Kinlochleven to Carlisle

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Bridge of Orchy to Dumfries

July 12

We left the very comfortable Kinlochleven AirBnB home after breakfast.  Our mission today was to head out from Glencoe toward Dumfries to hopefully find the house where Em’s dad’s family, the Grierson’s, lived many years ago. Then on to the city of Carlisle, England where we would catch a train the following morning.  Carlisle was the closest place to St. Bees that we could drop off the rental car before our big hike across England.  The city is about 50 miles from St. Bees, the starting point of the hike.  So we pre-purchased train tickets from Carlisle to St. Bees for July 13.

On the way toward Dumfries, Scotland we made an unplanned stop at the Bridge of Orchy for lunch.  We ate a very nice lunch at the Bridge of Orchy Hotel.  Then we tooled around the beautiful, historic bridge located just behind the hotel, and which is a popular stop for West Highland Way hikers. It was a relaxing, picturesque pit stop.

After lunch we detoured to Moffat, Scotland upon recommendation from a Kinlochleven AirBnB neighbor who we chatted with.  We walked around the quaint, touristy town with some cool architecture for a bit, and took pics with an odd, centrally located and historically significant large statue of a ram.

Then off to find the Grierson home around the Dumfries area.  The only info we had was that we needed to find “Straith Farm” somewhere in the small shire of Dunscore. There was no specific address, and it was not locatable via GPS.  We just randomly drove the very narrow, sometimes one-lane, winding country roads of rural Scotland (on the left side of the road, of course).  We kept a look out for any signage that might help.  Lo and behold, we amazingly found Straith Farm by sheer luck.

We met the people now living on the Grierson Farm: Graham, Brian, and Morag.  These are very nice, warm people who gave us a grand tour of their home and property of 500 acres of beautiful green pasture…and lots and lots of sheep. We stayed chatting until around 8:00 P.M., and then pulled ourselves away in order to get to Carlisle, England. This is where we were to drop the car rental and catch train to St. Bees the next day.

Lockerbie to Carlisle

Before getting to Carlisle we took a small detour to Lockerbie to visit the memorial site of the Lockerbie air disaster of 1988.  We got there late in the day, so nobody else was there. The gardens and memorial are beautiful, and movingly somber.  We walked the grounds in silence for about 20 minutes.

Suzannah found us a room online at the very nice Crown and Mitre hotel in the heart of downtown Carlisle. It is in a fantastic location amongst a busy shopping and restaurant district.  Carlisle, however is comprised of what seems like nothing but one-way streets…putting Boston to shame in that regard, which I would have thought impossible.  I actually needed the guy at the hotel desk to escort me, in my car, to the hotel parking lot, which was literally just behind the hotel. It was a 5 minute drive to get there….yet I never would have found it if he wasn’t with me.  The only reason he went with me was because Emilie pleaded with him to do so in order to save our marriage. We stayed in a very nice family room, with 2-bedrooms.

We went out to find dinner, but not much food was being served at 10:00 P.M. A cop told us about the nearby Nandos restaurant for peri peri chicken. We luckily got served by the very nice manager, and luckily got their last chicken!

We then walked around town for a bit, then off to bed. Em and I are ready for our Wainwright’s Coast to Coast hike across England!

Next: Wainwright’s Coast to Coast Hike Intro