A couple of weeks ago some friends invited us to spend an afternoon along the coast at Cellardyke, their house is very handy for the beach, in fact it backs onto it, the tide was almost as high as it gets. I just took some photos of a small part of the beach, the North Sea looked lovely and clear, but I suspect that like most other stretches of sea nowadays – it’s full of teeny wee plastic particles.
It looks like I must have taken this photograph from a boat but it’s just the angle that the beach takes. I’ve always wondered why the village was called Cellardyke and I’ve just discovered that it’s a corruption of Sil’erdykes as the harbour walls were covered with the drying fishing nets which were covered in silvery fish scales.
We’ll be going back to that area soonish as we plan to take the boat over to the Isle of May (weather permitting) as we’ve never been there before and I dying to get some photos of puffins and whatever other seabirds might be around the place.
I couldn’t resist taking a photo of the building in the photo below, it’s up for sale but it looks like nature is going to beat any buyer to it.
From there we went for a snoop around a supermarket, it’s always interesting in a foreign country – to see what different things are on offer food-wise. But with French supermarkets you always have to pluck up courage to go in as when you first step through the doors you are invariably assailed by such a horrendous smell that it takes some courage not to just turn around and dash out again for fresh air. I don’t know how they manage it, I suspect they just never clean the places.
Below is a photo of an old style French ‘gents’ public toilet – and it’s still in use. As usual Jack was in need of a loo (I swear I could write a guidebook on the public loos of Scotland – I seem to have stood outside most of them at some point!) Anyway, he went into the small white building which he thought was unisex, but I’m not so sure as the old metal structure is still in use, I saw chaps using it, and I mean saw as their heads were in view. This is all rather alien to Brits, but French toilet facilities still leave a lot to be desired, in some places it is literally just a hole in the ground!
It reminded me of Clochemerle, it’s a book by Gabriel Chevallier and it was televised way back in the early 1970s on the BBC, very late due to its subject matter being seen as rather risque in those days.
From the ‘cor blimey’ to the sublime Saint Catherine’s Church below is really old, 15th century in some parts I believe.
The church has a separate belltower.
And this other church was actually open.
As you can see the internal decor is quite different from British churches.
The very intricate designs on the walls and ceilings seem to be more in keeping with a grand house, but maybe that is a feature of French Roman Catholic churches. It’s beautiful anyway.
Sailing on out of Honfleur, the surroundings are lovely, with this heavily wooded area right by the coast.
Sailing back out to sea, as you can see it’s a flat calm but the sea did get a wee bit more interesting in the next few days as we sailed back to Scotland. Most of the time though lying in bed on ship made me think of how it would feel if you were being stirred around gently in a big bowl. I find it very relaxing – rock-a-bye-baby sort of sensation, although I always worried about that lullaby’s words. Even as a small child that sounded crazily dangerous to me!
We sailed into Lorient in Brittany on a Monday. Apparently shops in France shut on a Monday. I’ve spent a couple of holidays in France before and I don’t recall that at all, although they did have what seemed to us to be bizarre opening times. In Britain we just assume that shops should open at 9 am and close at 5.30 pm but it isn’t like that in other parts of the world. You would have thought though that any town that has a cruise ship containing nearly 1,000 passengers docking within a very short walking distance from ‘centre ville’ that the business owners might think it was a good idea to open up the shops, just for that Monday, but hmm, they don’t seem to think like that in France. The only shops open were bakeries and pharmacies. I think that France must have the biggest number of pharmacies of any country in the world. The photo below is of a typical street, complete with very tall plane trees. Well, I think that’s what they are.
Anyway, it was just nice to be able to stretch our legs properly after getting off the ship and Lorient is a lovely town – for window shopping. If I had known the town would be shut we would have arranged to go on one of the arranged trips to nearby Quimper, where that charming pottery originates, oh well, maybe next time we’re in that neighbourhood we’ll go there.
Below is a photo of the Hotel de Ville, I love fountains, I don’t know why we don’t have as many in the UK.
It has a rather snazzy looking modern theatre.
Most of Lorient is quite modern, it was badly bombed during the war in 1943-44, but the Hotel Gabriel and tower below are quite historic. The Germans had their U-Boat headquarters in Lorient so it was always going to be a big target for the allies, they apparently dropped leaflets prior to the bombing campaign advising inhabitants to get out. It’s quiet depressing how nothing seems to change where human beings are concerned, we – or should I say – the powers that be just never learn and ordinary people just have to suffer it all.
Despite being disappointed at fetching up in a more or less deserted town, it was only at this time that I began to really enjoy the cruise. The weather wasn’t great, it was quite chilly and we even got a wee smattering of rain, but Lorient has some beautiful planting and fountains and is obviously quite a wealthy area, going by the huge amount of yachts and boats moored there. The photo below shows just a tiny fraction of them.
There’s quite a lot of art deco inspired modern architecture around. I especially liked the porthole windows in the building below.
As we were leaving port on the Black Watch there was a nice looking wee town across the river from Lorient. I think it’s called Locmiquélic.
Tomorrow we’ll sail via the Bay of Biscay to Getxo in Spain, the port for Bilbao, where things get much better.
We chose to go on a cruise leaving from Rosyth in Fife because it’s fairly handy for us, in fact we even looked at a house in Rosyth when we were looking for a new home a couple of years ago. Rosyth is by the River Forth and for me it meant that our trip would be exciting from the very start as we would be sailing under the bridges – all three of them, and getting up close to the third one – the Queensferry Crossing, still under construction. We checked in at 4.30 pm on September, 30th – as we were asked to and by 6.00 pm the Black Watch set sail. The photo below was taken from the ship, looking over to Edinburgh.
The photo below is of one of the islands in the Firth of Forth, Inchcolm.
The photo below is of the new bridge called the Queensferry Crossing, still under construction.
The photo below is of Kirkcaldy where we used to live until a couple of years ago.
If you look closely at the photo below I think you can just about make out all three bridges.
The week previously had been wild and windy but the weather had taken a turn for the worse as far as I was concerned as the North Sea that we sailed into was a flat calm. What a disappointment, I’ve always loved heavy seas, ever since going on an incredibly rough voyage to Scandinavia as a schoolgirl. Anyway, we sailed along at an average speed of 16 knots and after sailing from the North Sea into the English Channel I was a bit happier as the sea was quite a bit choppier there.
I was still wondering if we had done the right thing in going on a cruise though as I’m not really a people person. I’m fine once I get to know folks but a shipful of around a thousand strangers was a bit daunting to me. For the first few days I did a lot of reading in our cabin, apart from meal times. I must say the food was really delicious, but going out for fancy meals has never been my top way of relaxing, although I did get used very quickly to having everything done for me. The evening meal was five courses but we usually just had three courses, I think we were unusual in that.
Just about the first thing that struck us was that everybody seemed to be so much older than us. I reckon that the average age was about 80. To be fair we deliberately booked up a cruise that was for adults only, mainly because I thought it would be a nightmare if there were a lot of badly behaved kids rampaging around. It never occurred to me that going on a cruise is actually cheaper than paying for a care home – but it is, and I’m sure the care is better on board too! We did find a few people who were younger than us, some folks who were maybe only around 40 or so.
The ship seemed to be full of people who were more or less addicted to cruising, loads of them had booked up for their next cruise before this one came to an end. They claim that the sea air makes your clothes shrink!
When I started to explore the ship a bit more I noticed that there were loads of people reading books, a few using Kindles. John Grisham was very popular but I didn’t see anyone reading the sorts of books that I tend to go for. There were a fair few knitters around too. I had thought about taking some knitting as it’s getting on for my knitting ‘season’ but I really thought that I would definitely be looked on as being a bit eccentric – knitting on a cruise.
So the first few days I was a bit down and that song about Camp Granada kept running through my mind. But then we made friends with the people at the next door table, and we discovered some old friends were on the cruise, old in both ways as we’ve known them for 30 years or so and they are both over 80 and still going strong. So by the time we got to the first port – Lorient in Brittany on Monday I was feeling a lot more optimistic. Tomorrow I’ll show you some photos of that port.
On our recent trip up to the Highlands with Peggy we were driving along admiring the views, well Jack couldn’t do so much admiring because he had to concentrate on the driving, when Peggy remarked that a lodge house we had just passed looked like the one from the TV programme Monarch of the Glen. When we saw a sign by the side of a few shops saying Glenbogle – she just about went off the scale of excitement! It is in fact Ardverikie estate and the loch is called Loch Laggan. The series was based on the books by Compton Mackenzie.
That road is pretty twisty turny but we did find a lay-by to stop off in and we climbed under/over the crash barrier and down a steep thistle and nettle edged path to reach the edge of the loch. As you can see we had a great day for sightseeing.
What a view the owners have from their home, I believe it was on the market a few years ago – asking price a mere 7 million quid. I wonder if it is now owned by a Russian oligarch or some such. The house is built in the Scottish baronial style, very popular in Victorian times.
I spotted the wee jetty that features in the programme too but seem to have managed to miss it of the few photos I took. I hope Peggy managed to get it.
The beach is my kind of beach with lovely glittering mica laden stones with bits of pink granite scattered around too. But we couldn’t linger all that long as we wanted to reach Dornie where our B&B accomodation awaited us. We did plan to go past ‘Glenbogle’ again and check out the few shops nearby but a slight change in the route back meant that we somehow missed the turn off. Ah well – maybe next time.
Kirkcudbright was one of the places that I particularly wanted to visit when we were down in the south-west of Scotland recently with Peggy. I had been there once before, years ago when our boys were wee and we stopped off there just to break a journey. McClellan Castle below is a stone’s throw from the harbour.
It’s well worth visiting this wee town but I must admit that I was a wee bit disappointed that it doesn’t have an awful lot in the way of shops or interesting places to visit. I had read somewhere that there were quite a few art galleries around as the town has always been very popular with artists, but we only found two galleries, one that had been taken over by an Edinburgh gallery for some weeks, and one which had artwork by just one artist.
The house below belonged to the artist Jessie M. King. She’s probably best known for her book illustrations. They’re beautifully delicate and ethereal. She lived there with her husband fellow artist E.A. Taylor.
There’s a mixture of building types in the town, from teeny wee medieval cottages to quite grand Georgian villas, and just a stone’s throw from the main street the streets are amazingly peaceful.
Below is the artist A.E. Hornel‘s house which is open to the public I think.
And there are closes like the one below leading to much older wee medieval houses.
Dorothy L. Sayers was one of the many artistic people who frequented Kirkcudbright and she actually set one of her books there – Five Red Herrings – when it was dramatised for TV they filmed it in and around Kirkcudbright.
It’s a fairly remote part of Scotland, but it’s a pretty wee place and it’s worth a visit if yoy find yourself in that area.
Last Friday we took Peggy to Eyemouth, an old fishing town in the Scottish Borders that she had been keen to visit.
As it happens it’s the town that Jack’s mother grew up in, she lived there in the 1920s when her father was the minister/vicar/priest of the Episcopal church there, it’s called St Ebba and when Jack’s parent’s bought their house they called it St Ebba after the church. I’m quite surprised that nobody chooses to name a daughter Ebba nowadays.
You can see Peggy’s post on our Eyemouth visit here.
I only took one photo while we were there.
As you can see it’s of the lifebelt from the lifeboat St Ebba.
If you’re looking for short break and trip ideas in Scotland you might be interested in this link. You’ll find seven incredible trip you could take this weekend (if you are lucky enough to be in Scotland of course)
I love bridges and the Clachan Bridge on the Isle of Seil in the photo below looks like something out of a fairy tale illustration to me.
One of my favourite local beaches is at Largo Bay in Fife, the photo above is of a rock pool there. I took the photo today, we swithered about going there or going to Falkland Palace for a walk around the gardens there to see what was blooming, but when I had a look at the National Trust ‘ What’s on at Easter’ section I realised that they were having an Easter egg hunt there today. So that was definitely to be avoided as it sounded too much like mayhem to me.
So Largo Bay it was then, it’s a good beach for a walk and has a nice mixture of sand and interesting stones to look at, I find sandy beaches quite boring. They don’t actually drill for oil in the Firth of Forth, these oil rigs are just being floated off to their final destination in the North Sea after having been built fairly close by.
We must have walked further along the beach than usual because neither of us had ever spotted that there was a path above the beach, I just caught a glimpse of this ruined house and climbed up the bank to investigate.
The path was obviously a railway line before Beeching closed down a huge amount of the UK’s railway network in the 1960s. The photo below is of the village of Lower Largo in the distance.
The fields above the beach have horses and bulls in them, although Jack calls all cattle cows. He is so unobservant! Sadly they are just black bulls, nothing at all exciting like Highland cattle or Belted Galloways.
The bull below was not in the least impressed by being called a cow though, just as well there was a fence between us!
A couple of days ago we went to visit our good friend Eric who lives close to this wee cove, which is actually just called Cove, in Berwickshire. As you can see the tide was fairly far in but we still managed to get a bit of a walk along the beach. At least one of the houses in the background is a holiday let, fine for a holiday but a bit too close to the sea for my liking, for all the year round living.
The nearest big place is Dunbar which was at one point quite a popular holiday destination, but this wee remote stretch of beach is far nicer and I have to say a lot more pleasant smelling than Dunbar was on the same day.
It was the houses above which I was most interested in, they’ve been built on a narrow lump of rock which is surrounded by the sea, or should I call it the Solway Firth? I’ve always said I would never want a house too close to water but these two have obviously been standing there for well over 100 years and they haven’t been washed away yet. You can see Uther the red and white setter having a good old sniff around.
I don’t think anybody lives in the houses nowadays, they seem to be just used for storing fishing gear.
Below you can see the sea wall, Jack, Eric and Uther. We knew that it was hot, in fact as hot as it had been all so-called summer, but we later discovered that despite it being the last day of September, it was hotter in Scotland than it was on the Cote d’Azure. There’s really no accounting for our weather but it makes life interesting I suppose.
If you look closely below you should be able to see a couple of scuba divers who seemed to be having fun. I’ve never done that, in fact I never will as I’m not a great swimmer, but I’d love to see what it looked like underwater there.
Jack remarked that Cove reminded him of Robin Hood’s Bay in Yorkshire, but being a good Yorkshireman Eric of course had never been there. Well you never do get around to visiting the tourist attractions on your own doorstep do you?!
