Before we knew it, it was time to go home. We had even extended our stay in Galloway a day by skipping our time in Glasgow. Neither one of us are much for cities and we decided that Edinburgh was enough this time.
We had to decide which route we wanted to take to travel up to Glasgow… by seaside or by land. Since we had been staying in a seaside cottage, we picked the land route up thru the ‘Southern Uplands’.
Excellent choice!
The drive took us thru the Galloway Forest Park. This is someplace we will come back to and spend a few days. It is a designated “Dark Sky” park… meaning it is far enough from sources of light pollution that you can truly see the beautiful wonders of the night sky.
The daytime is beautiful too with great mountain views. The park covers almost 375 square miles, so there is a lot to see.
The forest is lovely.
We saw our third type of deer going thru the park… this is a fallow deer. He crossed the road in front of us. I took the photo thru the closed car window before he disappeared into the woods. The park also has an area known as “Red Deer Park”. It has a nice hiking trail around it where you can view the deer.
Another area is the “Wild Goat Park”. They are an ancient breed of goat. Not sure why they have their own area in the park tho…
But doesn’t this bad boy have the most fantastic horns?
Another stop was at the Clatteringshaws Visitor Center. It had a nice picnic area.
There is a small wildlife museum where you can see mounts of animals found in the park. (The mounts all came from animals that had been killed accidently). A lot of hands on exhibits made it even more interesting.
A red deer stag.
There is a small café with wonderful hot chocolate (it was a dreich day and I wanted something warm!) and a wee gift shop. Can you believe it? Haggis potato chips!!! LOL
We stopped in the town of Hollybush – well before Glasgow, to have our dinner. We were fortunate to come across the Hollybush Inn restaurant (http://www.hollybushinn-ayrshire.co.uk/index.htm ). I highly recommend it!!
I had “ROAST LOIN OF SCOTTISH HIGHLAND VENISON Carved on creamed savoy cabbage, red onion & smoked bacon compote, drizzled with juniper berry jus.”
And Himself had “OVEN BAKED STEAK & ALE PIE: Served with panache of fresh market vegetables & fries.
With only a little difficulty we made it to the Glasgow airport, dropped off the rental car and checked into the airport Holiday Inn (literally AT the airport terminal entrance… closer than the parking area!).
Next morning (if you could call it that – 4:30 am!) we were in the airport for our departure. We held our breaths a bit as our bags were weighed. I am absolutely sure there was an angel with his finger under the scale as 2 bags were literally ounces from being overweight! (Remember all those beautiful rocks in our photos? We brought home 53 pounds of them!!! And about 25 pounds of books.) Dave… the two big ones from Colonsay weighed 23 pounds and 9 pounds! And they are sitting in our living room in front of a bookshelf.
My last view of Scotland.
Until next time…
Teri, that was so much fun. I learned and saw such neat things with you!. You were able to bring back rock??? :)
ReplyDeleteRocks and seashells. They are so beautiful!
ReplyDeleteI soak and scrub them in a bleach solution and claim them on customs form. Of course that gets me routed over to Agriculture area but I tell them how I prepared them. I've always been let thru.
How did you manage to bring enough clothes for that entire trip AND have enough extra room for the rocks, books, and other souvenirs?
ReplyDeleteI pack light (we were able to do laundry) and we each used only one of our two allowed check-in bags going, so we had 2 bags free to use (at 50# each) coming home. Plus we had our 2 carry-on bags each.
ReplyDeleteWent in light... came out heavy!