Being Tourists for a change

 Friends from near Dundee were heading for Stranraer, so we suggested meeting for lunch near us..as they would be passing...

Just off the A75... the Burns Experience..they had never been and we hadn't for a few years. A good lunch outside, then a wander around the museum.

Our friend's mother's family is Burns from Ayrshire...who knows if there is a connection..but his father was Polish, and brought him up as a good Caithness lad! (Having met his Ayrshire wife in Glasgow)

We picked up on something we had missed previously...Burn's father spelled his surname Burness..and that is a name from Eastern Scotland. Something for further research!

A wander then over to the cottage where Robert Burns and three of his siblings were born, before they moved to Mauchline.

A willow sculpture of Tam o'Shanter

A long cottage with the byre on the left, then two living rooms with the sleeping platform above where the children would have slept..and the garden as it would have been.

A willow sculpture in the orchard, where many fruit trees, mainly Scottish varieties, have been planted

And a woodland walk

Next to the Brig o Doon (bridge over the River Doon) which features in the poem about Tam o'Shanter

We missed the mausoleum...but that was ok...it meant that I got a picture of the gates!!

So we had a really relaxing four hours in the sunshine....and added to that, they are taking a pair of wheels back to a purchaser in Inverness!! The best...cash sale, no fees and no postage!!

Being tourists

 Called over to see a friend , who is Pirate's team sponsor, this morning.

It's good to see him, and an ex sprinter friend who works for him as an electrician/mechanic.

Then we thought...let's be tourists for a change!!

Over the beacons to Brecon and lunch, a walk around and a secondhand bookshop....we succumbed to temptation!!

Then along the other side of the valley to the main A40, to Llangynidr and up over the mountain to Beaufort and back down the Ebbw valley.

Memories of going over that mountain every Thursday early, to the weekly market at Hay on Wye to sell my pots.

After we arrived back home the local Chapel Man came round...they have some furniture going free and DiL is helping to find people who are in need. The community working together.