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...

2012 - HD6

Rather aptly, the place we're living in has a prog rock history - William Neal, an artist, most famous for his covers to Tarkus and Pictures at an Exhibition, two massive bloated offerings from the band who killed prog rock - Emerson, Lake and Palmer - bought this place, probably on the earnings from his music covers. He then sold it for a big profit years later to Jenny's dad. How about that then?

Today was a day of three thirds. It started really excellently, got crappy in the middle and evened itself out with a so-so ending. The great start was Back Bay (again), but this time with the tide going out, rather than coming in, we went round the head of the bay into another, almost secret, bay, with a fabulous unspoilt beach, massive rock formations and with the sun shining and the sea lapping at my bare feet, you could have been anywhere, wonderful.

Ness had given us a hard time to start with; getting incredibly arsey with Lexy and ending up attacking her in the back of the car. Ness went to the beach between the wife's legs, in the seat well, looking suitably admonished. The beach was crowded; there was at least five other people there. I ventured back into some of the caves with the camera and took a couple of funky pics (well, the wife likes them). I took my shoes and socks off and felt the sand and surprisingly warm sea between my toes. There isn't much better for nothing.

We stayed until gone midday with no real idea of what we were going to do. The wife suggested the Isle of Whithorn, but I felt that would be pandering to my wants too much so I suggested we go and do the Cream O' Galloway, the other smokehouse (mentioned yesterday) and possibly Creetown, which looked interesting on a map.

But first we decided to go to the highly recommended Bladnoch Inn and if that had been good we were going to pop over to the distillery and check that out. The pub was lovely, but only sold two lagers and Guinness - no beer, no keg or cask. It was not for me. So we didn't do the distillery, but I have a bottle of its scotch at home, so...

The smokehouse was poor and stunk of fish (no surprises there, but the other one was much nicer, if a little more expensive); Creetown was boring and we missed the only interesting sounding place. The Cream o' Galloway was over 30 bloody miles away and was heaving with people, I mean really heaving. The car parks were full, it was running alive with kids, it cost money to go into the place - an ice cream making factory and farm - and Marley was pissing us off a treat by now with her constant wailing and moaning in the back every time we drove past trees or standing water. The wife was getting a bit pissed off; we'd driven miles for no reason and had no alternative plan. I turned round and headed for the Gatehouse of Fleet.

Now, we saw this sign post that said National View Point, with picnic tables and other useful shit like toilets and stuff; so we turned out of Gatehouse and drove up the road and drove and drove and didn't see another sign for it. We passed a turning for some place called Lauceston and ended up at a little bit of parking in the middle of nowhere. I wasn't happy; Marley was sounding like a cow being gutted without anaesthetic and I could tell from the wife's body language that we were getting close to having a 'moment'. I turned round and we headed back to the park we saw in Gatehouse, stopped there and had some lunch before going into Gatehouse to have a look for a pub. They were all shut. But the river Fleet was great; the town is very dog friendly, we had ice cream and chilled and the mood changed back to how it had been this morning. The warm sun was also giving us both sun tans without us realising it.

I threw together some food for dinner and we're just sitting around now deciding what we're going to do tonight. So on retrospect, it was a day with lots of disappointments, too many to list, but after two really excellent days it was all but expected. Tomorrow could be interesting and HD7 might not appear until Saturday or Sunday, as tomorrow is moving day. We expect our day to go like this: go to the falls just outside Newton Stewart, then onto Glentrool for lunch in that pub and then back to Newton for a wee bit of shopping and some petrol, then back here, get things sorted and be away by 6pm. Saturday is going to be hot; I don't want to spend all day in the car (it's not fair for the dogs) and now I'm not going out on Saturday night, I'm going to need to get some shopping. Hey ho, best laid plans and all that...

2012 - HD5

If yesterday was a brilliant day, today was almost perfect. What a glorious, glorious day it has been. By 9.30am there was barely a cloud in the sky, there was a light southerly breeze and we had decided to do the Galloway Forest Park - not all of it, we'd need a few days to do that and a week to do it in detail.

First port of call was Newton Stewart, a lovely little town which is really the gateway to the forest park; we didn't stop because we wanted to get into the park and find some places for the dogs to go 'hunting'. The wife chose somewhere for us to go - very remote - and we got there inside an hour and took the dogs along a mountain trail in Glentrool Village. We spent an hour there (I was given the camera) and then decided to go further into the wilderness to Loch Trool.

The worrying thing about this Scottish wilderness is that in places the leaves have already started to look a bit yellow and red; autumn it seems creeps into parts of Scotland in early August. The rain that has been pretty constant here, as well as everywhere else, meant that there was boggy parts, quagmires and lots of lying water; the part of the park we were in was also a working forest, loggers in lorries carrying timber in a scene you might imagine in Canada.

We eventually got to the car park at the end of the road, but suffered the only disappointment of the day - we couldn't get within 100 yards of the loch; there is no road near it, so if you want to stand on its banks you need to walk to it and I couldn't find an easy way down - yes, down; the road sits about 50 metres above the lock and much of the side is a sheer drop. There is one place that has access to the loch and that's Glen Trool House, but that is privately owned and I am envious of the bastards that live there...

We went back up the trail a couple of miles and stopped off at the Water of Trool, the river that runs into the loch. The dogs went apeshit; this was the kind of terrain they love - woods, hills and water and we spent another hour, before heading back to Bargrennon on the main road and the best pub we've found in the whole of Dumfries and Galloway - The House O'the Hill. A restaurant with THREE unusual vegetarian options; two real ales and a sun trap of a garden that we just flopped out in. The irony was that after yesterday's shit meal, we brought a packed lunch, but we were so impressed by the place we're going back Friday for lunch, as we're heading back on that day.

From there, we took the back road back down to Newton Stewart, where we found a lovely little car park on the river, near an otter pool, where we met a family from Huntingdon and stood around for well over an hour talking about... well, everything. The irony is she works for the same umbrella company that I do and works for an Academy over where she lives. The best bit of this part of the day was Lexy having to swim.

Lexy doesn't do swimming; she loves water and will wade in it up to her shoulders, but never, ever, goes deeper. It's like she's scared that her wonky little legs won't work well enough to keep her afloat. The two times in the five years we've had her where she has swum have both been accidents and today was no exception; the big difference being an accident caused her to go in the water and her own volition brought her back.

Near the otter pool was a bendy bit of river with deep eddies and crystal clear water, which makes the floor of the riverbed seem deceptively shallower than it really is. Marley had bounced off into the water and had waded across the river and was standing in the shallows and Lexy, who had not been paying attention, looked at the six inch drop into the water; then at Marley and then without prompting, leapt into the water and went splosh, right under. She emerged looking utterly shocked and swam to where Marley was, who had now disappeared somewhere else. Lexy was stuck on the other side of the river and the only way across was to swim.

My God, you have never seen a dog edge its way more gingerly (and that is such an apt word with ginger Lexy) into water in your life. First up to her legs, then her belly, then her neck and then she was away; swimming very strongly against the flow and she covered the ten feet very quickly. She got so much praise you would have thought she'd just rescued Timmy from a well.

When we got to Newton Stewart we did some shopping; the place is really civilisation in microcosm; there is literally nothing you can't get there. Then we eventually got back here at nearly 6pm, had dinner and now we're all just buggered...

Tomorrow will be the last full day of the holiday; part of me is a little sad that I decided we'd go home on Friday evening, but if the weather forecast is anything to go by then travelling in the evening and at night is probably a good idea. We're going back to Back Bay because on a lovely day it's likely to be glorious and I want to take my boots and socks off. We're going to the Cream of Galloway ice cream making centre, a smokehouse that's off the beaten track and, if we have time, the Bladnoch Distillery and the Inn, but that will require part of that hour or so with the dogs in the car - see if we can find some shade, otherwise, we'll do that next time we're here. Which might be next year after speaking to Jenny's dad tonight on the dog n bone. We still haven't done so much, but it will make for actual plans next time we come here.

One utterly size-ist and potentially sexist moment happened when we were driving from the pub. The temperature was 23 degrees, the sun was shining and there were these two people - in their 20s - walking up the road (and up a hill) towards Glentrool. He was striding ahead, shorts, T-shirt and looking fresh and fit; she must have weighed about 18 stone; appeared to be carrying all their camping gear on her back and what looked like both their bellies on her front; she was dripping in sweat and looked about to die. I was thinking cruel and horrible thoughts when the wife said, "He probably thought she needed to do all the carrying," then grinned an evil smile at me. "He was right!"

With the exception of the two pictures of Lexy and the one of me by the river, I took all the photos on display.

2012 - HD4

When you do the kind of holidays we do, ones based around the dogs first and us second, then days like today are the reason why. There was a slight feeling of dread at the prospect of having to drive 51 miles back along our journey home to drop Jenny at the station in Dumfries, but we decided that it gave us a) a chance to check out the county town and b) to drive along the Solway Trail, which is pretty stunning.

Dumfries is absolutely wonderful; it's like a red Edinburgh. it is architecturally stunning, has a lot of interesting shops and places to look at and is, of course, the home of Queen of the South. We dropped Jenny off at the station that isn't signposted (it's the same in Stranraer, so this part of Scotland really likes giving you a mystery search) and then headed out of the busiest place we've found so far.

The Solway Trail really is something to behold, especially at points where you could literally be anywhere in the world. It winds and wends its way through that particular peninsula, passing right next to the sea and then minutes later through woods at the base of the solitary mountain that looms over the coast line. We barely saw any other cars after we disappeared from Dumfries, but by the time we got to the lovely Sandyhills Bay it was tourism central - there must have been 20 tourists on the massive beach. it was like the London Underground.

The picture to the left shows me doing my Bruce 'Die Hard' Willis impersonation, with the four dogs of the apocalypse and, yes, that is a massively impressive wind farm behind me, about five miles off shore - people who complain about things like this should have a fucking nuclear reactor built next to them, see if their three eyed children mind wind farms...

As you can see, it is sunny and it was also very warm - about 21 degrees according to the car - and the tide was well out, but I still got covered in mud. We walked for about a mile up the coast, where the wife took various photos of things such as rocks, seaweed and a few more rocks. The beach was great, but it didn't have the character that Back Bay has (plus there were people here and that simply won't do).

From there we decided to find somewhere to have lunch*. After lunch, we headed back along the trail and ended up in Kirkcudbright. I wasn't really fussed, it was 3.15 and we still had 40 miles to go to get home; but the wife decided she was going to have a look, so we broke the dogs out and got dragged round the streets of the Artists' Town and what a divine little place it is. It is pronounced Kerkoobree and it has its own micro-climate - it has only snowed there enough to settle once in the last 32 years and only half a dozen times since records began. "Oh, it gets cold, but never as cold as anywhere else in Scotland," said this 77 year-old ex-pat from Bow in East London. From the date palms, Mediterranean plants and secluded southerly facing bays, sheltered by the hills and mountains of Galloway to the north, Kerkoobree isn't the only place along this coast that gets this treatment, but it's probably the nicest.

The road home was a lot like parts of Dorset; the roads were still empty and when we got back to the main road we still had 25 miles to go and it was gone 5pm - fortunately, dinner had already been made. We stopped at a Smokehouse and bought cheese and (very expensive) locally produced strange jams - gooseberry and elderflower! We eventually got home just before six and everyone is knackered.

There is no TV here, so I've had BBC News streaming while we've been in, so I know what the world is doing, but generally it has been quite lovely not being governed by the box - but going away during the Olympics was always a clever move when you don't have a TV. I think tonight is going to be a short one before bed beckons. I've been ploughing my way through the first Grimy Thongs book and we're going to watch Carry on Vamping, which I downloaded today, to see if this latest series continues to impress after the last few really crappy camp series. That means watching it on a big monitor but with the sound this netbook kicks out - which is a bit like whisper in a dungeon. Tomorrow is going to be the woods; the big woods of the Galloway Forest Park. Marley wants to take Lexy hunting.

Disappointment of the day:

As the entire day was something of a highlight; for a while the worst thing was going to be having to pay £1.50 to park at Sandyhills Beach, especially as they've put it up by 50p since Google Street View was last there. But that was nothing compared to Auchencairn and the * from above.

The wife thought we'd blown our chances of finding a decent pub when we got to this very quaint and picturesque village about five miles past the beach. The Smugglers' Inn sold real ale, just, and they looked a bit posh and geared up for in door diners; but, hey, I'm on 'oliday, so screw that, let's see the lunch menu. As you might have guessed, Scotland doesn't really understand vegetarianism and the choices were simple - cheese and tomato sandwich or savoury cheese sandwich - a local delicacy of cheese, onion, mayonnaise, black pepper and tomato ketchup - it sounded like something a tramp would sick up after finding a skip outside Tesco. I asked the 'chef' if they could do us a plain cheese sandwich, which he seemed to think was really difficult and a cheese and onion sandwich which he didn't think was a problem.

Now as RnB will attest, my wife and pub food is pretty much a non-starter. In almost 30 years together, we have found two pubs that have served her food she has really liked and one of them was by mistake. Whenever my wife goes near a pub that sells food it's like all the staff become fucking cretins. "My wife is really fussy," I said explaining why she wanted just a cheese sandwich when he seemed to think that it would fall apart and offered to put mayo or toast it slightly to hold it together. "All she wants is a plain cheese sandwich on brown wholemeal bread and a bowl of chips - nothing else, just that." He nodded. "I don't care what mine comes with, but don't put anything else on hers." He nodded again and I felt comfortable. He seemed like a relatively intelligent man, if not a little... off.

They had a locally brewed beer called Grace, which was very nice and Greene King IPA - which I poured scorn on to the barman. When I took the drinks and the menus back, the next person in who ordered Grace was unlucky - it ran out. It was replaced by Old Speckled Hen, which meant I might as well have been in Northampton at a shit pub. The barman appeared about ten minutes later with our 'meals'. This little concoction of sandwiches and chips cost just shy of £15. Our 'sandwiches' if that's what you could call them, looked like they were made out of Tesco Value Thin-sliced White or Brown bread. I could almost have picked my teeth with the stuff it was so thin and also slightly battered - not as in fish, but as in it looked like the chef had pushed down on the tops of them both to ensure the pre-bought grated cheese didn't fall out. Mine came with a dollop of coleslaw that had that cheap shop bought smell; a handful of salted nacho chips and some salad that had some kind of dressing on it; all of this was sitting in the residue of the cheap smelly coleslaw. The sandwiches, the kind you would be given by your dirty friend's mum when you were 8, were untainted by the slurry on the plate, so we ate most of them. The chips were frozen - not literally, they were cooked, but they were obviously from a freezer bag.

I would have complained, but a) I was having a good day, b) we're on 'oliday, so you expect to get ripped off for shit food at least once and c) he was much bigger than me, the chef, and like I said he was a bit off. The dogs loved it!

The shame of it was the pub was nice; it had a lovely garden with a babbling brook at the bottom and the interior was remarkably warm and welcoming. They are off the beaten track, you'd think they would be bending over backwards to impress folk, because round her, word of mouth between chatting tourists is worth a damned sight more than advertising anywhere. So we disappeared as soon as the drinks were finished and got back on the road. It was just the food and all that surrounded it that was disappointing; had the food or the choice been better it would have topped a really good and satisfying day.

2012 - HD3

The day started badly; I woke up at 7am and needed the loo like seriously badly. When I was back on it within the hour I was thinking that my bad luck was just going to continue dogging me for the rest of my life, but after another hour in bed, I woke up at just after 9 feeling pretty good and a bath later I was raring to go; the only problem was the weather. During the night it had started raining again and at 9.45 this morning it was steadily falling like a fool in love.

"Bollocks to this," I said pulling on my raincoat and putting my walking boots on, "We're on bleedin' 'oliday, let's do this!" So we did and within three miles of driving south the rain petered out and by the time we got to the best place we've been to so far it had stopped. To be fair, it was blowing a gale, was overcast and the temperature was 14 degrees, but if we sat around waiting for decent weather then we could have been here all day. So, off we went.

We spotted another bay to visit when we went to Black Rock beach and therefore we decided to make our way there first. It was off the 'main' road to a little place called Port William, before the even littler place of Monreith (mentioned yesterday) which is where Gavin 'Ring of Bright Water' Maxwell lived, etc. You drive up a single track lane with a sheer drop on one side and past a wonderful little golf course, that was immaculately kept into a car park that was as empty as a brand new cemetery. We piled out of the car and in front of us was this:

and this:

Isn't that positively a wonderful site. Not the beach, but the complete lack of people. This is Back Bay and it is secluded, full of interesting places to go and look at, including this:

This is a cave and it isn't particularly deep, but it's perfectly formed and has a natural chimney in it; a flue like hole at the top of the cave that lets a lot of light (and rain, I would presume) in. I went and explored and caves still hold that mystical charm that normally gives you that frisson of fear because of the dark and the unknown; this was different and I may have to take the camera in with me when we return her in a couple of days.

Unfortunately, the tide came in while we were there and we had to retreat after about an hour; mainly because when the tide turns, boy does it turn. Rocks I was sitting on at midday were covered by the sea by 12.15 and the entrance to this cave, where the two rocks are at the front was completely cut off within five minutes of this photo being taken. Canute was a wise man.

The weather showed no real sign of easing inland and when we got on the road again it started raining again. We headed to Port William, which is a lovely, but really isolated little town; we might have stayed there for half an hour or so if the rain hadn't started sheeting down again. I suggested we go along to the Isle of Whithorn, a place we hadn't been to in 14 years and was one of the very few and far between holiday we had in this neck of the woods in 1998. We got there and the summer seemed to be just in front of us. There was bugger all cloud about a quarter of a mile out to sea and the little boats, bobbing on the calm sea, looked idyllic and I yearned for that sun to be just a bit closer. Twenty minutes later we didn't get my wish, but the temperature rose, the sky started to thin and we decided to pop into the Steam Packet Inn, a bloody decent pub in 1998 and now a bit poncier, but still a bloody decent pub; with FIVE locally brewed real ales. We sat outside, the sun peaking through the thinning clouds and were reluctant to go in land because it would probably rain again.

But, eventually we headed back to Wigtown, but not after getting incredibly irate with an old arsehole tourist in his fucking Volvo smoking a fag and blocking the way and being oblivious to it. By the time we got to home base, it had brightened up and we had a wander round Wigtown. The dogs, however, were in a completely noisy and restless mood, so we came back here, got them settled, I did the dinner and the wife went back up on her own.

It's now gone 8pm and it doesn't feel like it. We've had an oddly busy but relaxing day; the wife is fit to go to bed already, I'm hoping the TV program I'm downloading comes in at faster than 15kbps, but I feel as though I've done some walking and had the first real day of the holiday.

Highlights of the day:

• If you ever get up this way this is unbelievable; you could spend all day without a stitch of clothes on and probably see no one else, especially if you go up round the head and where the caves are. This is Back Bay, about three miles east of Monreith (there's also a wonderful otter statue worth looking at).
• The Steam Packet Inn - see above.

Disappointment of the day:

• If the Isle of Whithorn is the kind of place where I could gladly spend the rest of my life - and it really is - then it's big sister Whithorn is like Corby with character. We saw the first chavs there - and boy they were as rough as a badger's sandpapered arse - and it had all the welcoming atmosphere of a protestant at an IRA meeting in 1972. It's like someone looked at Wigtown and thought, 'Hm, I like the cut of their jib, I think I'll make my town like that.' Sadly, he then went to the pub drank 22 pints of heavy, took loads of illegal narcotics and was beaten round the head with a sausage stuffed with diamonds for a week, He then built Whithorn from whatever memories he had left; adding odd bits and missing out essential things. It has the widest high street I have ever seen and the two narrowest of entrances into it. Quaint, you might think. Fucking retarded is what it is in real life. It looks dirty, isolated, forgotten and full of despair - it is how Roger and I saw Wigtown in 1998; which incidentally is something the wife found in a history of the town. This place almost died in the 1990s; it was split by problems, had massive unemployment and most of the businesses were dying, but through some intrepid ex-pats, some local interest and hard work, they put Wigtown back on the map by reinventing it as Scotland's Book Town. Whithorn could reinvent itself as Scotland's Home of Despair and Cretinism.

Tomorrow we take Jenny to Dumfries and put her on a train (that's a 54 mile drive) and then do the coast road on the way back; expect some stunning pictures from the wife.

2012 - HD2

On the way here, yesterday, the wife was the first person to notice the fluctuating temperatures. All the way up it ranged between 18 and 21.5 degrees, depending on the rain; but when we got into Scotland it went all over the place. At one point about 10 miles from Dumfries, the temperature reached 22.5, but looking at the huge black mass in front of us I didn't expect it to last that long and it didn't. At the heart of the storm it was down to 13.5 degrees and was horrible.

This morning - after a long lie in - we decided to have a nothing day. We thought we'd drive down to Garlieston - on Jenny, our host's, recommendation; but there were far too many cows roaming around unfenced, so we got the OS map out and saw this place called Monreith with its Black Rock Beach. By the time we got there, the clouds were all to our left and blue sky and sea to our right. On the way down to it, I was the person to notice how utterly dead the whole place is; this isn't a traditional family holiday destination, therefore there's no one really here, at all, even the locals are few and far between. No wonder The Wicker Man was filmed here.

The beach was much like the roads; a handful of people and not much else, not even sand, but hey, we're on holiday. Actually, if you could have a beach like this on a glorious day with bugger all else, you'd bite someone's hand off. The dogs loved it and there's a bunch of photos that I may or may bot upload before the end of the week. The temperature on the car's thermometer said 23 degrees and for an hour or so we just chilled and it was really nice.

However, the lovely nothing day got very un-lovely as we were heading back from the beach. The blue skies were soon replaced by dark threatening bags of water soaked angriness and as we got into Wigtown the heavens opened and do I mean opened. It was like a cloudburst in the centre of the town; you could barely see 50 feet in front of you, the temperature was 14 degrees and we were laughing like idiots, because? We're on holiday!

It is now 3.30; the torrential rain has slowed to a steady cross between a drizzle and general rain; the BBC website reckons it'll be gone by 4 and the sun will be out by 6pm. Yeah and if my aunt had balls she'd be my uncle, I've cooked the dinner and watched a bit of the Olympics, specifically Ben Ainslie's win in the sailing thingy. There was a moment towards the end of the final race where the commentator, whoever he is, was focused on the French boat - which stood zero chance of winning, but was leading this final race. The camera stayed on the French boat for a good three minutes and finally the commentator almost shouted, "IT DOESN'T GET MUCH MORE EXCITING THAN THIS!" Really? Okay, I'll take that under advisement.

The rain, which looked like it was relenting about twenty minutes ago, has pepped up a bit, so the intended dog walk is being postponed. I should be doing something like working on one of my ideas, but, I've yet to find somewhere in this cottage that I feel really comfortable working from. I think I need to settle. Maybe if we had a couple of hours of sun? I think I'm going to read my book...

It's now 8.45 and the dogs are knackered, I'm on my second beer and the only thing going on has been some serious chilling; the sun even came out around 6pm and the (current) forecast isn't bad. I have this to finish up, I shall read some of my book and just take in the utter silence that is outside. if the skies clear, the wife said she might let me get her telescope out tonight and believe me as much as I'd like it to be that isn't a euphemism, missus.

Highlights of the day:

• The Forest - that's it, not something forest or oojamaflip woods, just The Forest. It will get some serious attention later in the week.
• Black Rock beach - you could film a period drama there and it would be authentic (if you could disguise the tarmac road).
• Frogs!
• Finding a pub that might have some potential.
  

Disappointment of the day:

• The Martyrs' Walk down at Wigtown 'Harbour'. I expected, you know, a walk, something substantial, but not in the league of, you know, the Pennine Way or St Cuthbert's Way, but something that took you deep into the winding estuary river of the Cree. If you look at the two pictures above you will see Wigtown and the Cree, which is a tidal estuary, which wends its way through a load of marshlands until it gets wider and falls into the sea. I expected the walk to take us a couple of miles into the depths of the estuary; but no, it doesn't take you that far, it takes you about 100 yards (if that) and then ends (with a bench). You can go further on, it just isn't recommended. Hopefully the Martyrs did something honourable and went and jumped in the river and drowned for some cause, otherwise I can't see what they sacrificed or for that matter how they did it. Oh, I think we'll make them walk 100 yards as punishment, but let them have a sit down at the end. But sire, you will be making martyrs of them. Really? How's that work then? We're not killing them. Perhaps we should have them grazed to death by sheep at the end of it, or maybe thrown into the iron ore rich waters of the Cree where they can develop a lovely colour before rusting to death; maybe even tie them to floor and be eaten by slugs, god knows there's enough of those buggers here and some as big as a baby's arm. All in a Scottish accent.
  Apparently, the martyrs were two women who conducted open air church services during the takeover by the Episcopalian church, who were then tied to stakes and left to drown as the waters rose, which is actually quite nasty compared to my feeble attempt at Pythonesque humour...

Tomorrow, more beaches, Port William, Wigtown sans monsoon (hopefully) and a curry. Stay tuned you spunky buggers things might actually happen!

If there are any mistakes in this or any subseqnute globs it's because of various reasons ranging from alcohol, an assortment of drugs and the fact that I am on my netbook, I haven't got the luxury of saving it onto a memory stick and taking it upstairs to the main PC where I can spell check it and read the tiny scribble on the page without squinting even with my reading glasses and yes, before you ask, I do wear reading glasses.

2012 - HD1

South-west Scotland has 'Tourist Attractions'; they're not strictly listed as you would imagine - you get the obligatory brown tourism sign, with such legends as the Devil's Porridge Exhibition and The Tooth Art Gallery, but you don't get much more and then you get this sign that says, quite clearly, Tourist Attractions. One such attraction was the Torture and Upholstery Centre; or as the wife pointed out, it was actually a Furniture and Upholstery Centre; I'd just read it wrongly.

The journey was relatively uneventful; with the world and his brother concentrating on Jessica Ennis's abs, the roads were quiet-ish and once we got north of Kendal, it became bleak and clear, apart from the start of the rain storms. We got off at the Lakes to try and find a pub and somewhere to stretch the dogs legs, but there weren't any, so we let the dogs out in a car park* and got back on the road. It started to thunderstorm just north of Gretna and by the time we got to Dumfries the sky looked angry and black and full of fork lightning - it was really quite impressive, if not a little scary at times, especially at the amount of water on the road and being hoicked onto my car by passing lorries.

*Actually, we went to a place called Sedgewick, which just happened to the be the place where they found Aphelia Ahmed's body - the Pakistani girl murdered by her parents; now, is that a spooky coincidence or what?

What followed after our arrival was pretty much what you'd expect from an arrival at a holiday destination; we unpacked, sorted things out, took the dogs down to the mud flats, Lexy rolled in some yellow pooh, came back and sat exhausted until the wife crashed out and left me doing this.

I am Bruce Bucked; 8 hours in the car and all the usual bother. I can't guarantee anything better later (especially as the weather forecast for tomorrow is worse than today's), but I won't have a headache.