Sunday 21 August 2016

August 20th 2016: Scotland: Portpatrick

Monty the Motorhome is parked up, on his own, in a corner of Logan Botanic Garden car park, where we are overnighting before visiting the gardens tomorrow. The place is some way off the main road and is deadly quiet.

The day did not start quietly with howling wind and driving rain, which gradually subsided as the morning wore on. We sat tight for a couple of hours, then made a move and travelled to Portpatrick - a small coastal town just south of Stranraer. By the time we arrived the rain had stopped and glimmers of blue sky were beginning to appear.
We had lunch at one of the town’s tea rooms and were presented with very generous portions, just like a couple of days ago at Castle Kennedy.

With the weather really improving we decided on a bit of a coastal walk, northwards towards Killantringan lighthouse. This is the first part of the Southern Uplands Way - a long distance footpath starting from Portpatrick and ending on the east coast of Scotland just north of Berwick upon Tweed  Parts of the path were quite challenging with steps rising almost vertically and chain hand rails to assist. However it was quite exhilarating to be out on the cliff tops with the wind in our faces. There was quite a bit of haze, but even so we could make out part of the Northern Ireland coastline.


As we left Portpatrick this was the view back to the town with it's lovely little harbour


Killantringan lighthouse

As we returned to Portpatrick the sea was quite rough
We returned to the van late afternoon and spent a while just soaking up the sunshine before moving on to Logan. I had emailed the gardens a couple of weeks ago asking permission to stay overnight and been quite surprised to receive a reply saying it was no problem. I’ve tried a number of other places like this and either been refused or had no reply. 
However there is no internet coverage, so this post will go out tomorrow.



No comments:

Post a Comment