Castles in the clouds.

This week I have had to deliver to some Historic Scotland sites, mostly castles and most I have never been to before. These included Dirleton and Tantallon in East Lothian, Blackness and Linlithgow Palace in West Lothian, Craigmillar in Edinburgh, Caeverlock in Dumfries and last but not least Stirling Castle. I think I really should make more of an effort to visit and learn a bit more about Scottish history. There is so much on my doorstep and yet I very rarely take the opportunity to visit these special places.

The Bass Rock on the way to Tantallon.

Caeverlock Castle.

Stirling, misty but atmospheric.

Friday's run took me up North, so decided to stay with the Mater and Pater again rather than drive back down in the same day. I brought Dolly with me as am still desperately trying to knock out some more miles. The weather this morning looked gorgeous, dry and blue skies, so headed East towards Pennan. The 10 miles to Pennan took approx 37mins. The 10 miles back to Macduff took approx an hour. The wind was so strong that I had to actually pedal on the downhills almost as hard as I did on the uphills. It was a good test of my uphill stamina. One of the hills near Pennan has a 17% gradient. I think at one point I was close to rolling backwards!

Signs.

Pretty flowers.

General observations and musings this week include;

1) In amongst the hundreds of orange road cones that I see every day, this week I saw 2 fluorescent green ones. Unusual but nice.

2) Before High viz jackets, waistcoats, uniforms became the norm did we just run over/hit people more than we do now?

3) Rainbow count was only 2 this week.

4) Why is there a Tourist information office in Kirkcaldy? Who goes there and why?

Peace x

All photographs by Caroline Harvey