I would drive 500 miles - Day 3

I'm still in Manchester, no baby bro, yet. And no Covid, yet. It's just a matter of time before we all get it, I know. But I'm dodging it atm, I am knackered though. Could be that I did nearly 8000 steps yesterday, after weeks of doing 1000 here and there. My right foot is not playing ball, except when we went foraging, it was fine. I do not understand, but there's lots I do not understand!

Back to Scotland, and we are in Scotland! Only the casual 69 miles today, nice. If you know you know, if you don't, don't google it, or do?

The day began with us getting up before sunrise, which was around 07:00. I do my usual, and we bolt out the door. We are flying into the twilight? Is it still twilight if it's dawn? Insert Twilight Breaking Dawn reference, I've only ever seen the first one, Twilight I'm 100 years old and like this 16 year old, problematic.

We are facing west as you can see Portpatrick is on a peninsula that faces Ireland, 23.21 miles away, and on a clear day I think you can see the Ilse of Man, 45.31 miles away. We snap some pinkish orangey skies and walk down the path. All the while Sofia is rueing that walking down this cliff path just means we have to walk back up it for breakfast. There are interesting tidbits inscribed on the steps and where the steps turn. I think it was to do with the rocks, and where the various bits of the landmass had been attached to millions of years ago.

We can indeed walk down to the harbour bit. We do a lap, capture the sun rising over the buildings. Not quite as dramatic as we'd hoped but lovely all the same. We note some funny words on the rocks, see pic below. I think they were to do with sea birds, or you know profanity, who's to say?! Sofia spots a dolphin bin that reminds her of her childhood, I think she sends it to Khamilla? My memory isn't what it used to be. We walk back, and suffer the ascent. But we make it, and it's A-ok.

It's at this point we committed to the quest to see a Shag.

Breakfast is in a grand old ballroom type place, see photo of the hotel. It's a grand old building, that's in need of a little repair here and there. The radio is playing and it ranges from golden oldies to modern pop, and peculiar choice, but nice enough. We note that there are some reserved tables, in the window no less! Savvy traveller, knew they wanted breakfast with a view of the see. We go grab yogurt, juice etc. I want a cooked breakfast today, but I can not find plates. Then I spot one of those catering bins that store plates, keeping them warm, inside I find my plate. And get too much food.

A young man swings by and takes our coffee order, he's super polite and apologetic. After I power through my breakfast I'm back to the buffet for some fruit, maybe juice. There's a man in clear confusion, I think he's after a plate. His wife asks him "What do you want!?", he replies "A plate...", I interject and point to the catering plate container thing. To which they reply "You've been here before!" I retort "No, but I did stand here about 15 minutes ago having the same crisis as you sir". We finish up, grab our gear and head out.

We are taking it a little easier today. Focussing on seeing the stuff around us without having to worry about getting to our next warm bed before all the eateries are shut. We head to Morrisons in Stranraer to refuel. I think we dipped in to grab our lunch, Sofia opting for salami, stinky cheese, and a baguette. I got salad, and two wellness shots. One with tumeric, the other with CBD. I'm driving so I steer clear of the CBD, lest it send me into some kind of chilled out trance situation. Who wants to be relaxed whilst driving? Certainly not me!

Back on the road we roar down to the Galloway Forest Park, it's one of a few designated dark sky areas in the world, on a clear night the stars are supposed to be quite something. But we're not stopping the night, because we're campers, we're super camp but not campers. Much like you can have soul and not be a soldier, or ham and not be a hamster. I digress.

We head for Loch Trool, and so begins the single track situation which means driving becomes all the more involved. 

As you can see narrow, limited view of the road ahead, and it's two way.

We park up at the Glen Trool Visitor's centre and head for the "Martyr's Tomb", the forest is super marshy and interesting looking. We get to the Tomb and it's sombre and peaceful. It is at this point I am overcome by the need to pee, as it's a forest I walk off trail and relieve myself. Remember I said it was marshy? The ground is spongy/bouncy, and clearly full of  water just under the surface. I manager to do what I have to do without sinking and head back to a clearing where Sofia is waiting. The sun had gone so the light through the trees isn't as photoworthy as when we first arrived #gutted. But we take a seat at the clearing, there are logs arranged for just that purpose. Some folks had had fires here, scorched earth, which is apparently a no no. Ray Mears said it best "It should be as though you'd never been there", I'm probably paraphrasing, or misremembering entirely.

Spiders and wood lice run about as we accidentally disturb logs and rocks. So we drive on to the "Bruce's Stone car park. More single track driving, lots of concentration. Pulling over, letting folks past, them letting us past. Getting to the car park, a little misunderstanding about where to park, but no harm, just some huffing and puffing. We then walk the short distance to Bruce's Stone. It's now that Sofia calls her ma, as we are kinda high up and we've got signal. Sofia's ma is called ****la, and Sofia's middle name is *****ina, I think it's nice. But I'm paranoid about giving away too much info online, hence the censoring. I think there was some kind of subterfuge, she told her ma we'd trekked through a forest, or up a mountain. Not driven and taken a few hundred steps. I think she panned the camera round to me briefly, and I did my usual stern wave.

We wander about a bit before getting back in the car and driving on. I think my foot had started to hurt and my mood soured. We missed Lock Moan! Drove on and down a little bridge, before finding somewhere for lunch. Loch Dow? It was a body of water that was used for fishing, only with a permit. But we weren't fishing. We were lunching. As we plough through the long grass, we think about the deer ticks etc that may have been waiting for the likes of us. Brimming with lyme disease! We say we'll check each other once we're at our next stop for the night. Turning a corner we spot a rock, and Sofia is overcome with the joy of nature's seat! We were gearing up to sit on the grass and here's a nice rock for us to perch upon and take it easy.

We crack on with lunch and spot a lone fisherman fishing in the water. He's some distance away, and we fear that he'll tell us off for disturbing his place of fishing. Once done with lunch we hang, and Sofia goes off to take a photo of the water. The fisherman approaches us, and asks us where we've come from? We tell him Nottingham, but we're touring Scotland arbitrarily. He enquires as to how we came to know about this body of water, we tell him we saw it on a map and here we are. That tickles him, he's happy that more people get to enjoy the beauty of the Scottish countryside. He asks us where we're headed. And then corrects our spelling Oban, it's more like Obun than Obaan as we were pronouncing it. We say our goodbyes, and he heads off. Walking back through the long grass we spot a hairy caterpillar, and a tiny frog!

A wild Sofia in the distance...

Onwards, my mood is lifted, funny that I was hungry, and my foot hurt, so I was being quiet and withdrawn. Fill the tank, and I'm back baby! Here's where I run out of memories. I remember stopped a few times, but I may be conflating future stops with the current day. But we did stop at Bell's Memorial, and were tempted to drink the water. We stop and Stinchar Bridge, and walk across the bridge, I think. There's a hole which has some tape over it, which is better than nothing, but still a real ankle break possibility. A dog swings by to say hi followed by their people, who also say hi.

We push on. Make lots of Oliphant comments as we go past Mount Oliphant. It's fun but we're wiped out. Plenty of walking, high concentration driving, and an unseasonably warm September have done a number on us. We make it to Ayr where we are stopping for the night, at a Travelodge. We park up right next to the entrance and go in, the guy behind the desk asks me for my address, I'm confused as I'd booked online, he explains it's a legal requirement, so I hand him my driver's licence. He tells us we're on the ground floor. We go through and crash. But spring back up as there's a Tim Horton's right next door.

If you look closely you can see Travelodge peeking over the left hand corner of Tim Horton's!

We order Timbits, coffee, and some kind of glazed something, or at least we try to via the screens at the front. But when we go to complete our order it crashes and resets. After we run through it twice, we wait for the other screen to become available. The lady at the other screen has two kids with her and they are taking the time deciding what they want. Luckily one the staff spot we're struggling and asks what's up. She offers to take our order at the till. She really did us a favour as we were so disheartened and tired. She asks if we want particular Tim Bits or just a selection, we must have looked confused, she suggests a selection. We wait for a bit our drinks and food arrives. The glazed doughnut is nice, super sweet. The Timbits are various flavours. Cinnamon sugar, birthday cake, etc. We settle on we're glad we did it but probably never again, well maybe once in a while, whence we see one, as their rare in the UK, for now.

We head back to the Travelodge. I do my daily physio routine, before climbing into bed with Task Master on in the background. We are wiped out and the sugar high has worn right off. We were going to hit the town, go to an actual restaurant. But laying in bed we're full of, laziness. After over an hour of lazing we decide to hit KFC. It's just over half a mile away, we're going to grab a bunch and eat it in the hotel room. Once there we order, I get a watermelon and lime refresher. And I leg it across the road to and M&S Foodhall, as I wanted some vegetables. I think I got vague bagged salad and some fruit pots.

Sofia's hopped in the driver's seat, I think and we head back. We have a brief panic that the surly fellow behind the desk will disallow our chicken dinner. He completely blanks us, the perfect crime. We get in and eat too much chicken. But we're satisfied. The fruit and salad go down well too, to offset the greasy excess. Exhausted we call it a day, brush our teeth, and hit the sack. We also had a discussion about the prevalence of sweetener in things, I avoid it as it can aggravate uric acid levels/trigger gout attacks.

This particular Travelodge room smelt like every changing room I've ever been in. Slightly sour. We suspect the room had been flooded and dried out, but not before the carpet had picked up the slight sour twang.