Concluding my account of my Scottish holiday with the return journey.
This will be the final post in my series about my Scottish holiday (28-31 May inclusive. I will briefly mention the birthday festivities which took place a day early – the day itself (May 31) was to be a day of travelling home, before covering the return journey.
THE BIRTHDAY MEAL
One of the shops Comrie possesses is a butcher, and the centrepiece of the meal was three large rib eye steaks purchased from that establishment. We also had Jersey Royals and locally grown asparagus, while there were locally grown raspberries for pudding. There was sparkling wine before the meal, and still wine with it.
THE RETURN JOURNEY
I was due to leave Perth at 11:15AM on May 31st, a time which was tailored to the fact that we had to be out of the building in Comrie by 10 at the latest – it was late enough not hurry our departure and early enough that the wait at Perth station would not be too long. This train was running a Perth to Edinburgh route and stopped at a number of places. There were some fine views, although I had put myself on the less good side of the train. I was worrying at one point as it ran late, and indeed I had only eight minutes to make the connection at Edinburgh, but I was never actually in any danger of missing that connection. The train from Edinburgh to Peterborough ran smoothly, though my reserved seat was on the less good side of the train for photography. At Peterborough I had a wait of about 20 minutes for the bus to King’s Lynn. This part of the journey also ran smoothly, and I arrived at the bus station a little before 6:40PM, and was home just before 7PM.
PHOTOGRAPHS
Here are my photographs from the return journey..,
The train for the Perth-Edinburgh leg of the journey.
Continuing my account of my Scottish holiday with a look at Crieff.
This is the penultimate post in my series about my recent holiday in Scotland. After Cultybraggan Camp and Ardoch Roman Fort we headed for Crieff. There is an excellent visitor centre, with a small museum about the cattle drovers who back in the day travelled from the far west of Scotland to Stirling with their cattle, with Crieff being an important staging post on the route. In the 19th century some of these people migrated to the US and Canada in search of better lives, and this was also covered in the museum. Crieff is home to some very fine buildings but time constraints limited our exploration of the town itself.
Continuing my account of my Scottish holiday with a look back at Cultybraggan Camp, Ardoch Roman Fort and the stone packhorse bridge over the river Earn.
Welcome to the latest post in my series about my recent Scottish holiday. In this post I look at the visit to Cultybraggan Camp and also a Roman fort in the area.
CULTYBRAGGAN
This is a perfectly preserved WWII camp. There is a museum which contains a large amount of memorabilia from the 1940s. Some of the Nissen huts that made up the camp have been modernized and are now rented out as holiday apartments, and some house businesses or parts thereof. There are also allotments.
THE ROMAN FORT
There were actually two forts built in the same area but at different alignments – the first by Julius Agricola, governor of Britain late in the reign of Vespasian, who had served in Britain as a young man and took more interest in it than most Roman emperors, and the second some 60 years later in the reign of Antoninus Pius. There are in consequence of this history a number of walls and ditches that nowadays overlap one another. There is also a medieval era stone packhorse bridge across the river Earn located close to the fort, which we got a look at after we had finished at the fort.
Continuing my account of my recent holiday in Scotland with an account of the earthquake walk.
Comrie lies close to a fault line, and at one time was known as the ‘shaky toon’ because of this. It had earthquake recording equipment as early as the 18th century, and the building that housed that equipment still stands, and contains a more modern piece of recording equipment – a seismoscope, which records earthquakes and their intensity but not the times at which they occur. This post looks at our walk that took in that house, and features some information about earthquakes as well.
FIRST PORT OF CALL: COMRIE POST OFFICE
Comrie Post Office has some information about earthquakes on display. Apparently the post office itself shook when an earthquake hit Greece in March of this year.
THE WALK PROPER
The walk begins by heading past the church and on to the road that passed the frontage of the church – heading at this point in the direction of Crianlarich. The first noteworthy point after the church is a magnificent stone bridge across the river Earn. The ‘Earthquake House’ itself stands alone in a field, and is accessed by a path which leads off a side road – the gate from the main road into that field is very firmly locked. The house has plenty of information, and although one cannot go in one can look through the window and get a decent view of the seismoscope, though the window is reinforced in a way that renders photographing the seismoscope a virtual impossibility – I tried.
We hoped to walk along a bit of disused railway – the former Lochearnhead, St Fillans and Comrie Railway, a route that was in operation between 1901 and 1951 when it was closed – but a small spring was bubbling on to the path rendering too wet and muddy to be walking, so we saw only the start of it. Thus in the end we went back the way we had come.
PHOTOGRAPHS
Here are my photographs from this walk…
The stone bridge across the Earn.The Earthquake HouseI kept two of my attempts at photographing through the window to illustrate the problems.A mile post showing the distances to Crieff in one direction and St Fillnas in the other.
Continuing my account of my Scottish holiday with a look at the Deil’s Caldron walk.
I continue my account of my recent Scottish holiday with a post about the Deil’s Caldron walk. In Comrie Village there is a restaurant called The Deil’s Caldron, about which I cannot comment further as it was closed while i was there so I had no opportunity to sample it. The restaurant is named after a natural landmark.
THE WALK
Just out of Comrie (literally yards past a sign indicating the end of the speed limit) is a path that is signposted to the Deil’s Caldron. It is a very well maintained path, in better shape than most English paths, and the walk at this time of year is not a challenging one. One hears the caldron before seeing it, and there is a superb viewing area overlooking it, which we made full use of. We did not continue onwards to make a circular walk of it, but went back the way we came.
PHOTOGRAPHS
Here are the pictures from this walk…
The Deil’s Caldron restaurant.Officially this is classed as a villa.
A look at the Charles Rennie Mackintosh building, the village of Comrie and the river Earn. Also a waterfall video.
Welcome to the next post in my series about my holiday in Scotland. This post looks at the house itself and the the village of Comrie including the river Earn. It is in the nature of clearing the decks for the more specific posts that will follow. This is an outside view of the house itself:
This is the outside view of our accommodation. The sitting room includes the turret, although there is an internal ceiling which means we don’t get to see the whole of the inside of the turret.
THE SETTING OF THE HOUSE
The house is directly opposite Comrie Community Centre, a building that looks remarkably like a church but is not (though it clearly used to be) – Comrie Church is about a five minute walk away. Next door it in one direction is an estate agent housed in what clearly used to be a local bank in the dim and distant days when such things existed while on the other side is a pet shop. Down one side of the house is a path that provides pedestrian access to the car parking area. There is a small shopping area, while the river, not quite visible from the house, is just the other side of the community centre from it.
On the Wednesday morning I explored the river a little way in each direction. One way is a path that leads to Cultybraggan. In the other direction I got as far as Legion Park. From certain locations a hill top monument is visible – I photographed it more than once.
PHOTOGRAPHS
Here are the pictures for this post…
A community centre that looks like a church.The sitting room, showing the inside of the turret.
For those who made it to this point, here is the first of a series of waterfall videos which will feature in this series:
The public transport elements of my journey from King’s Lynn to Comrie.
This is the first of what I plan to be a series of posts about my recent holiday in Scotland. This post looks in detail at the public transport elements of the journey there.
KING’S LYNN TO PETERBOROUGH
I booked my train tickets to and from Peterborough because it is significantly cheaper that way and also the train journey to Peterborough involves a change at Ely. With the train on which I had a reserved seat leaving Peterborough at 10:18AM I assessed that the right bus to be on was the 8:30AM bus, which meant I needed to leave before 8 o’clock to be sure of catching it. This did not prove to be any great problem. The bus ran smoothly and I arrived at Peterborough with plenty of time to find the correct platform and the correct place on that platform to wait to board the train at the right point (I was in coach H, which was shown on the information screen as needing me to be in zone 5 of the platform…
PETERBOROUGH TO EDINBURGH WAVERLEY
This was the longest leg of the journey, but compensated by also being the fastest. Finding my reserved seat was straightforward, and no one had unthinkingly occupied it, so I was able to seat myself without having to ask anyone to move (even though reservations are very clearly indicated as such it is not unknown to find a reserved seat already occupied, and I will get the person occupying it to move if that is the case). I had booked a forward facing window seat, and on this occasion that was what it proved to be – and it was on the better side of the train for photography. This route provides plenty of fine views, especially between York and Edinburgh (though there a few good bits south of York as well). The task at Edinburgh was to locate the train I was to travel on as far as Stirling, which I did…
EDINBURGH TO STIRLING
This was on a stopping service which was ultimately headed for Dunblane, and passed through a few interesting places. At Stirling I had to change trains for the final leg of the journey to Perth, but this did involve moving platforms, for which I was grateful.
STIRLING TO PERTH
This was a non-stop journey on a Scotrail Intercity service heading towards Inverness. Unfortunately I was unable to secure a window seat for this final leg of the journey, though I did spot one or two interesting things on arrival at Perth. The train arrived at Perth at the scheduled time, which meant that seven and a half hours of public transport travel involving one bus and three trains had ended with the traveller in the right place at the right time – which in 21st century Britain comes close to qualifying as miraculous.
PHOTOGRAPHS
Taking photographs through the windows of buses and trains is often frustrating, but yields enough good pictures to be worthwhile….
The first 15 pictures are King’s Lynn pictures, some taken on the Monday evening, a couple while walking to the bus station on Tuesday morning.This picture and the next two were taken while passing through Wisbech.The train pictures start here.Our first stop.On the approach to Alnmouth.The train would soon be crossing this viaduct.Looking along the Tweed as the train moves from England into Scotland.This is now a Radisson hotel, but it would have been built by the original railway company as the station hotel.
Setting the scene for a series about my recent holiday in Scotland.
I usually have a short holiday around the time of my birthday. This year, due to the place my mother was able to organize for us to stay at only being available for a few days I had the main celebration yesterday and have spent most of today travelling. This post sets the scene for what will be a series of blog posts about my brief sojourn in Scotland.
GETTING THERE
We were staying at the Charles Rennie Mackintosh building in Comrie, which was one of that worthy’s earliest design projects. I arranged to travel by public transport between King’s Lynn and Perth, the nearest major town to Comrie. The public transport element of my outbound journey consisted of four stages: King’s Lynn to Peterborough by bus, Peterborough to Edinburgh Waverley by rail (an Azuma train, the new stock being used by LNER, with a very streamlined front), a Scotrail stopping train from Edinburgh Waverley to Stirling (ultimate destination Dunblane) and then a Scotrail intercity train from Stirling to Perth. By the time I reached Perth, where my parents were meeting me by car for the rest of the journey to Comrie I had been underway for just over eight hours, and another hour would pass before we reached our destination. I will be covering the public transport element of the journey in fuller detail in a later blog post but for the moment here is sampler gallery…
This frontage is in Wisbech, near the start of my journey.Durham, in the middle of the journey (two pics)NewcastleLeaving England and heading into Scotland (this is Berwick, where the train did not stop)This tower with the gold coloured ornamentation is near Linlithgow, nearing the end of the Edinburgh-Stirling leg of the journey.
THE HOUSE
I will be covering the house and its immediate surrounds in more detail later, but here are a few pictures to whet the appetite…
Everything in these three pictures is Mackintosh designed.
ACTIVITIES
As you might imagine the Tuesday evening was pretty much a dead loss as far as activities were concerned, but Wednesday and Thursday were well filled. I explored along the river Earn on the Wednesday morning, and we all walked up to the Deil’s Caldron just before lunch that day, before doing some of the Earthquake Walk in the afternoon (Comrie used to be known as the ‘shaky toon’ because of its proximity to a fault line, and was possibly the first place in the world to have earthquake recording equipment, with the house in which that equipment lived, and where there is a still a functioning seismoscope, being the centrepiece of the walk). On Thursday we visited a WWII POW camp at Cultybraggan, also had a look at an old Roman fort, and near the latter we also saw a much younger but still impressively old stone packhorse bridge across the Earn and also paid a visit to Crieff, once an important staging post on an epic cattle droving route that began in the extreme west of Scotland and ended in Stirling. The birthday meal was Thursday evening. Here is a sample gallery from some of these activities…
Three shots of the Caldron (the colour of the water is down to dissolved peat from the uplands – water in Scotland is not in the hands of greedy privateers).A couple of items at Cultybraggan and the packhorse bridge.
THE RETURN JOURNEY
The public transport element of my return journey started with a journey from Perth to Edinburgh Waverley, not by way of Stirling, then the fast journey from Edinburgh Waverley to Peterborough and finally a bus from Peterborough to King’s Lynn. The train from Perth ran late, and there were moments of worry about making the interchange at Edinburgh (the train from Perth arrived only eight minutes before my second train, to Peterborough, was due to depart, but I hustled myself between platforms and in the end reached my seat with six of those eight minutes to spare. I haven’t yet edited the photos from I took en route. I end with a mini-gallery from earlier in the stay…
A stone bridge over the Earn, which we crossed on our way to the Earthquake House.the Earthquake House from the road.
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