Housesitting in Scotland

A stroll through Letham Grange with Angus dog. The extensive manor house is now boarded up and the grounds used to be a 36 hole golf course but are now fields through which we can wander straight from the back gate of the house. You can read a little about the Grange by following this link

Monday was a quick trip to the GP to get some blood taken after my doctors visit on Saturday and the dentist on Tuesday. Really exciting! We didn’t get to Denise and Paul as she messaged to say they were both feeling lousy. Not surprising really as they had both come down with Covid. We had lots of packing to do, and Brian started on scanning the photos.

Here's cutie Angus. Very laid back and easy going, he just likes to be with people

Planning on leaving at 09.00 for Arbroath on Wednesday was slightly delayed as I got a text from the GP saying my bloods showed low vitamin D, same as when I last had this dizziness 3 years ago. Not meant to happen in the summer, but the pills do seem to be helping so it was worth waiting half an hour for my prescription. Can’t fault the NHS either, except for the pharmacist who told me I should have ordered my prescription to be delivered to Arbroath, so I didn’t have to wait. He wouldn’t believe me when I told him it doesn’t work to Scotland as I tried during lockdown when we were at Tony and Nicky’s.

And here's Hector, doing what he does most of the time - chilling out!

A pretty good journey got us to the house about 17.00 for a quick cup of tea and to say hi to Angus. Then off to Kescoweth B&B, our home for two nights, we feel very spoiled. The family were nervous that Angus hadn’t been without them for four years so would he be OK? The answer is yes, he seemed to remember us and is quite happy. We spent a lovely day on Thursday spending the day in the house, being taken to some new walking spots, and finally out to dinner. As I said, very spoiled.

Our lovely room at the Kescoweth B&B

We arrived at the house after breakfast on Friday where we were greeted by a wagging tail and not a woof. How very gratifying, and here we are.

Our first morning at the B&B and the wind must have been just right for many, many insects to congregate round our windows. This sent the swift/swallows into a feeding frenzy, there were probably 100 of them swirling round outside the windows trying to catch them. I have many photos but I liked this one of an in-air manoeuvre at high speed to both catch an insect and to avoid crashing into our window

The big change, to us, since last time is that Oscar, the Maine Coone died so we only have Angus and Hector to care for. It is very sad about Oscar, but has allowed Hector to be a totally different cat. He is definitely an outdoor cat, but only in the middle of the night, and if it’s not raining! He is on the bed with us from the early hours, don’t know when, he’s just there when we wake up, till we get up. He might then lie about in the sunshine for a bit before vanishing into Narnia, or Louise’s wardrobe! It’s a big wardrobe, goes a long way back into the eaves of the building, but there is no sign of him at all. He’ll reappear to ask for an early tea before sleeping in the lounge with us for the evening. Bit of fuss in bed before going out to do cat things! It’s a hard life!

This photo's a bit aside the blog, but there is a globe in the lounge and, studying it, as is my want, I was interested to see the real size of Greenland in relation to other countries such as the UK and Europe. It's a lot smaller than the size shown on normal flat maps using the Mercator projection

Angus is as soft as they come, if we are downstairs, he’ll be downstairs and if we are upstairs he’ll be upstairs. He doesn’t like it if one of us is up and one down (the lounge is upstairs so this isn’t as weird as it sounds). He is quite happy with walks from the house of which there are many (have a look at these videos of a couple we've done, they have extra photos: 3.2km, 4km). The golf course is no more, so the residents are paying someone to drive about on a mower to keep the paths open, but we can walk for miles. Despite this we have taken him out for some new sniffs (that’s what it’s all about, not walking) to the coastal path west of Arbroath and today to the lime kilns. This is one of the new walks we were shown and although not long was a lovely walk, including the church yard where there is a gravestone to someone who died before they were born!

Very soft Angus will just lie there while Jackie brushes him. That is until it pulls, when he gets up, walks away for a while, then comes back for more

Brian did a park run on Saturday which he thoroughly enjoyed, less people than Redditch, though they did seem to have logging problems, he was happy with his result when he got it. Yesterday Angus was in doggy day care, as he is every Monday, Wednesday and Friday so we went for a walk along the cliff path. Got a bit carried away and found ourselves in Auchmithie, home of the But n Ben, a restaurant recommended by both Louise, and a couple staying in the B&B. We were very happy to find it open, so decided we had to try the smokie pancakes, as recommended, and very pleased we did too. Delicious. Just in time for the bus to take us back to Arbroath, perfect.

Walking along the coastal path at Elliot

I can’t believe it’s a week since we left home, time is flying, but we are having a lovely time.

About to cross the railway level crossing to get back to the car. I ran past this on my Parkrun on Saturday last

Walking along the very scenic Arbroath coastal path. We're going on a kayak trip tomorrow and, I believe, we will kayak into this bay and stand on that beach down there. There will be photos in the next blog!

In fact, there's Monday's kayak group doing the same trip. That'll be us on Wednesday!

Further along the path. We have done this before and been right down there scrambling on the rocks, even considering whether it would be possible to climb that stack

We're not far from Auchmithie now

On the other side, fields of wild flowers

There were two options when we got to Auchmithie, the first was to turn around and walk back to Arbroath along the coastal path, another 6.5km or, have lunch in this restaurant that has been highly recommended by several people and gets a score of 5 out of 5 on Google, then get the bus back. Guess which option we chose?

I hope you guessed before looking at this photo of what we had. This is flakes of Arbroath Smokie in a rich double cream sauce in a pancake. It was recommended, described as 'famous' in their menu, confirmed by the lady owner who was confident we wouldn't leave hungry and, also confirmed by us, absolutely delicious!

Today's walk to the lime kilns (there they are in the distance, not far off overbalancing into the sea) and this was my attempt at art!

Angus had to do his inspection

And this is on top of them. Despite the signs saying 'Danger, unsafe building, do not enter' it seems perfectly OK to follow the path that takes you onto the top of them

Here's one of the old chimneys and beyond is a wall half gone into the sea. We do get the feeling that during the next big storm, half of this will be down there on the beach

A little walk round the coast and here's Elephant Rock

And just by the elephants tail is a little cemetery perched on the edge of cliffs in the middle of nowhere

Colin and Louise had told us about this cemetery, the Dunninald, and how one of the headstones indicated a person who had died before he was born, so naturally, we had to find it. It's actually that one on the left...

Zooming in it shows the birth year as 1859 and the death year as 1840

For the avoidance of doubt, here it is in very close. It's definitely 1859 and 1840. Who was this legendary person? It looks like his name was George James Ramsay. Let me Google it.....Couldn't find much, it's mentioned on many sites but none I can find gives any information (unless you can find one!) Here's one site I looked at: click here

I'm just trying out my new camera with a 40:1 zoom lens. This was a fishing boat way out that I zoomed in on. Not bad I think

And this is an oil rig with wind turbine and a ship anchored by it almost over the horizon

Colin and Louise took us for a meal on the night before they left for their three week holiday in the USA. We had a lovely day with them on Thursday and got to know them quite well. Here we all are at the restaurant LtoR: Brian, Jackie, Anneka, Louise, Anders and Colin. I had some great conversations with Colin and Anders at the meal, we must continue them sometime!

Colin took us on a really good gorge river walk and we came upon this folly in the woods. It's a long river walk, of which we did only a part. Another section starts by a blue door in the woods. It sounded improbable but we passed the door in the car and I marked it on my map, must try it out sometime!

A tired Hector with a paw over his eyes

Angus with his raincoat on

It's nice here, we're going to have a good few weeks!