"Scottish Snippets"

"Colour Supplement"

7 July 2007

Each week the Rampant Scotland Newsletter includes a number of photographs which illustrate the weather and the seasons, plus the flora and fauna of the current week around Scotland. This separate "colour supplement" displays some more pictures, in a larger format. Here is this week's crop of Scottish views!


Port Logan Bay is in the extreme south-west of Galloway. The village harbour features a quay and lighthouse designed by Thomas Telford. Port Logan was the setting for the BBC series Two Thousand Acres of Sky. Nearby to Port Logan are the Logan Botanic Gardens and the Logan Fish Pond. In 1788 the Laird of Logan decided to create a "Fish Larder" for storing live sea fish by adapting a natural rock formation on the shore. Wild fish still come from the sea to be hand-fed.


There are palm trees and lots of unusual plants at the Logan Botanic Gardens. Gazania are not particularly rare, but this one (a variety called "Northbourne") was particularly colourful.




Carlsluith castle, overlooking Wigtown Bay in what is now Dumfries and Galloway, is a typical tower house of the time, with rooms built one on top of the other. It was begun in late 15th or early 16th century by a family of Cairns who had been supporters of the 4th Earl of Douglas. It passed by marriage to Richard Broun (or Brown), a family that had been in the area since the early 12th century. The castle remained with the Brouns until 1748.


The Cistercian Glenluce Abbey was founded by the Lord of Galloway in 1192. It was somewhat overshadowed by Whithorn Priory and Dundrennan Abbey and was probably used as a guest house for those travelling to these other places of pilgrimage - King Robert the Bruce visited in 1329 and King James IV called on at least two occasions. It remained a monastery until the Reformation of the Scottish Church. The last monk passed away in 1602.


Another brightly coloured flower from Logan Botanic Gardens - Hemerocallis or Day Lily. So called because although there is a profusion of successive blooms, the flowers only last for about a day.


The Mull of Galloway is the most southerly point in Scotland. "Mull" is the Scots word for promontory or peninsula and there is a long (and I do mean "long") single-track road to the most southerly tip. I had expected to find it deserted and wind-swept. It was wind-swept all right, but the overflowing car park, the Gallie Craig Coffee House (with a turf roof to blend into the landscape) and an RSPB visitor centre meant that it was far from being deserted!

If you want to look back at earlier editions of this Colour Supplement, there is an Index Page





Where else would you like to go in Scotland?








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