Monday, September 15, 2003 (Near Ayr - Scotland)
Things are brightening up as Scotland offers
promise. Sandy is one step ahead of me and the Isle of Whithorn will be our
first stop of the day. Lots of little places of interest each way we turn. How
many bookshops can just one town contain? Ancient stone circles. Distracted by
butterflies. Plenty of good parking spots but could we agree on
which?
Day 187. The start of the Scottish leg of this
tour looked promising this morning when we awoke to clear skies and mild
weather. With so much of our enjoyment tied so closely to the weather
conditions, I’m hoping the mild weather will hold out for at least another
two weeks to see us through to the tail end of this trip. We were parked
literally a few metres from the shore and whilst I was polishing off my morning
cornflakes, Sandy was already out on the pebble beach going through some morning
exercise stretching.
By the time the
brick was ready for the off again, Sandy had already investigated the
possibilities of what to explore on the maps and now had a rough idea of where
to go – for today at least. The peninsular of land just to the East of
Stranrear in the far South West of Scotland shows a number of interesting
monuments, ancient sites and villages on the map and so we decided that it was
worth a half a day’s
exploration.
First up was St.
Ninian’s Chapel in a place called the Isle of Withorn. I’m not too
sure why it’s called ‘Isle’ of Withorn since it is clearly not
an island. Perhaps it was in times past. St. Ninian was apparently the first
Christian saint in Scotland and this little town right on the end of the
peninsular marks one end of a pilgrimage trail that is apparently still
celebrated even today. Pilgrims are invited to write their names on a stone and
lay it on a pile of stones to mark their
pilgrimage.
The Lonely Planet
guidebook didn’t dedicate much verbiage to the Isle of Withorn but did a
little more so for the village of Wigton just a few minutes farther North.
Although quite a small place, the Withorn priory ruins were interesting.
Together with a nice little audiovisual theatre and a large collection of
ancient Christian stone crosses in the attached museum, it was well worth the
visit we paid it. We also had a spot of lunch in the front shop that doubled up
as information office for the site. After picking up a few more provisions for
the fridge and food cupboard, off we set again to complete our tour of the
peninsular with a visit to
Wigton.
Wigton is famed as the book
town of Scotland. With a couple of dozen or more bookshops to choose from, the
bookwork would love it there. Sandy was in her element and wasted no time in
exploring several of the bookshops close to where we parked the brick. I, on the
other hand, hunted down the only Internet café in town and caught up on
some e-mail. The woman stubbornly refused to allow me to hook up my laptop so I
was unable to get any more photos online or to send another WorldTravel update.
Hopefully, I can take care of both of these problems when we get to Glasgow in a
day or so.
Not too far from Wigton
along one of the minor roads, lies an ancient stone circle. There are a number
of these stone circles dotted around Western Europe and this one was apparently
a pretty good example. We took the brief detour to see it for
ourselves.
Wanting to make good
headway towards Glasgow, we left the stone circle near Wigton but didn’t
make it too far before one of those brown tourist road signs caught our eye.
This one mentioned something about butterflies and carnivorous plants. It
sounded too interesting to pass up and so we took the brief detour from the main
road to check it out. We spent the next hour inside an exceedingly humid
greenhouse enclosure walking around with our cameras trying to capture as many
photos as we could of the dozens of interesting butterfly species that they had
there. The Owl butterfly must have had a wingspan of a good thirty centimetres.
The fairly recent new owner of the complex answered many of our questions and we
learned a few new things about the lives of
butterflies.
Since time was pushing
on, we resumed our course towards Glasgow and managed to get to just South of
Ayr before starting to look for a place to park. We passed several really good
parking opportunities that Sandy kept rejecting. I was starting to get a little
annoyed about all these rejections. To make matters worse, I decided in my mind
that we would simply take the next best alternative but we then drove through an
area where there were none at all. We did have the option of parking at a
campsite near a castle that we plan on visiting tomorrow but with plenty of
water in the tank and juice in the batteries, I couldn’t see the point in
paying for the privilege of parking overnight if we could get away with it. In
the end, we backtracked a little and parked just off the main road next to what
looks like a building debris rubbish dump. The mound of rubble provides ample
cover from the passing traffic and the ground is flat and level so we should be
comfortable.
Posted: Mon - September 15, 2003 at 01:26 PM