28th June Berwick - Dollar.....We're in Scotland!

Robyn writes: We were up at around 7 to get ourselves organised and ready to move today - lots of packing and organising later, we were ready to leave at about 9.30. I was sad to leave the Berwick area as I've really enjoyed it. The weather was typical Northumbrian/Scottish - starting clear but then cloudy and as soon as we crossed the border, it started raining! Not that it's continued all day; it's actually been fine more than it's rained and the temperature has sat at about 15 degrees which is quite bearable.

We headed north along the A1 towards Edinburgh, which is new territory for us. For a lot of the time we were driving parallel to the sea. Then we turned to the west and skirted around Edinburgh on our way to the Falkirk Wheel. The trip to Dollar in Clackmannanshire was only going to take around 2 hours, so we had time to kill and this was something we both wanted to see. It's a world-famous and one-of-a-kind rotating wheel which is used to replace 11 locks (which used to take 6 to 8 hours) in moving canal boats about 35 metres up or down. After our canal experience, of course, we were very interested in how this would work!

 It's amazing to see the wheel in action

The Wheel was built about 12 years ago when they were regenerating the canal systems which had of course been closed down over the last part of last century. It's an amazing system, and there is a big visitor centre there with heaps of people watching its every move (especially on a Saturday like today!) We had morning tea while watching it, then found that there was a boat trip on in 5 minutes, so decided to try a ride for ourselves. It cost 9 pounds each but was really good, and went for an hour. We were in a tourist-type canal boat, much wider than the one we had in Wales, and sailed into the gondola at the bottom of the wheel. Then our boat was lashed into place and we began our ascent to the top (about 4 minutes). It was really smooth and quite amazing to glide to the top! Once we were up there, we sailed across the viaduct and into the pond at the end of the canal, turned around and sailed back, and repeated the exercise in reverse. Extremely cool!

Lex in the ditch next to the Antonine Wall

 The main street of Dollar, where we are staying - the Castle Campbell Hotel is at the left of the photo below. It dates back to the early 1800s.

 

Extremely photogenic heron in Dollar Burn

When we'd had our ride, and watched a few more boats being taken up/down, we decided to walk up to the top of the viaduct to see a piece of the surviving Roman Antonine Wall which is still there - this was a later wall than Hadrian's Wall, and unlike its stone construction, it was a huge turf wall with big ditches alongside. We climbed up on it and it's still a very impressive construction!

Then we decided we'd better get going as it was around 1.30, so we set course for Dollar. It was only about half an hour from the Falkirk Wheel and we crossed the Firth of Forth at the new Clackmannanshire Bridge (the Victorian Forth of Firth Bridge was over to our right). Dollar is a lovely little town at the foothills of the Ochil Mountains and they really do loom over the town - they are huge and sort of a bald green! Castle Campbell also looms over the town perched high on the mountain and is a very impressive sort of castle. As my many-times great grandmother is a Campbell from Dollar, I feel that this is quite legitimately MY family castle! (I have yet to put this argument to the people at the castle; they will probably want me to pay to enter it....)

Castle Campbell looming over the town

We arrived here just after 2, so we were able to book in immediately. The Castle Campbell Hotel is right on the main street of Dollar and very easy to find. It's just by the 'burn' (creek) that runs through the town down towards the Devon River below the town. We have a large room (thankfully), everything's a bit old (the hotel dates back to the early 1800s) but quite comfortable. A large bathroom with a bath is a bonus too!

Once we'd settled in, we went looking for some (late) lunch. The one cafe open in town was packed out, so we ended up just buying some lunch from the Co-op up the street and having it with a cuppa in our hotel room. Then we went out for a walk to explore the area. We headed up the burn to where the local museum (in an old mill building) was open, and went in for a look and chat with the people there. They promised to alert the local historian that I was here looking for my Drysdale ancestors, and I said I'd be back the next afternoon at 2 when it opened again (it only opens at weekends, so lucky we checked when we did). We explored further up along the burn and through Dollar Glen towards the castle, but by now it was after 4 and too late to go there, so we headed back to the hotel.

For tea, we first went to the Burnside Bar at the back of our hotel (there were two enthusiastic Chilean supporters next to us watching one of the World Cup games - sadly, Chile went down) then wandered up the street looking for tea. We settled on the "Italian" "restaurant", "Mo's Plaice" (we should have been warned!). The menu consisted of about twenty different things with chips. (Including haggis.) The only thing without chips was Spag Bol, so I ordered that - they were out of it! So we ended up ordering a pizza, hold the chips! Lex went off to find some alcohol to sustain us and came back with a very nice Aussie Sav Blanc. The pizza, amazingly, was really nice, at least, even though salad is apparently unknown to Mo. Then we came back and had dessert in the hotel restaurant (nice, but cost us more than the pizza!)

Being even farther north, it didn't get dark until well after 10pm. Thankfully we have really good curtains....I have no idea what time the sun comes up in the mornings (and I don't really think I want to know!)