For once we actually made it out of the house on time. We’d said to Nan that we’d pick them up just after nine and we were there at ten past. They may have been waiting since 7:30 though.
We’d agreed to meet the others down in Gatehouse of Fleet: C1 drives like a lunatic and they’d gotten a headstart when we stopped to pick up Nan and Grandad so things weren’t looking too hopeful. We took a road out of New Galloway with the intention of cutting through the hills but half way round Loch Ken we discovered the road was flooded and unpassable. Y was all for driving through the flooding, and while I’d have loved to give it a try, I wasn’t too fussed at the thought of the potential repair bills.
By the time we arrived the others had been waiting for nearly half an hour and had wisely used the their time to fill TB up with E numbers.
In pursuit of more E numbers we headed out to Cream O’Galloway. Rather changed since we were last there (I guess it has been ten years), it now costs to get in. That said, there is now a rather massive adventure playground and indoor play for kids. We grabbed burgers for lunch whole TB played and then went for the most important part of the visit: the ice cream. We also made a most excellent discovery: a list of stockists in London. I will never eat Ben & Jerrys again!
The next stop was back into Gatehouse of Fleet and up to Cardoness Castle. Boy has that place changed. You used to have to climb up to the castle and pay some poor person whose job it was to sit in a tiny wooden hut all day long. Now a cottage has been turned into a visitor centre complete with gift shop and toilets. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m all for disabled access and the like, but I really don’t understand putting a wheelchair ramp to the bottom of stairs climbing up an impossibly steep hill leading to a castle that a wheelchair wouldn’t get into. Clearly I missed something there.
Next off we headed over to the Cardoness Estate where we used to spend our holidays as kids. Going along the drive it appeared that nothing had changed. We parked up and wandered down to the beach past our old plot. We first stopped at the draughts board – those counters were nowhere near as heavy as any of us remembered. Despite once being assured that a modern-sized caravan would never fit in that plot, there is now another caravan sitting there. It was all just wrong.
TB seemed to love the beach and us girls were more than a little excited at the chance to see all the places we used to play. We walked over to the chapel and took a look around and then walked up to the balcony. We finished off our afternoon walking up to the park and around the lake before collapsing into the car and heading home.
