The other week an advertising postcard dropped through the door. Normally I would just chuck this sort of thing straight in the recycling bin without particularly looking at it, but it did have a nice picture on it so I gave it a glance.
It was from a coach tour firm called Lochs & Glens Holidays and was offering a holiday called Scenic Scotland based at a hotel in the Scottish Highlands on the banks of Loch Tummel. I drank in the view for a moment and then read through the card and it did look a good holiday break and for a quite reasonable price. So I ran it past Miss Franny who sort of grunted and said, "Well get on with it then..." Within a couple of hours - I don't like to rush into these things... - we were booked on the holiday and had snagged front seats on the coach.
So on Tuesday 20 June 2023, we found ourselves standing amongst the somewhat horrendous roadworks outside the River Wyre Hotel on the Singleton to Fleetwood road, where an empty coach picked us up, the only two passengers getting on at the first stop. We then picked up several more in Cleveleys, then Blackpool, then a very soggy large group in Lytham St Annes before hitting the motorway north. We picked up a final soggy bunch of folks at Penrith and then made our way back onto the M6 until it ran out onto the M74 up into Scotland.
Gretna Green, then Moffat where we stopped for lunch, passing Glasgow where we jumped onto the M73 then the M80, then M9 to Bannockburn and Stirling, passing first the white flagpole of Bannockburn's battle site then Stirling's magnificent castle sitting on the core of an ancient volcano as does the castle at Edinburgh.
Dunblane, then onto cross-country 'A' roads. We by-pass Perth, then Pitlochry, both places we shall visit during the coming days then we cut off to cross Garry Bridge over the River Garry and from there it's narrow, winding roads with sloping banks to either side - one going up and the other dropping away. Loch Tummel comes into view on our left and a long way down. There's ten miles of it to come before we get to our hotel which sits at the far end.
We are riding shotgun on the front seats on the nearside of the coach. As such I had a great view of the road ahead. As we approached our hotel the coach was travelling down what seemed to be an ever-narrower road with steep bends that were impossible to see around until we were halfway round. By then the coach would be taking up every bit of the road's width because of it's length and the fact that the bus itself was very unbendy... As we approached a bend to the right I spotted a pair of brown legs disappear round the corner ahead. "There's something running up the road!" I said. When we rounded the corner it was a hare, running up the road before us until a handy gateway allowed it to nip off into a yard. No chance of a photo, so here's an impression done a couple of days after we got back.
We got to the hotel around 4:30 in the afternoon and the organisation of this place was fantastic. They emptied the coach of our luggage and it was delivered up to our rooms without any fuss or the need for us to touch it. In fact as we sat in the lounge just after an excellent meal, another three coaches turned up and they had the luggage from all three into the hotel and cleared up to the rooms within 20 minutes. I call that impressive. We had time before and after our meal to wander across the lawn in front of the hotel to view the lock and some fabulous scenery. A water wheel was on the side of one building, but it appeared to have lost some of its paddles. I started a sketch of this view but it didn't get finished until the following day.
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