[The “z” is silent.]

Yesterday evenings lashing rain had cleared and our morning dawned with a clear view across the Firth of Clyde to the Isle of Arran and you-know-where. Today was time for me to brave the grounds of the Scottish National Trust Property of Culzean Castle. The grounds feature a walled garden so, with the protection from the still present wind, I was hopeful that its shelter might produce something. There was also a “wildlife garden” which included a pond that looked promising.

Just beyond the campsite we entered the Scottish National Trust grounds, our English National Trust cards being valid. The grounds are extensive and it was still about a 15 minute walk down to the castle itself. Beside the roadway, a footpath meanders through woodland thick with wild garlic. What I didn’t see was any wildlife other than a few diptera.

Arriving at Culzean Castle itself, I was reminded of Bamburgh Castle in Northumberland – neither of these properties look particularly like my idea of a castle but more like very large houses. It is an impressive property and there is, at least, a battery of canons pointing seaward.

I went “ooh, ah” briefly before we set off in the direction of the walled garden passing a field containing a mixed herd of deer and llamas. We hung a quick left to investigate the wildlife garden. Francine consulted the park map and got us to the pond, which looked well vegetated and clean. It looked like decent habitat to us but it clearly didn’t look like good habitat to the critters. We saw absolutely nothing, nothing flying over the water and not even any pond skaters on the water. This was weird.

We returned to the large walled garden and began making our way around it. Once again, nothing. Well, to be honest there were a handful of bumblebees but otherwise the plants looked to have attracted nothing more. Feeling that I needed to surrender, I vented my photographic frustration on a white flag.

Lunch was beckoning so we made our way back from the disappointing walled garden to the café area at Home Farm. The food was good but I mention it really to highlight the espresso coffee which I believe to be the best I have ever tasted. I was so impressed that I had to go and ask what it was. I’d never heard of it – Nàdar – but it was on sale in the gift shop. £10 for a 227g bag but I just had to buy some.

Wandering back to the campsite, right outside the entrance Francine spotted what looked like a farm track heading up on our right. Furthermore, it was lined with a splendid hedgerow, better than anything we’d seen thus far. Finally I had some interesting insects to play with, chief among them being a hoverfly called Rhingia campestris (Common Snout), looking curious with the long snout peculiar to the genus.

Messing about in the hedgerow, I was clearly not obvious. Francine was more out in the open track but was moving little, so much so that a very surprising visitor turned up to start grazing. I’d never been anywhere near a Hare before so this was a special treat. I managed a few shots before it spotted me and hared off.

After a dull start it had turned out to be an interesting day.

[Very Erle Stanley Gardner.]

Today we were leaving our Moffat campsite to make the 75-mile trip to Culzean Castle where the Camping and Caravanning Club have a campsite in the park grounds. From the campsite it is but a short step to the Scottish National Trust property.

Before leaving the Moffat campsite, I needed to visit the motorhome service point to dump our waste water and fill up with fresh water. The campsite layout is a little awkward in that we had to go through the exit barrier to return immediately through the code-controlled entrance barrier.This I did and pulled into the service point.

We had not dumped any waste water since leaving Newark after Frodo’s service. Because our waste drains slowly, I thought I’d set it going before filling with fresh water. I opened the drain tap – nothing, nada, nichts. Other than a brief tiny dribble which soon stopped, no waste water appeared. Surely I had not left the tap in the wrong position, open, and discharged where I shouldn’t? Five days worth of water seemed to have disappeared. I had a problem one way or the other.

With what must be a reasonably full waste tank and not wishing to be carrying too great a weight of water, I filled the fresh tank to only 50%. Scratching my head metaphorically, we exited once again and began our journey.

Some of the Scottish miles can seem a bit long; the journey took about two hours. We were a few minutes ahead of opening time [13:00] so sat and waited behind another early arrival.

Once open, the friendly man at reception asked if we’d like a pitch with a sea view – yes please – so we got Frodo settled overlooking the Firth of Clyde and the isle of Arran. Most unfortunately, behind the Isle of Arran are parts of the Mull of Kintyre which are visible. Francine irritatingly mentioned it. I absolutely loathe Macca’s Mull of Kintyre but now it was cemented into my brain as earworm of the day. Thanks a bunch!

Probably to avoid being strangled, Francine thought she’d go on a scouting trip of the Culzean castle grounds, leaving me to investigate Frodo’s lack of waste water. I tried lying on a picnic blanket but the howling gale blowing in off the firth made holding it down impossible. A padded jacket on the gravel would have to do.

I grabbed a collapsible bowl to place under the waste tank plumbing as I removed my duct tape to gently ease off the tap assembly. My waste water was not lost after all, it was still in the tank and began flowing into my bowl as I loosened the pipe. The bowl filled quickly and I jammed the pipe back on to stem the flow while I emptied the bowl. I did this three times before I could let the dregs into the bowl.

The drain tap is poor, seemingly being designed to block, and blocked it most certainly was. I have a bendy drain pipe-cleaner device with which I managed to extract an unmentionable plug of grease-matted curly hair. Guess whose hair that might’ve been. A kettle of boiling water finished the cleaning job whereupon I reassembled the waste tank plumbing.

Fortunately I already knew my way around the waste tank plumbing; this was not the first time I had taken it apart to clean it. Frodo had always drained painfully slowly and whilst in Spain over winter, I had removed the tap and flushed it through with hot water. Draining speed became respectable. I think our problem this time is that we had used Frodo’s on-board shower nearly all the time in Spain and clearly quite a bit of hair had made its way into the waste tank. Add to that grease from washing up water and you’ve got a drain blockage waiting to happen.

Mr. Fixit had struck once again, so I awarded myself a beer or two. Francine returned from her exploratory mission while I was keeping poor ol’ Frodo company.

After a pleasant afternoon, in the evening Frodo’s view was lost as low clouds and heavy rain moved in.

Sadly my earworm remained. I may have to find some intertidal mud in which to bury Francine – “she’s a witch, m’lud”.

Our original plan had been to spend four nights at the Moffat campsite, largely to spend a weekend with Francine’s niece and husband. Then she-who-must-be-obeyed decided that, if we could, we should stay for an extra day, basically to giver us a day off without an agenda. The process caused some difficulty since the campsite had been using a new booking system for only a few days. Eventually, though, we got our stay extended.

Then we got a shock. Our initial booking for four nights cost a shade under £120. The payment the Camping and Caravan Club took for our extra night was a whopping £47. I assumed that they had forgotten the Age Concession Rate [60+ get a discount] but no – this was differential pricing in action ‘cos we’d booked it close to the date. That’s even worse – the £47 included  the ACR so the full price would have been well over £50.

Frankly that’s outrageous – someone’s having a laugh. We have never paid anywhere close to prices like that in either France or Spain where we’d think of €30 as being on the high side. The UK has completely lost it but, then, we knew that anyway.

So, in trying to enjoy our extra extortionately expensive extra day in Moffat, we took a circuitous route into town for Francine to sate her craving for a Scotch Pie. [Don’t ask.] Our route into town took us through a park with a boating lake that seemed largely to be lacking water, then up a delightful “burn” known as Annan Water. I soon regretted not taking my camera along – I wasn’t expecting to see much but this rock-strewn burn looked as if it might be prime Dipper territory.

At first we saw little but a Robin catching flies over the water. Further up, though, as the numbers of boulders in the water increased, we did, indeed, see Dippers. We’ve seen them only once before, I think; they are delightful little birds that frenetically bob up and down searching in the shallower water for invertebrates to feed on. This encounter was especially good ‘cos these Dippers were feeding fledged chicks who followed them around expectantly. Now I was really ruing my lack of camera. Francine did what she could with her phone camera. [At least it’s an iPhone.] She even took some video.

We finally ended up in town to search for Francine’s Scotch Pie. Getting a hot one proved difficult. The local baker did have a hot cabinet and clearly had had some pies but at first glance it was now woefully ill-supplied. Still short on the Scotch Pie front, we returned a few minutes later to find the cabinet replenished. Sadly it had not been replenished with hot pies but cold pies needing to be heated up. We made the mistake of buying two, even though I could see what was coming; Francine’s pie was, at least, tepid but mine was cold. You do not want to eat a cold Scotch Pie. Actually, I’m not sure that I ever want to eat any kind of Scotch Pie again.

We repaired to a hotel for a drink to wash down the pies. I’ve tried two different Scottish real ales since I’ve been here and I wouldn’t give you thank you for either one of them. Yesterday I switched to Staropramen, today I chose Cruzcampo. Better.

We returned to Frodo and it just had to be done. At first I hadn’t felt like returning but the Dippers were calling. I broke out my camera and wandered back to Annan Water to see if I could catch the Dippers on pixels. They are the most endearing birds that live up to their name, constantly bobbing up and down as they sit on a rock looking for underwater prey items. I managed to catch and adult, a chick, an adult surfacing with prey in its beak, and finally an adult passing food to one of the chicks. The adults appeared to have divided their workload, with the male looking after one chick while the female tended to the other chick. It had been well worth the return trip to the burn.

As well as having a photography pal in the vicinity of Moffat, Francine’s niece lives about a 30-minute drive away. This is the main reason we are here and we planned to spend the weekend in their company.

On Saturday we broke Frodo out of his pitch and drove the 30 minutes to Francine’s niece’s village, which conveniently had a decent car park behind the village hall. I’d been a bit nervous about the access with width and height (over a small bridge) looking a bit restricted but our pals had been very considerate in measuring it for us and Frodo should be fine. Indeed he was.

Driving the road to the village had woken us up but we still sat with a coffee before Mr. and Mrs. Niece took us out on a trip. Our trip was to Culross just across the Firth of Forth in Fife. Culross is a 16th century village that looks more French than it does Scottish. It is known as one of the main filming locations of Outlander. [No, we haven’t seen it.] Being both attractive and notable it is, of course, a tourist attraction but there is ample free parking, though with a 1.5T limit it would be no good for Frodo. We abandoned ship and set off to wander.

‘T was 13:00-ish and the worms were biting. We called in to a pub which declared that food was served all day. The wind was a bit chill but all inside tables were reserved so we had to eat outside under a gazebo. The food was decent though you had to eat pretty quickly if you wanted it warm.

Stomachs sated, we explored the village. I was surprised to see what turned out to be a Chilean flag flying on a second flagpole beside the Scottish saltire. Nearby was a bust of an historic dignitary who was Thomas Cochrane, 10th Earl of Dundonald. He was also the first Vice Admiral of Chile. Figure that one out. Naturally the girls went into a couple of gift shops while I remained outside taking in the air and the views.

There was a piece of linguistic interest that we stumbled upon. One of pictures is of the “mercat cross”. At first we thought “mercat” might stem from the Chilean connection and its Spanish language but, no, mercat is apparently a bona fide Scottish word.

A couple of miles along the estuary was a grave that Mrs. Niece was keen to visit. The grave is in the estuary and visible only when the tide is low enough. It is the grave of a supposed witch, Lilias Adie (c. 1640-1704). She died in prison and was buried in the mud under a large stone slab “to prevent her from escaping”. It is the only known grave of a Scottish witch.

On Sunday our relies came to us in Moffat, where Sunday is Market Day, a popular attraction. This would be more up my street featuring both booze and food. After introducing our friends to Frodo, we walked the few minutes into town to see what the market had to offer.

One attraction for which we had forewarning was the stall of a renowned pie man. [After me: Simple Simon met a pie man going to the fair …] His pies had a perplexing array of fillings including macaroni – a macaroni pie [?]. Others were more conventional featuring various combinations of steak or chicken, together with vegetarian options. Not wishing to fire up Frodo’s oven, we passed but Mr. Niece did buy some pies and some bridies, which are like Scottish pasties.

Moffat is home to the Moffat Distillery (run by an American, no less) which produces hand-crafted whisky and gin, Well, it would be criminal to come all this way without trying Moffat’s gin. There was a second stall from Dark Art Distillery also selling spirits, including a couple of gins, so we thought we needed to do a comparative tasting. My rucksack was becoming heavy. Dark Art’s stall also had a very intriguing “tequila-alike” made from agave. They aren’t allowed to call it tequila ‘cos it isn’t made in Mexico. There were two offerings, including one with a tinge from being matured in red wine barrels. Whilst intrigued, we weren’t quite intrigued enough to lash out £65 a bottle, though.

Being a cheese addict, there were two further stalls which piqued my interest. I added a soft blue cheese, a firm cows milk cheese and an even harder, matured ewes milk cheese to my increasingly heavy rucksack. All this effort spending money left us needing refreshment in a local hostelry, after which we needed to carry more weight in the form of two bottles of tonic to go with the gin.

Francine has a friend who lives about a 30-minute drive away from Moffat. She had arranged that they would come down to meet us, then take us to see something local. They duly arrived at 10:30.

The something local that they elected to introduce us to was Craigieburn Gardens and Nursery. If I’ve got this right, the story goes that many years ago, the lady of the property was in Nepal seeking plants. On the trip she met a Nepalese gardener and somehow encouraged him and his family back to Scotland to plant and look after her garden. Her property is in a modest gorge with a climate that resembled that of Nepal, apparently. It is now open to the public for a £7.50 admission fee and features some exotic plants. There are even prayer flags – it looks the part.

The weather was a little threatening and at one point we did get wet but took some shelter under the trees. There was an energetic dog complete with ball for those of us with short attention spans to entertain. As a non-botanist with said short attention span, here’s a couple of plants that appealed to me. Our friends thought they needed to return with an empty car for some of the plants from the nursery.

‘T was approaching lunchtime and we returned to Moffat in search of a hostelry. Moffat has an intriguing one, The Star Hotel which is, we’re told, the narrowest detached hotel in Scotland. How’s that for a claim to fame? Get specific enough and you can probably get into the Guinness Book of Records for almost anything. [No, I don’t know if it’s in there.] Naturally, the Star Hotel goes back quite a long way. It proved a decent venue for lunch. Their choice of real ale, being one of Morland’s offerings from Oxfordshire, seemed a little unusual in Scotland.

After lunch our friends departed to get on with their lives leaving us to wander around Moffat to explore. We’d visited a real butcher to supplement our supplies and were only just able to do so as it would be closing at the end of May. There was also (or rather wasn’t) a greengrocer with good reviews shown on Google maps which was now missing. A baker was up for sale, too. Perhaps a sad sign of the times.

On a brighter note, at the end of one of the side streets close to the Star Hotel, we stumbled across what is now called Dowding House, formerly St. Ninian’s Preparatory School. This is where Air Chief Marshall Sir Hugh Caswall Tremenheere Dowding was born. [How’s that for a name to conjure with?] His father was headmaster. Hugh Dowding was Air Officer Commanding RAF Fighter Command during the Battle of Britain. I had no idea of this connection prior to our visit. Outside the house, as well as Dowding’s bust, stands a Spitfire; a replica but a very good one.

Time to go and keep Frodo company listening to the Westminster chimes of the local church.

From our blissful overnight stay at Augill Castle, one which has certainly ruined me for any regular campsites, we continued our way along the A66 to hit the M6 before turning north to Moffat. The journey was a mere 85 miles taking about an hour and three quarters but we had to kill time at Gretna service area so as not to arrive too early for check-in.

We skilfully avoided the motorway service station fuel at a whopping £2 a litre and found a much more reasonable fuel station in Moffat as we arrived. What am I saying, reasonable? This fuel was a mere £1.86 litre but when the world has been Trumped …

Tank replenished, there was a short queue at the entrance to the Camping and Caravanning Club campsite. We sat and waited patiently. The day was busy for the staff with over 70 units arriving that day, 50+ having left. It didn’t take too long for us to get shepherded around to a very pleasant pitch on the edge of the site backing onto some woodland . We reversed Frodo in with his rear lounge overlooking the trees rather than other units – perfect for us unsociable gits.

The campsite has excellent facilities and is very conveniently located right on the edge of the town; it is but a 10 minute walk to get into the centre. There is also an adequate (though unscintillating) Co-op just a spit away. We stretched our legs and hit it to stock up on some supplies. Our supplies included the necessary items for an arrival paella – you simply cannot have too many paellas.

Following Frodo’s service, our initial inclination was to break our journey to Scotland by staying at the UK’s highest pub, the Tan Hill Inn “on a lonely hill high in the Yorkshire Dales” [it says here]. The Tan Hill Inn allows motorhomes to park overnight, requesting just a £10 donation to the air ambulance for the privilege; a fine cause. The downside is that it’s on a first come, first served basis. With somewhat restricted parking, there are also some stories about groups of cars blocking other vehicles in. Thus, we thought a back up plan might be in order.

That was when Francine found Augill Castle close by the Tan Hill Inn. Augill Castle

is a hotel and restaurant with [drum roll] two spaces for motorhomes. There are no service facilities so you are effectively off-grid but pitching up is free if you eat in the restaurant. We would be off-grid at the Tan Hill Inn, anyway, so it was little different. Augill Castle has booking available and with just two pitches, that would seem essential.

Whilst in the Beefeater opposite Frodo’s dealer, we mulled it over and decided that we may prefer a night at the castle if possible. Francine popped out to phone Augill Castle and returned with a smile. We were in – game on.

Frodo was returned to us quite late in the day following his service and we once again grabbed our free pitch for the night. This facility is excellent; it is really like an aire in France or Spain, but with the addition of toilet and shower facilities (and a swimming pool, should you want it). How bad can that be?

Morning dawned with a little irritating rain but that stopped and we eventually set sail for Cumbria and Augill Castle. With the comfort of being booked in, Frodo was very relaxed. He cruised up the A1(M) for 140 miles and turned off onto the gravel track that led him through trees to the castle itself, arriving at 13:30-ish.

We announced our arrival and were shown where to park. (Levelling blocks necessary.) Other guests would start arriving at about 15:00. Meanwhile, after the journey, Leaving me to site Frodo, Francine needed to check out the castle plumbing which seemed to have been made to look like a long-drop toilet with a modern bowl beneath the flat wooden seat. Very inventive.

Francine guided Frodo onto his levelling ramps. Bliss! We were on a gravel hardstanding in the middle of nowhere overlooked by an historic castle. Frodo has a 19:00 booking for dinner in the castle restaurant so there’ll be no washing up to deal with.

Other guests duly arrived to check into rooms but no second motorhome. At 18:30 we went to check out the bar and peruse the menu before a 19:00 dinner. The castle does do its own gin but sadly that was out of stock. Lakeland gin made an excellent substitute, though. We enjoyed  conversing with the very friendly barman/waiter together with a few of the other guests as they, too, arrived all wanting the local gin but having to take the very good substitute.

In my view, this place does it right. There were four starters, five mains and four desserts on the menu; far better to concentrate on doing a few things well rather than a lot poorly. With a fixed price of £28 for two courses, I went for Duck Bon Bons as a starter [there were three but I’d eaten one before the camera was deployed] with an “on trend” smash burger main. “On trend” is a phrase that is itself on-trend these days. [I’m falling out of love with our language.] Francine went for Pesto-topped Salmon as a main and Lemon Tart as a dessert. She declared the lemon tart to be the best she had ever tasted. The food really was extremely good and for once I begrudged nothing about the bill.

With no sound other than birds and the bleating of lambs, this overnight stay will surely be the highlight of the trip.

Frodo is booked in for his annual habitation service on Tuesday 5th at the dealer in Newark on Trent. We are also booked into the dealer’s overnight area for Monday night, before the service, and Tuesday night after the service. Our booking seemed like a good idea at the time – get it all done before the main season – but then we realized that on Monday, being a bank holiday, we would not be able get Frodo out of his secure storage facility to travel up to Newark. Duh! We’d have to break Frodo out of prison on Sunday, which would mean that we’d need somewhere to stay en route.

Great! Sunday on a Bank Holiday weekend is not a wonderful time to find a campsite; first of all they’d be busy and, further more, they’d be busy with Satan’s Little Disciples. Francine did manage to find a club site near Peterborough with space – Ferry Meadows in the Nene Valley Country Park. All the hardstanding areas were unavailable but some grass pitches were still open. Happily, the recent weather had been dry so a grass pitch should be no problem. Francine booked it.

Now, Franco has a bucket list trip booked to Costa Rica in early June, so we won’t be able to spend June in La Belle France. Francine, though, has been hankering after a trip to Bonny Scotland. Since we’d be almost half way there after Frodo’s service, she made plans for us to continue north after Newark with our initial Scottish landfall being Moffat enabling us to visit Francine’s niece who lives close by. Scotland doesn’t really like Franco – it always rains on him – but, hey, I’m just the driver and it would be somewhere new.

First hurdle, though – dealing with a rugrat infested campsite on Sunday of a Bank Holiday weekend. We released Frodo from captivity on Sunday morning, filled up with Trumped-expensive diesel and headed for Peterborough. We arrived at Ferry Meadows.

The campsite is split across a road with the hardstanding areas being on one side and the grass pitches, where we were to be located, on the opposite side of the road. Having missed out on filing the water tank at home, I paused at the motor vehicle service point. While I was attending to the water supply, Francine spotted an available pitch just beside the circular track, overlooking no one and far from the rugrat play areas. It looked about as good as we could do, so we went for it.

We had chosen well. Rugrats were cycling around the track but being tarmac rather than gravel, disturbance was minimal. Furthermore, we were away from areas that might encourage ball games. Unsociability rules, OK. Since kids were everywhere and I’m not allowed to take photos involving kids, you’ll have to imagine it.

After an installation beer, we went for an exploratory wander around the Country Park itself. I must say that it has been done very well. There is a vast an mount of grassy, open space encircled by lakes and the river Nene. If you’re a rabbit with children, it’s a great open space. There is also ample car parking. Even someone for whom this is an unnatural habitat, was impressed. Well done Peterborough.

We returned from our walk to our first paella of the trip. You can’t have too many paellas – apart from being tasty, it’s a one-pot dinner. Rugrat racket did eventually calm down and we settled in to watch some of the World Snooker Championship final.

It was less scary than I’d feared it might be.