Loch Leven, Perth and Kinross.

Posted on 6 March 2023 by Katrina

Way back in July we visited the Loch Leven area of Perth and Kinross to have lunch and walk off some of the calories after that. It’s close to an airstrip that’s used by people for gliding. A nearby hill produces good updraughts.

Memory is so weird as I remembered this as being a really blue sky day, well we did have a really good summer, so I was surprised to see that the sky was really quite grey and moody looking.

We decided to go for a walk to the loch, the photo below is a stitch.

We walked for ages, but didn’t seem to be getting any closer to the loch.

So we ended up turning back and walking towards the Bishop Hill and Scotlandwell.

Dumbarton Castle – Tom Weir

Posted on 22 January 2023 by Katrina

On TV recently I’ve been watching a lot of programmes which feature people walking in the countryside. I do enjoy walking but mainly in good weather not so much in the winter, that’s armchair travelling time. The first such programmes I watched would have been those by the late great Tom Weir, but I hadn’t realised that there are a couple of his films on You Tube featuring Dumbarton Castle, my old stamping ground. The photo on my header was taken from the top of the castle and the film shows Tom making his way up there.

If you’re interested you can see a previous blogpost of mine about the castle here.

After Harry and Meghan’s wedding (or maybe just before it) it was announced that they had been given the Scottish titles Earl and Countess of Dumbarton, and apparently everyone in the town got quite excited because that would normally mean a royal visit from them, but it was not to be. It seems that the historic name of Dumbarton which means fort of the Britons was seen as an insult because the word dumb is in it. Well – what can I say?!
You can read more about the town here.

Boxing Day walk near Errol, Perth and Kinross

Posted on 28 December 2022 by Katrina

Christmas this year was hosted by one of our sons and his wife so we travelled to rural Perthshire on Christmas morning, the small twisty turny roads were fairly empty. It was lovely not to be doing all the cooking and a good time was had by all. On Boxing Day we went for a crisp walk around the countryside which surrounds the nearby village. It was a wee bit icy underfoot in parts.

The photos below are of the wee village of Errol, if you want to see them enlarged click on the photos. The church in the photo dates from 1833 so it’s quite new, but the bells still ring out the hours and one of them is cracked. It sounds quite charming somehow. My strange looking shadow is towards the right of the second photo.

All of us in shadow form. We’re shy!

From these photos the area looks fairly flat but in the photo below there is a snow covered hill which I think was probably a Pictish hill fort thousands of years ago. The River Tay is not far from the path we were walking on and that of course is famous for salmon fishing, but nowadays any salmon caught must be put back in the river – carefully.

Well we walked off some of our Christmas dinner calories, I hope!

Merry Christmas

Posted on 25 December 2022 by Katrina

Happy Christmas!

If by any chance you are feeling at a loose end – well it looks like there’s absolutely nothing on TV worth watching – you could go down that rabbit hole called You Tube. If you don’t fancy doing an actual walk it might be entertaining to do a virtual one, kicking off with the Aviemore area below. Have fun!

Dumfries House, Ayrshire

Posted on 2 December 2022 by Katrina

Since we visited Dumfries House for the first time last month the house keeps popping up on TV. First it was featured in The Repair Shop, with King Charles. The yesterday it was on TV again with a documentary about how it was saved by the King who headed a consortium of like-minded people.

It was interesting to see the gardens being planned and constructed, but here are a few photos of how it looked in October, with the planting really coming on.

If you ever are able to visit Dumfries House remember that the tours of the house are guided and you must pre-book.

Below is a photo of the steps leading to the Belvedere.

The garden areas are coming on nicely.

Probably the house below is /was for the head gardener.

The cute wee house below is in the kitchen garden. It’s my idea of a dream house, or certainly from a fairy tale. I/we could just move in, there wouldn’t be much to do in the way of housework, and it has a handy chimney!

It wasn’t great weather-wise when we were at Dumfries House so we didn’t spend a lot of time exploring the grounds, we’ll do more of that the next time. It does have a great play area for kids though, so it’s a place for all ages to enjoy

As ever, click on the photos if you want to enlarge them.

If you are interested in visiting the area you might like to look at the nearby small village of Maybole which you can read about here.

Kildrummy Castle, Aberdeenshire

Posted on 20 October 2022 by Katrina

We had to have two goes at visiting Kildrummy Castle when we were in Aberdeenshire for a few days in August. The first time we tried to go there it was shut, normally as it’s a ruin you would have been able just to wander around it after hours, but for some reason we weren’t allowed to do that at this castle. It dates from the 1200s so I suppose it can be forgiven for being a ruin.

The castle was originally the seat of the Earl of Mar but over the years it has been under siege several times and so has changed hands, it’s thought that the English King Edward I took it over at some point.

You can’t really tell from what is left of the building but the design of it was similar to French castles, as so many Scottish castles are, they looked to France and Italy for inspiration and obviously didn’t want to be like English castles.

Certainly Kildrummy was inhabited by some of the Bruce family, including Robert’s brother and sister, but its downfall came much later than that at 1716 after the failure of the Jacobite ‘rebellion’ the previous year. Obviously the then owners backed the wrong side!

The information boards give you some idea of how the place would have looked in its heyday. The one below shows the Snow Tower which was the castle keep, one of the tallest buildings of its time.

As you can see from the photo of a model below, it was quite elegant in its day. Even although it’s a ruin it’s still worth seeing.

Balmaha, Loch Lomond, Scotland

Posted on 14 October 2022 by Katrina

It’s just over a month since we travelled over to the west of Scotland to visit a Doors Open weekend, we managed to fit in a visit to Loch Lomond too. The photos here are of Balmaha which is a place that I had never visited before despite growing up nearby. It’s a dead end as there’s one road in and out!

My idea of heaven would be to be puttering around on the loch, even in a rowing boat, but one of these ones might be better at my age. It’s a good long while since I rowed my cousins around on Loch Long. I got the job of rowing as I was the country cousin and they were the city kids. Actually it was 50 years ago and when I think about it now I go quite cold as I don’t think any of us could swim and in those days nobody used life-jackets.

It was September the ninth and the place was full of visitors, it was a golden evening and quite warm, probably the last day of summer weather, I had my sun hat on. It’s an awful lot chillier now. The tourist information page recommends arriving by boat as parking your car can be difficult, but we managed with no problem, I imagine that in the summer months it will be heaving with people.

At the Balloch side of Loch Lomond in the photo below there were people doing various water sports. Sadly people drown every year in the loch, it’s very cold and I think that shocks people, even good swimmers.

You can see lots more images of the area here.

Craigievar Castle, Aberdeenshire, Scotland

Posted on 22 August 2022 by Katrina

At the end of last week we drove up to Aberdeenshire in the north-east of Scotland to spend a couple of nights there, we were so lucky with the weather. We spent our time running around various castles, Pictish stones, halls and gardens, the first one we went to was Cragievar Castle which we had never been to before. It’s pink!

Obviously it’s in the Scots Baronial style, sadly you aren’t allowed to take photos inside, but it is lovely, despite it having very steep spiral stone stairs which get narrower as you get towards the top, which was the domain of the servants, so it didn’t matter much if they broke their necks falling downstairs! They slept four to a bed. But they did live in a beautiful part of the country as you can see from the photo below, they may not have had much time to appreciate it though.

Jupiter Artland, Edinburgh

Posted on 14 August 2022 by Katrina

A couple of weeks ago we celebrated our 46th wedding anniversary (I know, but I was a child bride!) and we couldn’t think of anything better to do than to spend the afternoon at Jupiter Artland, which is an outdour sculpture park by Edinburgh. It was a hot day, and we hadn’t had any rain for quite a while but as you can see the Charles Jencks landforms below are holding up quite well to the drought.

In the distance you can just see the three bridges which span the Firth of Forth in the photo below.

I must admit that I’m not that enamoured with some of the art on offer here but it’s a lovely place to walk around and when it got too hot we just headed for the surrounding woodland for the shade. I wasn’t too impressed with this ‘bomb’ below, but each to their own.

I didn’t really think much of the Tracey Emin sculpture below either, but Jack quite liked it. He took some of these photos.

You won’t be surprised to know that I was more impressed by the garden which surrounds what was the separate ballroom of the ‘big hoose’ where the owners of the Artland still live.

The ballroom houses some of the Tracey Emin paintings, you can see some here but the link is really better for showing the inside of the ballroom. The artwork is ‘parental advisory’, and Emin seems to have just one thing on her mind at the moment, these paintings are all very recent, done after her radical cancer surgery.

Below is the garden gate. I love the design of the grass intersected by paviors.

And through the gate you can see one of those lit up signs similar to the ones at Modern 1 and 2 in Edinburgh. I find those ones a bit depressing.

And below is the ballroom building which at the moment houses part of their Tracy Emin exhibition, we didn’t stay long, but as ever admired the interior decor.

The ceiling looks like an intricately iced wedding cake, upside-down.

I did quite like the very large metal structure below which is called Firmament. For some reason there are no information boards about the artworks but there was on the map we were given at the entrance. Firmament is by Antony Gormley. There are info boards in areas where art used to be located but has been moved on, telling what used to be there.

Way off in the distance we could see a tower and it turned out to be the rose walk below. It’s made of wood, I don’t know how well it’s going to weather Scottish winters, but it looks very elegant now. It would be a lovely place to get married I think. Oops, I’m in this one which Jack took.

All of the roses are white but you can’t really see them in the photos.

The heleniums below were enjoying the heat and sunshine. This path surrounds the pond.

We had a walk around the nature pond, if you look carefully you should be able to see the swans with their three cygnets.

Jupiter Artland is on the outskirts of Edinburgh and is close to the flightpath for the airport. Below I managed to capture an aeroplane on my phone, as it flew over the Jencks landform.

Then it was time for lunch at the cafe, which was very good. It was the perfect way to celebrate 46 years of annoying each other!

Cuween Chambered Cairn, Orkney, Scotland

Posted on 4 August 2022 by Katrina

The Cuween Burial Chambered Cairn is accessed by the original doorway, which means that you have to crawl in. I was wary of getting my knees muddy though so I did a sort of elongated crawl, with my legs and arms stretched out.

Inside it’s quite roomy compared with some others.

There’s plenty of space to stand up in once you get through the tunnel entrance.

The side chambers are much bigger, I suppose that’s where the people were placed, with animals. I crawled halfway into the one below to get a pohoto of inside it, the dark shadow is my phone! The roof in the side chamber was low, well the dead don’t need to stand up I suppose! I would not have liked to go any further, it felt very claustraphobic – and a wee bit spooky.

Cuween Chambered Cairn is around 5,000 years old, but wasn’t excavated until 1901. It contained human and animal bones.

I don’t think I would have gone into any of these burial cairns on my own, as you can see I had Jack with me. It was definitely worth visiting this one though and it was a plus to have it all to ourselves so we could take our time having a good look at it.

Pining for the West

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Category Archives: Scotland