of the gardens with a glass of bubbles ... very civilised!
On our final day with Ray and Fay we drove about an hour north to Pond Cottage, a house which started as a ruin with 10 acres of woodland and which, over the years, they have converted into a comfortable home. Sue was particularly keen to go to see this.
(Sue says that this photo doesn't do justice to the cottage, actually a 4 bedroom bungalow)
A view in their wood.
The pond, which is quite large.
On Saturday we turned our backs on civilisation and drove up to the West Highland Peninsulars to Strontian, near Fort William. We drove North-west, through Glencoe, on twisty, narrowing roads, over a ferry and on to see my cousin Sue and her husband John (no really, another Sue and John!) who had moved there about 3 years ago. We stayed in a 5 star B&B, but the weather was foul; it struggled to get up to 12 deg. the wind blew and it rained sideways.
The countryside has a bleak grandeur but the weather meant that the wildlife (deer, otters, eagles etc,) sensibly stayed at home.
With no animals to see, we decided to drive to Ardnamurchan Point, the most westerly on the British mainland. Unfortunately, the weather didn't improve!
Having seen the grey sea and the grey sky we started our journey back to the B&B which proved eventful. As the roads there are all single track with passing places, when we came upon a Fuel tanker delivering domestic fuel oil we calmly turned the engine off and waited ... about 10-15 minutes. Once this was sorted we carried on and then decided to stop at a Wildlife Park. Upon getting out of the car, neither of us had my bag ... with all of our money, credit cards, phone etc. We (not just me you realise) must have left it on a chair in the cafe next to the lighthouse!
We retraced our steps (at least 45 minutes) driving slightly faster around the twisty narrow roads than in the morning, fearing the worst but trying to reassure ourselves that people who would make the effort to go all the way to this Point would be the 'right' type. And our luck was in. The bag was sitting behind the counter waiting for us.
Tuesday morning we were to drive back to Edinburgh for our flight home at 7am Wednesday. As we had plenty of time (the car was due back at 4pm) we decided to stop at Glencoe visitors centre. The weather had become calm but very misty, but it gave us some great views of the mountains.
We left the visitors centre to continue the journey to Edinburgh and fine for time until ... between Callendar and Stirling we hit a traffic jam, and the kind drivers heading in the opposite direction were telling us "There's a tree down blocking the road. You'll have to turn round" (Scottish accent needed here). A quick 3 point turn and we were following a little tour bus which seemed to know the way. We, and lots of other cars turned down tiny little lanes, churning up the verges when cars were coming the other way, until our tour bus met a service bus. There was much discussing between the two drivers as to the width of the lane, the width of their buses and the state of the verges. After about 10 minutes, a lady (fairly stout, possibly Glaswegian) jumped out of her car, went up to the drivers and proceeded to take control. She got one bus to back up to a wider section of the lane, and then told the other bus driver that he could now get a bus through the gap. It worked! We were only 15 minutes late getting the car back.
After all the excitement of our return to Edinburgh, taking the car back and finding our overnight hotel, we decided the simplest thing to do was to make up an M&S takeway which we ate in our room before retiring early to bed ready for our alarm clock sounding at 4am!!!!
It was certainly good to get back home to continuing temperatures of 30 deg. and to start the course of antibiotics for the flu that we have come home with.
