2012 - HD7

Frankly, I can't be arsed to give a huge and full account of yesterday (at the moment) because of a various things; the most prominent being Fuckwit's decision to mow his lawn at about 8.05am this morning...

But, first this:

Pub/food

woods/waterfall

town/river

Anger/annoyance

That was very much our last day in Dumfries and Galloway, a place I would have absolutely no problem returning to; next year if we can (tomorrow in my dreams).

Because of a change in our circumstances for today (thank the gods for the internet and scattered mobile phone services, otherwise I would have got home and been royally pissed off with my mate, who has already been the subject of my ire once or twice this year already) we decided to revisit a few of the places we'd liked during the opening days of the holiday. The plan was simple - go to the Wood of Creetown, then up to Bargrennan for the pub and then some shopping and then, eventually, home.

The day started very much the way it continued with wall-to-wall sunshine, so we got petrol and headed up to the Otter Pool where we parked and walked up into the Wood of Cree and found the most wonderful waterfall/cut in the mountain with water. There will be a bundle of pictures to follow from that and the other days, but it was a spectacular way to end the week. Unfortunately, I got eaten by midges while in the woods and exited with two gnawed bones for calves.

We let the dogs have a swim near the Otter Pool before heading up to the House O'Hill to see if their excellent (3) choices for vegetarians were as good as they sounded. The pub started well with a draught beer from the Williams Brewery in Alloa - one of my faves - it was called Birds & Bees and my ale swilling chums would all have been completely blown away by it - light, thirst-quenching and with that citrus-y hint of grapefruit and at 4.3% almost a session beer.

The wife went for the Red Thai Veg curry, I opted for the Falafel Burger. The wife's pub food record, as I said, is abysmal, but today things changed. Her curry was phenomenal and we both agreed that it was as good, if not better, than some Thai restaurants we go to. There was also heaps of it. My falafel burger was chick peas, potatoes, onion, spices and bound together with a gram flour coating; it came on a fresh Scotch roll with home-made chips, a very nice, home-made, tomato and onion relish and the burger had lettuce, tomato and onion on it - nothing else. It was simply divine.

We stayed there until about 2pm; it was remarkably quiet so we chatted with Paddy (the head barman), a fellow vegetarian who has lived in the tiny hamlet of Glentrool for the last 20 years and instead of hating his parents for bringing him and his sister to a wilderness, he was full of praise for growing up in such an 'idyllic' place (his word). The hospitality at the place is brilliant; the food excellent, the beer to die for - I want to own that pub! It is, in my humble, but usually always right, opinion, the best pub in Scotland!

From there we went back to Newton Stewart so that the wife could get some shopping. I took the dogs down to the river Cree, where they swam, paddled and whined because mum wasn't there. All the while we were out we both continued to go very brown, with our faces and arms looking like we'd been to Spain and not Scotland.

We got back to the house at 3.00; I loaded the car up while the wife tidied the cottage up and at 3.55pm we said a sad farewell to Billy Neal's old cottage and headed home. I did have the idea that as we no longer needed to be back by Saturday, we could have stayed and come back on Sunday evening instead, but the wife reluctantly said no.

Then it all went wrong - BIG TIME!

I was full of praise for Dumfries and Galloway, my only criticism being they haven't embraced recycling like everywhere else (but it's a big and well spread county, so...), but they shut the A75 off without so much of a warning or, as we almost crashed into the road block, not much warning that you were going to meet barriers preventing you from actually using the road. Also there was no diversion signs; no warnings, no suggestions, no anything to be of help to the tourists. We ended up having to go unbelievably out of our way, up a bendy, newly resurfaced road to New Galloway. We were stuck behind a HGV that never got above 25mph for the entire 30 fucking miles...

So, I was almost apoplectic by the time we reached New Galloway (a place we were told would blow our socks off). I was so angry, I just saw imbeciles and arseholes, but we managed to evade the HGV and various other tools who had no sense of driving, so we were only about 40 minutes behind schedule. Now, when you consider that we left at 3.55pm and I opened the front door to our house at 9.36pm; we stopped for 20 minutes in Tebay and lost valuable time in Scotland; I think we made good time.

The dogs all seem depressed. I have rarely come home from a holiday and felt that I could go back and stay there forever. In fact, Shoesville this morning looks and feels like very stinky shit lurking in a dank and uninviting hole. I cannot believe that a place I went to and hated 14 years ago could have such a startling affect on me. Yes, the weather helped, but when you consider you can buy at 2 bedroom terraced house in Wigtown for about £70,000; I might start to see if I can get a job up there!

Today sees mass washing; some tidying up of the garden and shopping for some dinner tonight (and the rest of the week). I almost have the post-holiday blues and not even the sight of a scantily-clad Mrs Sexually-Explicit watering her plants out the front has made me feel any happier (but it would have helped if she didn't have a face like a plastic bag full of lugworms).

I don't want to live here any more...