We were driving back from Perthshire to Fife one evening last week and I just had to point my camera out of the car window to take a couple of snaps, sadly I got a couple of power lines in the first photo.
The second one is sans lines though – and no I wasn’t driving at the time!
Since one of our sons has moved to Errol in Perthshire we’ve been travelling along a road which we hadn’t been on before and the view of Balvaird Castle from the road is an enticing one. So a few weeks ago we were on our way back home to Fife and as we were in no hurry we decided to stop and investigate the castle. The photo below is just how it looks from the road.
There’s a track up to the castle, it’s not too hard on the legs and it’s not long before you reach the castle.
Some of it is in not bad condition but other parts are ruins as you can see. It all adds to the atmosphere though.
It’s a fairly remote place but the surrounding countryside is lovely.
The view above is of the land around the back of the castle. And below is looking over to Fife.
The castle was built in 1500 by Sir Andrew Murray and it’s definitely worth breaking your journey to go and have a snoop around the outside of it, and it doesn’t cost anything either, unusually.
We were driving in Perthshire one day last week and I spotted a Saltire in the sky! You might have heard of how Scotland’s flag (the Saltire) came to be a blue background with a white Saint Andrew’s cross on it, if not then you can read about it here.
Anyway, below is a photo of last week’s Saltire. Is it an omen for the independence referendum I wonder? I took the photo through the windscreen as Jack was driving along so it isn’t nearly as clear as it looked on the day.
Oh all right, it probably is just two jet trails crossing the sky, but you never know, it might be an omen!
I took the photo above just a few minutes later as we were driving across the Friarton Bridge over the River Tay, just south of Perth. You can still just see the cross in the sky.
I promise you these will be the last photos of deer which I put on here, I’m almost over the novelty of it, but this one did look right at me as I was leaning out of the window to snap him, she was as interested in me as I was in her, she wasn’t at all bothered that I was there though. I now realise that it is red deer which is around this area, they’re quite a lot bigger than roe deer, so far we’ve only seen quite young ones though.
The four photographs below were taken at Errol in Perthsire, which is a very wee town, not more than a village really but they have built quite a few new houses recently so it’s expanding.
I took these photos on the River Tay walk, actually it doesn’t go that close to the river because there are massive reed beds on the banks of it, in fact they’re the largest reed beds in Europe, which hardly seems credible but it was on TV so it must be true! The reeds were used to thatch roofs until recently.
I just stood on one spot and turned in four directions when we got to the crossroads. It’s quite a nice walk and isn’t hilly so it’s an easy one.
And what about this for a view at the end of your road, it was taken from Gordon’s front path – not bad at all, well when they finish all the building work and the flags have gone it’ll be great. When we saw the view we were half wishing that we had had a look in Errol too when we were house-hunting.
The photo above is of a Japanese Garden which has been planted within the Glendoick Garden Centre, near Errol in Perthshire, Scotland. It has obviously been planted some years ago as it’s quite mature now, but it’s a great idea and it probably does quite a lot for their sales of those types of plants.
We visited about 10 days ago when it was looking fab, as you can see, I think we got there just at the perfect time.
I had been to this garden centre just once before and I was sure that it had all the plants with their Latin names in alphabetical order, which I thought was a brilliant idea, so easy to find what you were looking for.
Imagine my surprise when I got there and there was no sign of anything alphabetical. Either they have changed it completely or I was thinking of an entirely different garden centre, or possibly I dreamt of such a thing, as my perfect place to buy plants and it doesn’t actually exist!
Anyway, if you know of such an alphabetical plant place – please do tell!
When I woke up on Sunday morning and realised that it was a dead dreich day (in other words – miserably grey, damp day) – I was really glad that we had grabbed a hold of the sunshine of the previous day and gone for a drive up north of Perth to Dunkeld. It’s one of my favourite destinations. This is a photo of the High Street, taken from the middle of the bridge over the River Tay.
There’s not a lot there shop-wise, which suits me fine as I’m happier looking at scenery than ‘stuff’, but we had a wander around the wee town anyway, I decided that I didn’t need a lovely old framed print, so I didn’t buy it and so didn’t help out the country’s economy, but on the other hand – I helped our economy!
The photo below is of the River Tay, taken from the middle of the bridge again, looking south. As you can see, the trees aren’t even showing a haze of green at the moment, and who could blame them for keeping their tender parts tucked away from the cold wind.
And the photo below is looking along the river towards the north.
We walked along the riverbank for a wee while and this was the best photo I could get of the bridge through the trees.
So that was Dunkeld, we climbed a hill to have a look at the war memorial of course, and I thought to myself – maybe Dunkeld would be a nice place to move to. But on the way back to Fife I noticed a roadsign which said Edinburgh 56 miles – and that seems an awful long way from civilisation to me, so it put me right off the idea. The search continues!