Great North Fun Day 19

Do I look like dinner to you? Apparently I do to 50,000 midges.

Breakfast outdoors in Moffat was a lovely and relatively midge free experience.  We packed up and headed for the hills - quite literally.  Our aim was to find a suitable wildcamping spot near Glen Trool but to stop along the way and take in some sights.  If you want to 'take in some sights' in Scotland be prepared to walk uphill.  In a cunning move no doubt driven by a desire to keep them out of the way of the English the Scots have put all their good stuff high up and well out of harms way.  We stopped near Loch Ken for lunch and walked up to admire a couple of viewpoints before tackling the 'Raiders Road Forest Drive' - a toll road between the A762 and A712 just south of New Galloway.  It was a wonderful if somewhat bumpy drive with my pedometer racking up over 1000 steps without me leaving the driving seat - a quick and painfree way to fitness.

Delores tucked away.

Next stop was Murray's monument which was again at the top of a hill albeit a relatively small one.  Still not quite sure who Murray was but someone called James Stewart liked him enough to build him a huge monument on the top of a very pretty hill.

And so to Glen Trool.  We'd done our homework and had an idea of a couple of wild spots to try.  We eventually found a lovely little hideaway almost completely hidden from the tiny road next to it.  Comletely hidden from humans that is, every midge within a 10 mile radius seemed to know exactly where we were. Not that we wanted to go outside as the rain was thundering down again.  So I whipped up our romantic anniversary dinner to the sound of rain drumming on the roof and Steve cursing and swotting any midge that dared breach our defences.

We all gave up and had an early night, though I can't help feeling the midges will be munching on me till the early hours. Let's hope tomorrow brings better weather.