It is Thursday morning and we are anxious to get going! One small glitch, no suitcases yet ( not missing just one, but all three ) and so we chat about our day at breakfast and decide that since we are supposed to meet with David at the Scottish Dark Skies Observatory, we would head over that way and spend the day looking for things related to our topic of study while we are here. That is easier said than done, but we are adventurous and so muster on. About 30 minutes into our adventure, the tire pressure light comes on in the car and so we stop and get the air checked... seems ok and onward we go. Now one thing that anyone traveling in Scotland needs to consider is the comment that was made to me at the hotel, " Scotland is a small country that wants to seem big, so they have few major roads and lots of winding, sheep covered smaller roads." That makes for long driving to get short distances... keep this thought in mind.
We decide after driving almost the entire way to the Galloway Forest that we would stop and spend some time at the Clyde Falls. We were feeling pretty good about ourselves at that moment since we had had some coffee at a local tea and coffee shop and they had encouraged us to absolutely visit the falls. We were armed with new toothbrushes, toothpaste and two BIG packs of Jammie Dodgers... thank you Lidl and the sale you were running.
After going around the roundabout several times, making a few wrong turns and turning a few colorful phrases, we end up at the Clyde Falls, only it is an entire historical site of which the falls are only a part. It is lovely and Steve and Trent make due notice of the homemade ice cream and determine that they will have a cone after the little hike we will be going on. Two and a half miles later, we had completed a beautiful hike, seen several gorgeous falls, stood next to William Wallace's hide out cave and thoroughly sweated up our extra clothes..... but as Steve would say, You have to do as much as you can when you are where you are! Now I want to remind you that falls are found in areas where the landscape is steep and a bit raggedy. We forgot this one small detail and as we got our ice cream ( mine was Jammie Dodgers ice cream ) and were enjoying it, the realization hit us that we had to walk up out of the gorge; and so we did, but it was no where near as enjoyable as walking down into the gorge.
As we headed out we were careful to watch for sheep who didn't like to be penned into a field. Now , when I say field, I mean a field of several hundreds of acres. If you were a sheep and you had that much space, honestly... would you want to play in the road? Especially since the roads are narrow and at times on bridges especially, they are one car wide. We had to be very careful since the sheep just wandered out into the road to play and that was dangerous for us and them. Finally, we make it to Ayr and Trent checks his texts and to his delight finds notifications that two of the suitcases are located and on the way to the hotel..... Trent's and Steve's........ argh......! Supper was simple and hearty ( well we were going to the top of a mountain where it would be cold and windy and you need lots of hearty food to get by !)
So, let me tell you about the journey to the Observatory. It is in the Galloway Forest and is in the section designated as a dark sky site. But remember I told you to keep those roads in mind? Ok , so we turn off of the main road ( one lane sheep covered ) and head to the top of the mountain. The directions start out, please drive 10 miles ( not kilometers ) per hour and I believe that you will have no troubled getting here. The first direction tells us to go to the cow grid, cross it.... shortly after this we are to be on watch for a wooden sheep gate that needs to be closed behind us before we drive over the wooden bridge that has no sides. Ok, so far so good! Next step.. continue on making a sharp left up the hill , being carefully not to go too fast and continue on until one more left that goes as near to vertical as a car can safely travel. We get to our last deer gate , open it and know in our hearts we have made it!! It is 7:50 , not remotely dark yet and in an area of zero cell reception. We don't care right? We made it! As we turn the last corner, there it is ! The last Gate and on it is the SDSO logo and insignia. It is closed and riding on our previous success, we just send Steve out to open the gate ( he has been the gate master after all ! ) He fiddles with the latch and then turns around, looks at us, shakes his head and utters the words we dread: " It is locked". Dejected we ponder plan B.
Plan B consists of waiting. I mean what else can we do? David said be there by 8... so , ok we are a little early. So waiting is good, that is until we start hearing noises and imaginations start to do their imagination thing. At one point we thought that badgers were hunting, or the sheep flock was coming... screams like humans echoed as bats flew overhead and the owls started ". whoo-ing"... We waited about 20 minutes, long enough to see lots of very aggressive spiders and feel the nibble of some hungry flying bugs. At last, we hear David's vehicle roaring up the hill . He welcomes us, opens the gate and in a cloud of dust.... disappears. We continue on and encounter roads steeper than we have already driven, but we eventually pull into the observatory parking lot and begin a fabulous tour of the facility while we are waiting for the rest of the crowd to arrive and do some photography and star gazing. It was clouding up quickly and so once the other people arrived, David set the scopes up and we checked out Jupiter with Calisto and Ganymede , Arcturus and Altair. Because the clouds were rolling in at an ever increasing rate and because we plan to go back to see the meteor shower, we left about 10:45 pm. It is time to remember those winding roads I described and how you go short distances in long periods of time .... and that the sheep like the road as I tell you that we didn't get back to the hotel until 1:45 ( a full 90 minutes later than we should have ) , saw several families of sheep sleeping beside the road in little clusters and winding roads that had bridges that just appeared out of nowhere until you turned a corner.... it was an adventurous day and thoroughly enjoyable until we walked in the door and saw only two suitcases still....... I would have to go at least one more day as the last representative of our suitcase-less team. Nobody plans to be at breakfast before nine.......
We decide after driving almost the entire way to the Galloway Forest that we would stop and spend some time at the Clyde Falls. We were feeling pretty good about ourselves at that moment since we had had some coffee at a local tea and coffee shop and they had encouraged us to absolutely visit the falls. We were armed with new toothbrushes, toothpaste and two BIG packs of Jammie Dodgers... thank you Lidl and the sale you were running.
After going around the roundabout several times, making a few wrong turns and turning a few colorful phrases, we end up at the Clyde Falls, only it is an entire historical site of which the falls are only a part. It is lovely and Steve and Trent make due notice of the homemade ice cream and determine that they will have a cone after the little hike we will be going on. Two and a half miles later, we had completed a beautiful hike, seen several gorgeous falls, stood next to William Wallace's hide out cave and thoroughly sweated up our extra clothes..... but as Steve would say, You have to do as much as you can when you are where you are! Now I want to remind you that falls are found in areas where the landscape is steep and a bit raggedy. We forgot this one small detail and as we got our ice cream ( mine was Jammie Dodgers ice cream ) and were enjoying it, the realization hit us that we had to walk up out of the gorge; and so we did, but it was no where near as enjoyable as walking down into the gorge.
As we headed out we were careful to watch for sheep who didn't like to be penned into a field. Now , when I say field, I mean a field of several hundreds of acres. If you were a sheep and you had that much space, honestly... would you want to play in the road? Especially since the roads are narrow and at times on bridges especially, they are one car wide. We had to be very careful since the sheep just wandered out into the road to play and that was dangerous for us and them. Finally, we make it to Ayr and Trent checks his texts and to his delight finds notifications that two of the suitcases are located and on the way to the hotel..... Trent's and Steve's........ argh......! Supper was simple and hearty ( well we were going to the top of a mountain where it would be cold and windy and you need lots of hearty food to get by !)
So, let me tell you about the journey to the Observatory. It is in the Galloway Forest and is in the section designated as a dark sky site. But remember I told you to keep those roads in mind? Ok , so we turn off of the main road ( one lane sheep covered ) and head to the top of the mountain. The directions start out, please drive 10 miles ( not kilometers ) per hour and I believe that you will have no troubled getting here. The first direction tells us to go to the cow grid, cross it.... shortly after this we are to be on watch for a wooden sheep gate that needs to be closed behind us before we drive over the wooden bridge that has no sides. Ok, so far so good! Next step.. continue on making a sharp left up the hill , being carefully not to go too fast and continue on until one more left that goes as near to vertical as a car can safely travel. We get to our last deer gate , open it and know in our hearts we have made it!! It is 7:50 , not remotely dark yet and in an area of zero cell reception. We don't care right? We made it! As we turn the last corner, there it is ! The last Gate and on it is the SDSO logo and insignia. It is closed and riding on our previous success, we just send Steve out to open the gate ( he has been the gate master after all ! ) He fiddles with the latch and then turns around, looks at us, shakes his head and utters the words we dread: " It is locked". Dejected we ponder plan B.
Plan B consists of waiting. I mean what else can we do? David said be there by 8... so , ok we are a little early. So waiting is good, that is until we start hearing noises and imaginations start to do their imagination thing. At one point we thought that badgers were hunting, or the sheep flock was coming... screams like humans echoed as bats flew overhead and the owls started ". whoo-ing"... We waited about 20 minutes, long enough to see lots of very aggressive spiders and feel the nibble of some hungry flying bugs. At last, we hear David's vehicle roaring up the hill . He welcomes us, opens the gate and in a cloud of dust.... disappears. We continue on and encounter roads steeper than we have already driven, but we eventually pull into the observatory parking lot and begin a fabulous tour of the facility while we are waiting for the rest of the crowd to arrive and do some photography and star gazing. It was clouding up quickly and so once the other people arrived, David set the scopes up and we checked out Jupiter with Calisto and Ganymede , Arcturus and Altair. Because the clouds were rolling in at an ever increasing rate and because we plan to go back to see the meteor shower, we left about 10:45 pm. It is time to remember those winding roads I described and how you go short distances in long periods of time .... and that the sheep like the road as I tell you that we didn't get back to the hotel until 1:45 ( a full 90 minutes later than we should have ) , saw several families of sheep sleeping beside the road in little clusters and winding roads that had bridges that just appeared out of nowhere until you turned a corner.... it was an adventurous day and thoroughly enjoyable until we walked in the door and saw only two suitcases still....... I would have to go at least one more day as the last representative of our suitcase-less team. Nobody plans to be at breakfast before nine.......
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