Torture by bagpipes.

Trevor suggested the title of today's blog entry.  Being a loving husband he suffers much for the happiness of his woman.  Today he did just that.

I decided that we should try to absorb some real Scottish flavour before leaving this country, so we started out the day with a walk like the locals do. We joined the local families taking a Saturday stroll and dog exercisers on the grounds of the Balloch Castle Country Park as recommended by our host from the evening before.

I'm not sure what the story is with the park but we suspect that it is one of the many castles and grounds handed over to public ownership which has seen many better days.  The river stroll to get there was lovely, and the grounds with their rolling green lawns,  wide variety of trees and pathways stretching as far as you can see are still an absolute pleasure, but the house is sad.  Big cracks, fretting stonework and rotting timber make it better seen at a distance.

From the river side , looking up the rolling lawns

From the other side

The main entrance-note the plants growing out of the stonework!

Beautiful long driveway where we met many happy dogs and their owners. 

Then we headed out towards the coast to Dundonald where they were holding highland games today. To get there we passed an old abbey, many very basic double storey tenement housing blocks, open fields, and stone-walled estates. We zigzagged through tiny towns, and beneath many railway bridges before we found the haphazard parking near the games site.  People seem to park on either ride of the road with total disregard for double yellow lines, curbs or corners. What a mess! What we found was a very old castle ruin overlooking a green patch of ground. Set up was a typical country fete- but with continuous bagpipe music due to the rehearsing and  competing of 12 different bands , plus lone piper competitions and pipers assisting with highland dancing competitions. Heaven for me. Hell for my long-suffering husband.

We stood around, walked around,  then walked up to the old castle to have a look around. They have rare cave spiders in the dungeon! From the castle balcony we could watch the strong men competing as they tossed the stone and the shot put. We never saw any caber tossing, but there really was a limit to how much Trevor could stand.. and he had been very good about the whole thing.

the old castle as seen from the gathering site

After walking up the hill to get a better look

One of the windows-such thick walls!

From the balcony

Rare cave spider with hanging Web balloon ( a spider for each balloon)

Tossing the stone

One of the local (grade 3) pipe bands

The pipe band judges

Highland dancing competition.

We made tracks towards Glasgow via the coast and marvelled at the fact that the shops are not on the seaside and even the most seaside houses are not usually facing so that they can see the water. The beaches are mostly rocky.

We were let into our little flat above the shops in an outer suburb near to the airport, and found ourselves some dinner at the local supermarket, before settling to repack, ready for flying to Ireland tomorrow. This time tomorrow we will be in Dublin, and anticipating an early pick up and the start of our first organised small group tour.