Sunday 6th July 2025
I booked this short break in Scotland in early February after watching a TV programme which showcased several gardens in Scotland. Drummond Castle garden was one which really impressed Gee and I and so we arranged a trip specifically to visit it. I booked what I thought were very nice (expensive!) hotels for two nights in Stirling and two nights in Inveraray. Then I set about seeking out gardens to visit whilst we were there. Immediately I hit a snag, since while Drummond Castle was very close to Stirling, other interesting gardens were scattered far and wide across the country. Simply driving to them would have taken so much time leaving insufficient time to visit them. So the whole purpose of the trip (garden visiting) was called into question immediately.
When I booked the hotels, I was pretty sure that Gee had booked Tilly in for her stay at the cattery at the same time and so when I was asked a few days before whether space had been booked, I confidently said ‘yes’, but I could find no written record of this. So I then spent the next two days quietly worrying about whether it had indeed been booked. (It would’ve been much less stressful to ring up and ask, but that’s not what I did). Therefore I was very relieved that the cattery staff welcomed Tilly when we dropped her off at 10am on Sunday morning.
We then had an easy journey to Lockerbie passing through heavy rain along the way. The first stop was at the Lockerbie Memorial Garden which was planted to commemorate the 270 deaths of the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 in 1988. The garden was in a cemetery a couple of miles from the crash site and was very moving and surprisingly busy.
We then continued on to Moffat where we enjoyed a cappuccino and a Lorne sausage butty in a café there. (We are in Scotland, so the choice of meat was appropriate, nay, obligatory). After posing by the Moffat Ram (designed by William Brodie who also made Greyfriars Bobby in Edinburgh), we continued North through rain showers, arriving in Stirling at 3pm.
We’d been warned by the hotel that limited parking was accessed from the rear of the premises and was offered on a first come basis so we were incentivised to arrive early. We just managed to squeeze in to secure the last place. After checking into our room on the 5th floor, we had a brew and headed into town for the first of many surprises and disappointments on this trip. When I booked the hotel (which was an impressive building right in the centre of the city), I walked out of the front door to realise that we weren’t in the hotel I thought we were in. I knew this since I could see the one I thought I’d booked which was 100 yards up the street! Never mind, the hotel we are in looks fine, but the restaurant menu was closer to that of a pub, so as compensation, we booked a meal at the Stirling Highland Hotel where I thought we were staying.
The hospitality industry is struggling throughout the UK at present, but this seems to be worse in Scotland. When we were handed the menu in the Stirling Highland Hotel we were told that three items were unavailable. That’s OK. On a Sunday night in peak season, that’s understandable. Then the wine waiter came to say that Geraldine’s choice of wine was not chilled and would she like some ice cubes in it to cool it off? No thanks, she certainly would not, and she made a different choice. Then the waitress came to announce that the Chicken Schnitzel that Geraldine had ordered could not be prepared as described since they had run out of eggs! I can understand running out of certain items in a restaurant, but eggs? I wondered what they were planning to serve for breakfast the following morning? (If I were the chef I’d’ve sent someone down to Spar for eggs). Overall, however, the meal was delicious, but we decided to book a table at Nicky Tams for the following night. (I’ve eaten there before, and it offers basic Scottish fare for half the price).
Today was a great start to the holiday, however, and we learned a lot about Bannockburn, Bruce and Wallace. I also learned that even though Stirling is several miles from the sea, it has a large resident gull population who squawk throughout daylight hours which is about 19 hours here just now.
Monday 7th July 2025
Our hotel, The Golden Lion, did offer eggs for breakfast this morning, but I half wish they hadn’t. They were served scrambled and had a grey appearance, as if they’d been cooked with the mushrooms. They tasted OK but looked awful. As did the sausages which were also a pale grey colour. They had the appearance of being raw, but they were in fact hot and showed the tiniest bit of brown on one side which suggested they’d briefly encountered a frying pan. The coffee machine had broken, and so tea and filter coffee were provided in vacuum flasks as an alternative. Cereals were limited to miniature boxes of Kelloggs multipacks (no muesli) and they’d run out of milk when I arrived. Gee ordered poached eggs as a special order, and although they looked OK from the outside, inside the whites were not white but clear and still runny. Ah well. When people say they can no longer get the staff in hospitality, I’m beginning to believe them.
Drummond Castle Gardens (our destination today) didn’t open until 11am so after breakfast we walked out to the Old Bridge in Stirling and back via Primark to buy an emergency hairbrush.
At 10:30 we left for the castle and 40 minutes later as we turned off the road we were stunned by the fabulous driveway – an entire mile of straight single-track road through an avenue of mature beech trees.
It was lovely weather today and so we spent four hours mooching round enjoying the views. While the premises didn’t have a tea room, they have allowed a little coffee van to park in the courtyard and we had a delicious cake and coffee overlooking the gardens.
The gardens are one of the most important and impressive formal gardens in Europe (they say), and indeed I must agree with them – they are truly impressive and certainly worth the drive up here.
We’d passed Bannockburn battle site on the way into Stirling yesterday, so we decided to visit it today before returning to the hotel. There was a huge visitor centre there, but we opted out of the tour since it was getting late and instead just admired the monument and huge statue of Robert the Bruce.
On the way out, I admired a man’s dog which was bounding through the grass and we fell into conversation (with the man, not the dog) and he asked whether we’d been to the Portcullis pub yet. When we said no, and that we had a reservation at Nicky Tams, he just said “Cancel it. You’ll get far better food (and more of it) at the Portcullis”. He then got out his phone and made us a reservation there and then! We were a bit too stunned to argue, so went along with it.
It turned out to be good advice, since the food was wonderful, the staff very friendly and the venue more suited to us than Nicky Tams which is really just a music and beer sort of place (and there was no music scheduled for tonight).
Tuesday 8th July 2025
Breakfast this morning was hardly improved. It wasn’t busy when we turned up, but there were no glasses for the fruit juice, no serving spoons for the savoury bits and when I mentioned to the waitress that I’d taken the last plate, she went to the kitchen and returned with just one! Gee ordered poached eggs again, but this time they weren’t delivered, at least not to her. We managed however, and it seemed churlish to complain (and probably pointless).
The other disappointment we had with the hotel was that they didn’t automatically offer to clean the rooms each day, not that they needed cleaning particularly, but fresh towels and a remade bed would have been nice; we were paying full price after all. We specifically asked for our room to be serviced on Monday morning, but this didn’t happen. When we mentioned this omission upon checkout, there was barely an apology, just some muttering about policy.
We took a short drive to the Wallace Monument after checking out and spent a wonderful morning walking up to the monument itself and then climbed the 246 steps to the Crown Spire where we enjoyed fabulous 360º views. After a coffee and a scone, we set off at 11am to drive the 80 miles to Inveraray via Crianlarich.
Tonight we’d booked into what I thought was a Country House Hotel in a cracking position beside Loch Fyne but when we arrived and parked up, we found it wasn’t quite what I expected. It was very pretty, but there was no reception, just a self-check-in arrangement. We spent time chatting to Crawford (the owner) who was a very interesting chap. While we were there we got his life history and he also explained how the room-only basis of our booking was the only way he could make the place pay since he couldn’t find the staff to work there any longer. Since there was no food offered, we booked in (sight unseen) at the Loch Fyne Hotel next door. It was only when we checked the menu online that we realised that we’d have to pay way more than at home for the privilege of eating there. My Aberdeen Angus burger was delicious and substantial, but at £22 it was rather on the pricey side. It was also like eating in a kennels. By the time we left, there were five dogs in our part of the restaurant. Now I like dogs, but the humans were almost outnumbered.
Before we ate, we walked into town (if it can be so described) and realised that our visit to the castle tomorrow was not going to happen since, like many things here, it is closed on Tuesday and Wednesday.
After enjoying an ice cream on the front, we walked through the castle grounds and then climbed up to the lookout tower (Dùn Na Cuaiche) where there were fabulous views down the loch. Just as we were beginning to descend, it began to drizzle, but we didn’t get too wet walking through the pine forest. The rain was forecast to arrive at 5pm, so it was about right.
To finish a very disappointing evening, we found that the TV didn’t work properly and Gee couldn’t watch Wimbledon! The weather forecast for tomorrow isn’t good, so we are struggling to find somewhere to go that’s in the dry.
Wednesday 9th July 2025
We awoke to a dull morning, overcast, with rain in the air. We walked the quarter of a mile to the Co-op for breakfast supplies since nowhere nearby appeared to offer breakfast without the need for a mortgage. The DIY breakfast (yoghurt, Danish pasties and fruit) was supplemented by copious amounts of fresh raspberries scrumped from where they were growing beside the path. We were sort-of scolded by a local who saw us foraging for the raspberries. “They belong to the estate, you know!” were her angry words. We were close to what looked to be a council estate, but I suspect that she didn’t mean that estate but rather the estate owned by the local laird. We’d already picked the fruit by then, and since they were beside a public footpath, we ignored the warning and didn’t feel in any way guilty. The raspberries added considerably to our breakfast enjoyment and led to a much-improved mood.
We set off at 10am to visit Kilchurn castle fifteen miles to the north. It was rather a damp half mile walk along a path to reach the ruin, but worth it.
We considered our options for the rest of the day and ruled out visiting Oban (40 minutes away) on the grounds that it didn’t seem to have much to offer in the rain and was probably going to be miserable. So we stayed local and continued to the Cruachan Dam visitor centre. Sadly, the guided tours inside the power station were suspended while upgrades were being undertaken, but the exhibition centre was fascinating and the café served delicious jacket spuds. (You may surmise that by now we were seeking pleasure in every small thing).
On the way back, we called in to see St Conan’s Kirk which whose odd architecture was fascinating. Every architectural style you could conceive appeared to be represented in the building which exuded a sense of fun and joy. There was much to see and puzzle over, the most perplexing being a set of organ pipes which appeared to be unconnected to any air supply: they just appeared to be suspected from a rope. Perhaps they were simply ornamental, but there was a console so some of the pipes must have been real.
After a cup of tea in the hotel room, we walked out through the castle grounds to something called the Smoothie Seat which was a carved log with views over to the castle. On the way back we called at the Co-op for more breakfast supplies (and more raspberries).
We booked a table at The George for tea. This hotel was apparently in receivership whilst the family owners sought a buyer, but since there were few other food options in the town, we decided to give it a go. The meal turned out to be excellent, but once more, very expensive.
During the evening the weather had brightened up slightly, but by bedtime, the clouds had descended once more. This led us to abandon the initial idea of visiting some gardens on the way home tomorrow, but instead just head home earlier and collect Tilly before the cattery shut. This would save her spending another night away from home so she’d be very happy with that.
Thursday 10th July 2025
We left Inveraray 08.30 and drove to IKEA in Glasgow where we had breakfast and bought a few essentials: candles (obvs), two cups, four bowls and a replacement for a bowl I broke last week. It was an easy drive through Glasgow before stopping at Tebay services for a cup of tea (& and our own biscuits). We arrived at the cattery at 15.40, just twenty minutes before it closed. The weather was chilly and dull at Inveraray when we set off but it was 20° and bright & sunny at Glasgow and had reached 24° at home.
I think Tilly had been happy enough in the cattery, but she was certainly happier to be home once more. In total, we drove 644 miles, walked over 30 miles and climbed 2,867 feet climbed (874 metres).