You can’t go to South Queensferry and not take some photos of the Forth Bridge, so here they are!

The Hawes Inn appears in Robert Louis Stevenson’s book Kidnapped. As you can see the approach to the bridge is more or less straight above the inn but of course the bridge wasn’t there at the time that Robert Louis Stevenson was writing about.

The photo below is of the main street in South Queensferry, I think it’s quite unusual to have a two tiered street with a pavement and houses being situated over the top of the shops.

This vintage car came tootling along just as I was taking the photos, it was like something that Toad out of The Wind in the Willows might have driven. They must have been freezing! I wouldn’t mind going for a drive in it on a hot day though.

As you can see, they have some olde worlde streetlamps in South Queensferry which fit in nicely with the age of the buildings. Even although it was a cold day it was still busy with locals and day trippers, there are quite a few eateries in the town and I think it’s a favourite place for people living in Edinburgh to visit.

Some of the buildings are really quite ancient, as you can see the date on this pub is 1683.

This photo below is of Jack (husband) eyeing up one of the boats which has been lifted out of the harbour but I don’t think he’ll be taking up sailing.

This is one end of the town from the harbour. It’s a nice wee place to have a bit of a stroll around.

It was reading Margaret of Books Please review of a Catriona McPherson book which is set there which made me think it was about time we had another look at South Queensferry. The last time we were there was during the summer when we took a trip on one of the boats which sails regularly to the island of Inchcolm. It’s a good day out, when the weather’s fair. You really wouldn’t want to be stuck out on an island in the middle of the Forth if there was the chance of a howling gale and rain blowing up. You can have a look at my Inchcolm post here.

We spent two nights in Cambridge because there’s a lot to see in the area and we had friends to meet too. The first time we actually went into the town it was night time but very busy with students flying all over the place on their bikes. You’re in real danger of getting knocked down by them, I’ve never seen so many cyclists before. The bike is King in Cambridge. There are so many all padlocked up that people often have trouble finding their machine amongst the many and have to give up and walk home! The above photo is of the Senate House, just a few bikes there. There weren’t so many around during the day and there were graduations taking place at this time.

This is Clare College, a very handsome building and lovely setting. The college buildings in Cambridge are very much smaller than I had imagined they would be. I thought that the whole place would be full of Hooray Henrys/Henriettas but it wasn’t, in fact the students at St Andrews are much more inclined to be snooty and loud mouthed.

Below is the entrance to Christ’s College.

And this is what you see when you walk through the doorway, very pretty.

Look in the other direction and you see this side. It’s all very Brideshead Revisited, although that was set in Oxford, but this quad seems really small compared with St Salvator’s at St Andrews. No students were seen wandering around with their teddy bear. Shame!

As you can see this is where you go if you want to go on a punt but it was actually raining quite heavily at this point so the punts were all tied up, nobody being mad enough to want to take a trip on the Cam.

There’s obviously a lot of money in Cambridge and there are lots of privately owned shops and boutiques. Not the sort of shops which you get around most universities. But the natives are very friendly and although people in the south of England are always being slagged off for being cold and stand-offish, they definitely aren’t at The Pickerel Inn anyway. We’ll probably be going back sometime as there’s still plenty to see in the county. Our friend from Yorkshire who lived temporarily in Cambridge says that the people in Yorkshire have a reputation for being warm and friendly but he says that they’re bloody miserable buggers. Well, I suppose he should know. He’s moving to Edinburgh soon. I wonder what he’ll think of Edinburghers!

I took this one just as we were going under the road bridge, you can just see a bit of it.

This photo is of the underside of the scary road bridge. You can see why it’s scary because it’s see through and it’s a bit disconcerting to be able to see the water far below you as you drive across. Drivers tend not to notice it as they’re concentrating on the road ahead but I know quite a few people who are nervy as passengers because of the design.

If you look closely you can see some of the bridge workers in their orange overalls hanging over the side having a look at the boat as we sailed under them. They’ve got a great view but rather them than me because if they fall off they have no chance of surviving!

Click on the photos if you want to enlarge them.

As you can see, these houses are situated right underneath the Forth Bridge. The owners probably bought them because they have a great view, if you’re into that sort of thing but I wouldn’t live in a house there, even if I got it for nothing!

This photo is of the Forth Bridge with a view of the island of Inchgarvie, which is uninhabited now but it has been used for centuries as a fortification and in World War II it had a gun emplacement on it. Obviously the Germans were keen to bomb the bridge but they didn’t manage.

This is a photograph of the Forth Road Bridge, forever known as the SCARY bridge, as named by Joan Kyler. She’s right it is scary because as you drive along on it you can clearly see the sea underneath you, such is its design. It’s also scary because the cables are corroding and they are planning on building a new bridge because that one is having to cope with far more traffic than they ever expected it to. The two bridges are very close together and quite often there are whales swimming underneath them, but not this time, sadly.

The sun didn’t stay around very long and it was very windy as usual, but it was just nice to get out of the house and do a wee bit of beachcombing for some lovely sea glass.

I think the Bridge is quite beautiful considering it’s a big lump of iron.

This cherry tree is right outside Gordon’s living-room window in Alloa, it’s gorgeous, it’s just a pity that the blossom doesn’t last very long.

This is one of the many sculptures which decorate the roundabouts in Clackmannanshire. They seem to have given one local sculptor loads of commissions – lucky him! I do like his work but they have given others a chance to shine too. Apparently this one is called Journey’s End. You can see more of Andy Scott’s work (and various other artists’) by following the links here.

We parked the car at the Loch of the Lowes, intending to go for a good long walk around the loch, but it turned out that you can’t do that. We ended up walking to Dunkeld from there, which was a first for us. We thought that we were never going to get to the town, it seemed a lot further away than the signposts stated, I think they must have been country miles!

Anyway, by the time we got to Dunkeld we were pretty tired and didn’t feel up to doing our usual river walk along the ‘silveryTay’, so we just had a sit down by the cathedral and had a bit of a rest before making the very steep climb over the hill to the car park at the Loch of the Lowes again. We didn’t see any birds flying about at all, never mind ospreys, just loads of bird-watchers.

As usual we had great intentions of going further north but never did get around to it during the two week long spring holiday, which went past in a flash. Never mind, this coming Good Friday is another holiday and then there’s the royal wedding holiday, then the May Bank holiday and just to make things even weirder, the Easter weather forecast is really good. How rare is that!

At last, we managed to get away for a few days and we did actually do what we had planned to do for ages, which was to visit the north-east of England starting with Newcastle.

We each had one grandparent who was born in Newcastle, there has always been a lot of toing and froing between that area and Scotland. Men always had to go wherever the work was in the coal mining and shipbuilding industries. The men in our families were the shipbuilding type and ended up settling by the River Clyde near Glasgow and leaving the River Tyne behind.

There are actually four bridges in this photograph.

We were in Dundee yesterday, so I thought I would take the chance to photograph the bridge, including the scary stumps of the old bridge. The one which collapsed in a very high wind over 100 years ago.

Looking down on the remains of the original bridge from a train is not a very pleasant experience. Luckily, if it is a nice bright day you will be distracted by the lovely view of the hills of Perthshire in the distance.

William Topaz McGonagall that eccentric Dundonian ‘poet’, famously wrote one of his truly dire poems about the incident.

As you can see there is work going on to the fabric of the bridge at the moment. The same can be said of just about every bridge that I’ve seen recently.

My photo is a stitch of two because I couldn’t get the whole Palace into the one frame. Shame about the red car.

The village and Palace are well worth a visit if you are in the area. It’s stuffed full of ancient history but it also played a part in more recent times with The Chapel Royal being used by the Polish Airborne Forces during World War 2, when they were stationed nearby. They were allowed to use it as there wasn’t an ordinary Roman Catholic Church in the vicinity.

I really liked the royal (real) tennis court. It’s the oldest one in Britain and was built for James V in 1539. When we were there , a match was actually taking place. It is a sort of cross between tennis and squash.

The village itself is very quaint and has a variety of interesting houses. Some of them are absolutely tiny but people are still living in them today. I think they were probably inhabited by weavers originally.

It was traditional to carve the initials of the original house owners as well as the date on the door lintel. This is known as a marriage lintel.

Falkland Estate is on the outskirts of the village and has a very pretty gatehouse. As you can see there is a pond by the house. It’s usually full of ducks and moor hens but it was deserted when I took this photograph.

The lovely wee stone bridge just leads into a field. It crosses the burn (stream) which fills the pond. The burn continues its way from the pond and under the house. That is the one thing that puts me off the house. I would hate water running underneath my home, especially as it is a rushing torrent and noisy.

You can walk through the estate which has a very smart cricket pitch, which I think is probably a bit of a shock to English tourists, but cricket is actually quite popular in more rural areas. We’re just not very good at it.

We drove over The Squinty Bridge for the first time. I really like it, I think it’s quite elegant. They’ve been doing some radical road tweaking recently (as usual) so it was all a bit confusing.

Eventually we got to our destination which was the Scotland Street School. Designed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh in 1905 and used as a primary school until 1979, it has now become a museum of education. The building is really stylish and very different from the very plain Victorian school which I went to.

It must have been nice to have some lovely coloured tiles and windows instead of the very utilitarian design of most schools.

They still had the belt (tawse) for punishment just like the rest of us, until it was banned in 1982 or thereabouts. They have one on show but I have one hanging up in my dining-room. It is quite a talking point as younger folk can’t believe that you could get ‘six of the best’ from such a heavy, thick strap of leather until fairly recently.

I can hardly believe it myself really, although I witnessed it plenty of times. I always managed to avoid it but lived in fear of it. Sometimes if a teacher couldn’t get someone to own up to a misdemeanour – the whole class ended up getting it.

Teachers must have had plenty of stamina then, anyway I digress.

If you are into Rennie Mackintosh architecture and design you will enjoy a visit to this school.