Lakes and Cars and Dogs on the Bank Bloody Holiday

31 May 2007

We finished our drive through the Scottish Highlands and headed back to Edinburgh for our final night in the apartment - then packed up and headed to Stirling to check out the famed castle. Stirling Castle did not disappoint! The restoration works were magnificent with major ancient tapestries being recreated as well as the buildings. The displays were excellent as well documenting the painstaking efforts to faithfully put back what was damaged or missing, and life as it had been in the castle. The military stuff was fierce some. Even the modern history in WWI & II with horrifying stories of soldiers using sharpened shovels as weapons and hand making clubs from heavy pieces of metal machinery for convenience of size in the trenches. We headed off to Luss to see the bonny banks of Loch Lomand. It was more vast than I had imagined with a sandy shore and a timber wharf. The village of Luss was beyond quaint and the maddening nose poke of visitors might have explained the lack of locals anywhere to be seen. We wandered up to the little church surrounded by old grave markers as a wedding was about to commence. The nervous groom paced inside the stone yard. We happened upon a cafe - and sat down to a hearty hot soup and delicious hank of hot fresh bread before continuing on down south.

After leaving Luss we headed into Glasgow for a quick look - a big mistake - it was Saturday on the Bank holiday weekend that was also the beginning of a mid term break (school holidays) and a big 1st division final footy match on in Glasgow that day. Bloody hell! The traffic was bumper to bumper (again!) and our nerves were pretty frayed as we sat waiting in a line of traffic into a car park when the FULL sign went up. We had nowhere to go with 3 lanes of cars and us, buried squarely in the middle of it all. Every now and then a car or two would leave and the FULL sign would disappear and let 2 more cars in. Finally in and finding an empty car space was as difficult as you could imagine. Then when we found our way into the middle of Glasgow Square? Mall? There were literally hundreds of thousands of people - it was quite overwhelming. We found out what was going on and after checking the internet for accommodation options our worst fears were realised. The city was overflowing. So we beat our retreat and headed out towards Carlisle.

At Carlisle we hit the trifecta - not the winning one though. We spied a B&B with a vacancy sign after trying a couple of hotels - all booked out (there was a racing carnival in Carlisle this weekend!) So we went in and secured a bed. The man seemed nice enough and sent us across the road to the pub for dinner where we met a couple from Newcastle who we saw at one of the hotels - sprinting across the car park to beat us to a room. They'd been having much the same experience as us in Glasgow! After dinner we headed home and I found after showering for bed that the sheets were somewhat used - I just brushed out the black coarse hairs and fell into bed exhausted. Then the rhythmic banging of the music must have started around 11pm. The disco at the pub outside our window was getting into full swing and continued on well into the wee small hours. To complete the trifecta coffee in the morning was akin to grey dishwater. Oh well.

We put all that behind us and headed off to the Lakes District where the scenery made up for our aborted attempt to get to know Glasgow. The leafy green tunnels opened out to vistas of shimmering lakes with narrow stone-fenced roads slowing everyone down to a pleasant sightseeing pace. We pulled into Glen Ridding just as it began to shower and wandered into the tiny village and checked out the national parks visitor centre. It was freezing! Everywhere there are serious walkers - gaiters, walking poles, gortex anoraks with the obligatory dog in tow. People were camped here in the rain with their dogs and a little bit or rain or freezing temperatures will not deter them from their walking/camping bank holiday weekend. Very stoic. I guess the bank holiday weekend is a little like our Easter camping weekend - it is guaranteed to rain the lady tells us in the visitor centre.

We decide to continue down to Windermere and Ambleside the heart of the Lakes District - and the drive through the mountain pass is extraordinary. Huge looming hills - bare, save for a large rock here or there and then a stone house and a gaggle of stone farm buildings. Then the stone fences - they cross-stick the rugged landscape in every direction you can see, including up! The hills rise to mountains and the dry stone fences struggle ever upward, til beaten by the grade. A marvel of human engineering - some meticulously straight - other taking wild beds or wiggles - to avoid hips and hollows? Bad surveying? Or just for fun? I'm not sure. The amazing thing is how many miles of them there are (local measure)! I would say hundreds or even thousands. How long does it take to build a dry stone fence - maybe 2 feet thick, tapered at the top, 5 feet or so high, on the side of a mountain for miles and miles? How many people does it take? Ric and I joke about the wife asking the farmer about his day - every day - for his whole life building stone fences.

Talking of miles - it's weird here how the temperature is in celsius, the money is decimal currency but the measure of distance is miles. A persistent struggle to hold on to an imperial measure?
Close to the top scree slopes reveal the seemingly endless source of the stone - I wonder if the owner of that land made his fortune selling it to his neighbours? As we wind back down into the valley, the temperature rises and the beautiful leafy hues of green envelop us again as we drive flanked by a wide lake at an ever decreasing speed. The problem? Traffic of course.
Slowly we crawl into the Windermere high street and despite the beautiful buildings we are horrified to see that half of England has chosen this weekend to head to the Lakes District as well. There are so many people walking along the streets they cannot fit on to the footpath so spill on to the roads, replete with their dogs on leads, serving only to create more traffic chaos. We head to the short stay car park and are confronted with as many cars looking for car parks as there are cars already parked. By some stroke of luck we jag a park and jostle our way into the village with all the people and the dogs. We find the tourist info place only to find it is being refurbished and although open is not assisting visitors with accommodation. The cheerful man behind the counter informs me this is the busiest weekend in the Lakes District and we would be lucky to find anywhere to stay - save the places costing £100 plus (just times it by two and a half). Crikey! So we head off to Penrith via Ambleside to take in all we are missing. Ambleside is truly beautiful - Tudor style houses and pubs with the fairytale lake and castle with turret in the background. Finally we speed off up the ‘A something or other’ towards Penrith. A large racecourse looms into view as we drive into town with a crowded car park with a couple of police directing traffic out front. Oh no, not again!!! Bloody bank holiday weekend. After trying a couple of hotels we find a row of B&B's. The one I choose is heavenly - clean quiet and spacious. We wander down the street and eat a sumptuous Indian feed and then quietly waddle home to sleep in crisp clean sheets. Goodnight!