After a fantastic day out at Jupiter Artland, we pushed on to find somewhere to stay for the night. We decided to head to the Loch Lomond and the Trossachs National Park region for the evening as we wanted to spend some time taking in some of Scotland’s natural gallery, that is its scenery and landscape.
Not a bad little view to wake up to in the morning, one that makes you want to get up and crack on with the day! So once we had said our good mornings to the four-legged neighbours, it was time to push on and find a nice little spot for breakfast, fortunately finding beauty spots to stop at in Scotland is not exactly hard, you could go so far as saying there is an abundance of them!
Stopping at the nearby Loch Lubnaig was a great example of such a beauty spot. It was here I had a little revelation. It’s often seen by some that travelling around in a vintage VW Split screen bus is ‘living the dream’ (whatever that’s supposed to mean?). We often joke about it thinking if only people knew the reality of vintage bus ownership and what driving them is like! 🙂 Never the less, the iconic camper conjures up this romantic notion within people, we’ve had so many people expressing this to us through the numerous waves or words on this trip already! Hence the dream/myth continues to grow…
However I realised that for me at least, this trip had fulfilled a very simple, but long-held dream of mine. One where you can go to beautiful areas of the country and make a little something to eat and drink whilst taking in the beauty of the surroundings. Nothing flash, expensive or complicated, but setting up the Trangia for making the tea in this idyllic location, made me realise just how lucky I was just to experience this moment. Hard to explain exactly, but it was a small dream come true for me! It was a lovely to take a little walk around the loch and chat about this an’ that with Lorna, sometimes it really is just the simple things in life that are the most memorable and magical!
We thought we’d push on to Crianlarich and stop for brunch at the Ben More Lodge as this was near the top of Loch Lomond and would make an ideal stopping point before driving down the length of the loch. Unfortunately we were now beginning the homeward section of the road trip, so would now need to start making our way back down the length of the country home again! Having looked at the map Lorna realised we could make a small detour and ‘pop in’ to see one of her old friends who we hadn’t seen for nearly 25 years or so!
Having checked she was in, we plotted a course to take us down the length of Loch Lomond and on to Kirkcudbright on the lower southwestern coast in the Dumfries and Galloway region of Scotland. It was a beautiful day, the scenery was stunning, why wouldn’t you want to go for a drive!
It was a beautiful drive down, and at some points we were literally chasing the end of the rainbow! It was great to catch up with Lornas friend Rachel again, and she very kindly treated us to some beautiful, locally caught fish and chips! With our bellies full, we decided to push on and cross the border before night fell, so as to reduce the driving over the next couple of days into manageable chunks.
On out way out over the border to England we passed through the last village in Scotland, Gretna Green, nationally famous for carrying out runaway weddings! Or in our families history, where my eldest brother ran away to get married so that the first thing my Mum and Dad knew about it was when they read about it in the local papers!
Well, after a long days driving, we arrived at out latest Brit Stop for the night on the English side of the border. Quite literally it will now be mostly down hill from here on in as we head home to the very lowest edge of England’s south coast as we make our way home…
