Royal Mile in Edinburgh with the Forth in the distance.  

For Kate - interesting grave stones! 

Edinburgh Castle viewed from below in the cemetary! 

Close up of river. Some of these were quite torrential. To get the scale look at the size of the tree!  

Rivers running down the mountains. 

Loch Lomond! 

Lochs in the rain! 

Whisky distillery on loch journey 

The lovely purple colour of the swathes of heather.  

Typical scenery along the route through the lochs.  

Wherever one looked there were castles! 

More, much more!

Today was such a contrast in weather to the last week. If only we could have had this glorious hot sunshine in Scotland it would have been wonderful. However they are still having rainy weather up there so we are better off down here.

We spent one day going to see Falkland Palace with Andrew's girlfriend Mel. This was a lovely fairytale palace with turrets and pointed towers. This was a holiday home for the Stuart kings and queens especially Mary Queen of Scots. The tennis courts built for James V in 1539 are the oldest in Britain. In the grounds are the remains of Falkland Castle which was a much older building. A large part of the royal apartments was destroyed by fire when Oliver Cromwell's soldiers were quartered here. It was a lovely place to visit but unfortunately pictures weren't allowed to be taken inside. The queen's apartments were furnished beautifully and I would have liked to have taken some photos. The insert picture facility isn't working so I will have to use Picassa to put the photo in that I was going to insert here. It is of the front of the palace as seen from the road. The whole of this little village was very picturesque with oldy worldy dwellings and shops. We had the most delicious carrot cake in a small tea room complete with beamed ceilings and ornate fireplace. It was called Kindly Kitty's Kitchen! And the small craft shop up the road sold wonderful homemade chutneys and jams. However I was disappointed to see that they were selling cheap quilts made in China! When they have all this local quilting talent I don't know how they can do this!

The surrounding countryside!  

High Street

Small street of original cottages

I loved this old sculpture. It is amazing and will be good inspiration for a quilt. Just look at those eyes!  

Back of the castle from the ruins. These were the Queen's apartments.  

Falkland Palace from the road.

Martin disappearing up a chimney in the ruins. This is my son's girlfriend.  

This was the King's apartments before it was destroyed by Cromwell's men.  

Falkland Palace. Part of this was in ruins thanks to Oliver Cromwell.  

Blackpool tower in the distance for Liz! Taken from Southport.  

Different coloured stones on the beach. 

The Forth railway bridge with the road bridge behind it. We crossed this to get to Dalgety Bay where we were staying with Andrew our son. The Forth road bridge is so long that they start painting it at one end and when they have finished it they start all over again!  

Home again!

Warning! This will all be about my recent travels to Scotland for the next couple of days so that I can fill in details for the family, and any friends I might have! lol And also so I don't have to repeat myself too much! So stop reading now if you don't want a travelogue!

Well after nearly ten days away I'm back. For family and friends I have taken over 500 photographs but I promise I won't put them all up here. If you want to see them all you'll have to come round for coffee! We had a great time and although the weather was atrocious - it rained constantly on the journey up to Scotland - it was still fun and we enjoyed ourselves immensly. I don't want any rude comments about my road pictures from family and friends either! Considering that we did nearly 2000 miles in the car I was lucky to get any photos at all. The journey up was uneventful. We stopped the night at Leyland which is near Preston which is near Lancaster. Leyland is the home of the Leyland truck manufacturers and they had a museum there of all their trucks etc going back to sometime at the end of the 19th century when they started up. It was also near to Southport where I took some pictures of the sea. I found this coastline amazing as the sea went out so far and it was all so flat. Very different to our Cornish coast. It was very bleak as well without any sun to enliven the day. I was lucky to get the odd glimmer showing up in one or two of the photos.

The next day we managed to avoid a massive hold up on the motor way. An oil tanker had overturned in the night and spilled its load and part of the motor way was closed. This is a view of the traffic on the other side of the road when we rejoined after the incident. The traffic was static and went on for over ten miles! It was quite tedious and boring driving on the motorway but at least time passed quickly. Martin had treated himself to a TomTom navigator before we left and he was so pleased with it. I have to say that I was pretty impressed with it as it was able to tell us about hold ups ahead and find us ways round them. He was like a dog with two tails using this thing! LOL It did save me having to struggle with maps and try not to get us lost or even send us back down the motor way to home! Which I have been known to do! lol Anyway please bear in mind that most of these photos have been taken from a moving vehicle and so arn't of the best quality! Though I have to say that my Fuiji digital camera takes a remarkably good photo under the most awful conditions.

We arrived in Dalgety Bay by tea time and after rest and relaxation and a lot of chat we went out for a walk by the estuary of the Forth river. As usual it was the stones and seaweeds that interested me most. As Scotland is granite country just like Cornwall it wasn't going to be likely that they would be any different. However the granite was black which was a change!

I am exhausted so this is it for now. I shall continue with the narrative tomorrow with details of the castles we visited and our mammouth round trip round the lochs. But now its time for bed! Oh the joys of being in our own bed again! Perhaps my bones can now recover!

With the camera on zoom it is easy to see the oil rig in the Irish Sea. If the weather had been better we might have been able to see the Isle of Man.  

Our first stop on the journey to Scotland. Southport was wet and overcast with occasional bursts of sun. On the horizon the dot is an oil rig. It was very flat here and the tide went out a long, long way. Very treacherous sands.