Wigtown and Bladnoch

Hi all, I hope you like the photograph above. It was taken from the side of the A712 a little way north east of Newton Stewart. He obviously fancied himself as The Goat of the Glen.

If you remember my last post regarding our holiday on the Isle of Whithorn, we had a full Sunday and came back knackered. On the Monday we decided we'd slow down a bit and take life at a gentler pace. We managed it, but only just.

Our first problem was that we needed to do some shopping, nothing serious, (we don't do that shop till you drop sort of nonsense)just day to day stuff like milk, bread and some other provisions that one needs to keep one's strength up. We had a choice, we could either go into Newton Stewart, which is the only town in the area big enough to have a proper supermarket, or we could use the local shop in the village of Whithorn. I'm pleased to say that common sense prevailed and we turned down the 36 mile round trip to the superstore in favour of the local shop.

It was quite interesting to go back to the old way of living when you could stand in a shop and tell the shopkeeper what you wanted. My wife stood there and reeled off the items that she had on her shopping list while the grocer went from shelf to shelf finding and bagging up the goods. The service was relaxed and friendly and the price difference when compared with the supermarket was not as big as I expected. The extra we paid for our groceries I expect was less than the cost of the fuel we would have used if we'd gone to Newton Stewart. If the experience had a down side it was just the lack of choice, but I suppose we've all been spoilt in that direction.

Anyway, we soon dropped our shopping off back at the cottage and we were off on our travels again. Our first port of call was Wigtown which is Scotland's book town and modelled on the original secondhand bookshop town, Hay-on-Wye, in mid Wales.
We walked around the town and visited all of the bookshops and found them very pleasant although there were few in number than can be found in Wales. However, that is more than made up for by the relaxed atmosphere that surrounds this lovely place. We purchased several books including George Orwell's 1984 which turned out to be a very good read.

The photo above was taken across the meadows below Wigtown.
By the time we'd done the books shops we needed to find some food so we left Wigtown and went to a pub that we saw on the way to the book town. It was in the village of Bladnoch which was only about a mile from Wigtown and we chose this because we hadn't finished with the book town yet.

We had a lovely meal in the pub which cooked delicious food. It was also ideally situated by the river Bladnoch which boasts a good head of salmon. In fact the pub also hired out fishing tackle for those who fancied a go and at least two sets of kit were taken out while we were there. Across the road from the pub is Bladnoch whisky distillery which is open to the public. We didn't bother going in because my wife is tee total and I've given up drinking for England.

Suitably refreshed we went back into Wigtown and visited the town hall to see some ospreys. They weren't actually in the building of course, but on the top floor there was an exhibition dedicated to this rare bird of prey. There was also live coverage being shown of some ospreys that were nesting somewhere in remotest Scotland.

Having seen enough of the birds we took off down to Wigtown old harbour to have a look at the Martry's Post. This was a sad tale, apparently two women covenanters were tied to posts here and left to drown as the tide came in down the Solway Firth. How people could stand by and watch others drown is beyond me, thankfully we now live in better times.

It was now mid-afternoon and we decided to finish the day off by taking the dog for a walk along the estuary. That's me with Buzby in the photo on the right. Here we enjoyed some fresh air and some of the most beautiful scenery in the British Isles. There is one thing for sure, Wigtown has more to offer than just books.

I'll leave you with a photo taken by Wigtown old harbour looking north towards Newton Stewart.