St Mungo's Cathedral, Riverside Museum and Home

We left our luggage with our very helpful hosts Douglas and Rosemary (who despite their relative youth have had the Kirklee for about 17 years), whilst we took the tour bus again and visited St Mungo’s cathedral (the oldest remaining building in Glasgow), the Necropolis and Provand’s Lordship (the oldest remaining house in Glasgow). The cathedral is massive and very impressive, as are some of the monuments in the Necropolis – and the views of the city and of Tennent’s Brewery at its foot.

Our penultimate trip on the tour bus took us to the Riverside Museum and the Glenlee, a tall ship moored on the Clyde beside the museum. We did not have nearly as much time as we would have liked for the museum, mainly devoted to a great collection of different forms of transport, and the Glenlee so a further visit will be necessary in the future.

The same applies for the other Charles Rennie Mackintosh buildings in the city, of which there are several, as well as Hill House outside the city. We won’t need to do the bus tour again now having a good appreciation of the layout of the city – which is an amazing mix of beautiful old architecture standing cheek by jowl with the most hideous (probably) 60s and 70s buildings. But there is a real heart-beat there making Edinburgh seem beautiful but rather staid by comparison.

Our taxi ride to Glasgow airport and flight back to Bristol went smoothly, as did our drive back to Dorset. The garden looked a bit of a wreck after several very hot and dry days but is now recovering.

Botanic Gardens, City Tour Bus to Glasgow School of Art

With a full day at our leisure we set off on foot quite early – in warm sunshine - for the Botanic Garden where we looked around the Kibble Palace and then the glasshouses, where we saw a remarkably large collection of orchids, amongst many other fascinating plants – and fish!

Then we got onto a city tour bus, the tickets for which cover 2 full days so this was our mode of transport for the rest of our holiday. We had not previously experienced this type of tour bus in the height of the season, when they run every 15 minutes making them an extremely convenient way of getting about. We sat on the open top deck for the 1hr 45min tour with commentary by Neil Oliver and then went part way round again.

Our first stop was at The Tenement Building (NTS) which we found fascinating although it only comprises 5 rooms – hall, living room, bedroom, kitchen and bathroom. It had been lived in from 1911 to 1965 by Miss Agnes Toward, a shorthand typist, and was more or less as she had left it. Even more amazing was that the two separate floors (known as ‘houses’) immediately above are both lived in by families, and in one of them the parents of the two small girls still use the double bed in the cupboard which forms part of the kitchen. The NTS guides told us that most of these ‘houses’ have now been adapted so that the hall and living room are combined and incorporate the kitchen, with the original kitchen turned into a second bedroom. The term ‘tenement’ tends to conjure up poverty in the English mind but practically all living space in Glasgow is in the form of tenement buildings – the West End where we were staying was also made up of tenement buildings. Most of them are very attractive, architecturally.
Next we joined a tour at the Glasgow School of Art, which contained some beautiful original furniture and lighting but the exterior was of greatest interest. We failed to find the Willow Tea Room (not realising it was on the lst floor of a building, not at ground level), and ended up walking around the vast shopping area, much of it pedestrianized and very lively. The tour bus took us back to West End.
In the evening we ate in another good restaurant, just off Byres Road, the Stravaigin2 (whose website was almost certainly designed by the same person who did that of The Ubiquitous Chip!). Again we thought the food was excellent and the customer service in both restaurants was well above the average standard.

Glasgow by train, Kelvingrove Museum and Ubiquitous Chip!

Richard and Vanessa were sorry to bid farewell to Keith and Wendy at around 9 am at the airport, but at least Keith and Wendy had four further ‘mini visits’ to look forward to before their arrival back in NZ on 5 August, including the promise of warmer sunny weather in Belgium and the UK, followed by much hotter weather in Kuala Lumpur.
Richard and Vanessa took the hire car back to Waverley Station under the stressful circumstances of limited petrol supply and road works/diversions in the New Town, but got it back in time and without running out of petrol, and then journeyed on to Glasgow by train.
Our Edwardian hotel (The Kirklee) was in Hillhead, in Glasgow’s leafy West End and within walking distance of the Botanic Garden, the University, the Kelvingrove Museum and Art Gallery and Byres Road, which is a popular ‘eaterie’ area.

We had a light lunch at the Kelvingrove and spent the rest of the afternoon exploring it, including joining a guided tour. It would take several visits to see all its contents. We were particularly impressed by Dali’s “Christ of St John of the Cross” (which Richard remembered seeing on a previous visit quite a few years ago) and the new gallery of paintings by the Glasgow Boys.  Of all its fascinating collection, Sophie Cave’s “Floating Heads” apparently prompts the most interest.

In the evening we splashed out on our most expensive meal of the holiday in the restaurant of “The Ubiquitous Chip”. We had three courses each plus wine and coffee, and fully appreciated why it has such a fine reputation – the ambience and the food were both great. It has recently been awarded The Good Food Guide Readers’ Restaurant of the Year for Scotland 2013.

St Andrews Golf Course, Kellie Castle and back to Edinburgh

Rain was forecast for the next day but we decided Keith could not return to New Zealand without having been to St Andrews - he plays golf, of course. Vanessa drove the route suggested by Tony and we drove up the M90 and then skirted Perth onto the A90 and followed the southern edges of Dundee to cross the 2225m Tay Road Bridge to head south to St Andrews. The rain did not seem to dampen Keith’s enthusiasm for watching those going out to play on The Old Course and he also picked up one or two souvenirs in the golfing shops, of which there were a good few! We had a coffee in the City and a look around, and decided it looked a pleasant place to live.

We moved on to 14th century Kellie Castle (NTS) – with the rain fairly persistent by then – and were pleased to find yet another good café, and a fascinating place to look around with very knowledgeable room guides. The recent tenant family (the Lorimers) had included a university professor and his sons, one of whom designed furniture (some of it in the castle) and another a sculptor of note. We braved the rain for a walk around the walled garden.  This was probably the most colourful and interesting of the gardens we had visited, helped by the backdrop of the castle buildings. Of particular interest were the gooseberry bushes being grown vertically up canes; something which might be worth trying ourselves.

Naturally enough we met a fair amount of traffic on the journey back into Edinburgh’s environs via the Forth road bridge to spend the night at the Marriott Airport Hotel. We were staying there as Keith and Wendy had an early start the next day for their departure to Brussels. The hotel was efficient and comfortable enough and Vanessa managed her third swim of the holiday before it was time for dinner, which we took in the hotel (to avoid the rain). It was of better quality than one might have expected of a hotel chain and we were pleased to find a NZ white wine, Vidal (from a producer of the same name), a Sauvignon Blanc from Hawke’s Bay, which none of us had previously tried and which we all liked.

Blair Castle and Glenalmond

After a quick look at Grantown on Spey, we headed south on the A86 and A9 through some steady rain showers, to Blair Castle where - after being amazed by the number of scouts of both sexes, and all ages, all sizes and all nationalities, who were staying in the castle parkland for a jamboree - we spent several hours exploring the very large number of rooms open to the public and wandering through the walled gardens. We lunched there too and were tempted into buying some of their whisky liqueur.

We spent a short time at the House of Bruar where there was a large range of tempting things to buy ranging from food and wine to cashmere and tweed. After finally managing to find a petrol station at Pitlochry (we were getting quite nervous by then), we diverted briefly into Dunkeld, which is a most attractive little town which we would like to visit again.

We arrived at our next B&B, Finlaggan House, in the early evening. It appeared to be in the middle of nowhere but was quite close to Glenalmond College, a co-educational public school. The modern house was very comfortable and attractively presented and, apart from the warm welcome from Tony and Jane, our hosts, we were delighted to encounter Bob and Skye, their two black retrievers and one of their two cats (who made himself comfortable on our bed – we didn’t tell Tony and Jane!).

Having discovered that Jane was formerly chef in their own private hotel and had been awarded 2 AA rosettes we had arranged to have a private dinner there. We had a superb looking, and tasting, meal of an Asian style prawn and noodle starter, followed by stuffed Guinea Fowl and vegetables, and finishing with a delightfully light chocolate cheese cake. This was definitely the star meal of our Scottish tour.

Highland Wildlife Park, Dalwhinnie Distillery and Grantown

Unfortunately time did not allow for a detour to Glencoe or to make our way up ‘The Road to the Isles’ towards Skye. And just when we had been hoping for good views of Ben Nevis the weather ‘closed in’ and although we had made our first stop at Banavie and Neptune’s Steps to see the mountain, the top was enveloped in cloud.

We had wanted to see the locks and craft on the Caledonian Canal and to take a walk along the canal. We did the former, and talked to some of the yachtsmen coming through the locks, but it had started to rain a bit by then so we abandoned the walk and travelled on to Spean Bridge to see the Grade 1 listed Commando Memorial. This is not only a wonderful piece of sculpture, commemorating the British Commando Forces in the area where they undertook their training before World War II, but stands in the most stunning of settings. The fact that the weather was ‘threatening’ intensified its dramatic effect.
We were still heading north eastwards and had originally thought to go up the Great Glen and see Loch Ness, but decided instead to take the A86 route running alongside Loch Laggan. We stopped to see the dam, where the water level seemed quite low supporting the fact that the west of Scotland had been far drier than the rest of the UK this year.

As the Dalwhinnie distillery lay close to our route and we had heard good reports of the tour there, we booked ahead. There was just time beforehand for a quick lunch at the delightful Pottery Café and Bunkhouse at Laggan Bridge (close to the Ardverikie estate, used as ‘Glenbogle’ for the filming of ‘Monarch of the Glen’). In fact they sold far more than pottery, including some very attractive Scottish knitwear. We all found the Dalwhinnie distillery tour informative and enjoyed our ‘tasting’ afterwards, especially as it came with complimentary hand-made Highland chocolate.
Continuing northwards in sunshine, we stopped at the Highland Wildlife Park and enjoyed seeing all the animals but, in particular, the two polar bears ‘playing’ in their small lake, the two Amur tigers, the snow monkeys and the wildcats and their kittens. We were surprised by the size of the capercaillie and disappointed not to see the polecats or red squirrels (though we got sightings of the latter the following morning in the hotel grounds).

We stayed overnight at the Tigh na Sgiath Hotel, a small country house hotel at Dunain Bridge near Grantown on Spey. This was a very attractive and comfortable place and we had a respectable five course dinner there, followed by birthday cake with Terri Douglas and her husband from America. This was very entertaining as Terri not only provides children’s voices in animations, but is also a voice-casting director and runs a loop group known as the Loop Troop, providing voice-over artists and voice matching. She was thrilled at having just traced her family roots in Scotland (Jameson) – with help from the Edinburgh Register Office – and had obtained her coat of arms.


Terri Douglas Demo

Oban to Mull and Iona

We were blessed with a gloriously sunny day for our organised coach tour to Mull and Iona. We travelled over from Oban to Mull (Craignure) as foot passengers on the ferry with what seemed like a multitude of other people. It was warm enough to sit on the open deck, enjoy the lovely views, and take lots of photos.

At Craignure we joined one of several tour coaches for the drive across to Fionnphort on the south west coast of Mull. This was a scenic route following the southern shores of Loch Scridain for the last part of the journey. The coach driver provided an excellent, and humorous, commentary.

The unexpected part of the day was when we arrived at the ferry for the short trip across to Iona to find that there were too many people to go on the first ferry and we had to wait for 25 minutes for it to make the trip there and back and then take us over. There was still plenty of time for us to see the Abbey and other buildings/ruins and enjoy a light lunch in the sunshine in the café garden of the Visitor Centre. Despite the large number of people at the ferry it did not seem over-crowded on Iona. We had a quiet and peaceful visit.  Some of us dozed on the return coach trip.

On arrival back at Oban Vanessa took to the wheel for a journey of about an hour north east across the bright red Connel Bridge and along the shore of Loch Linnhe to Onich. We stayed at Cuilcheanna House which is a handsome old estate house with spectacular views down to Loch Linnhe. Both couples had charming rooms in this very attractive house and enjoyed meeting our Yorkshire hostesses, Kirsty and Mary, and Brodie, their black Labrador. We went to the Loch Leven Seafood Café on Loch Leven for dinner and had some excellent fish/seafood. This was the only time during our holiday when we knew we were in ‘midge land’. Just as the sun was setting they came out in force, but luckily none of us was bitten.