Olympic Torch being carried by Paul McIntyre

Olympic Torch being carried by Paul McIntyre, a photo by Bev & Paul Mynott on Flickr.

During our grand tour of Scotland, the Olympic torch was conveniently coming to Stirling, so Paul and Tony went off to see it and take some photographs. Here is Paul McIntyre holding the torch - Paul has Becker Muscular Dystrophy.

Tony at the Kyles of Bute

Tony at the Kyles of Bute, a photo by Bev & Paul Mynott on Flickr.

Here is Tony enjoying a break overlooking the Kyles of Bute. He is wearing his sturdy trainers and has a rucksack with his packed lunch - I think Tony is going hillwalking this afternoon.

Tighnabruach and the Kyles of Bute

Kyles of Bute, a photo by Bev & Paul Mynott on Flickr.

Bev and the Nice Lady were keen to visit Tighnabruaich, as that is where the Nice Lady's mum and Bev's gran used to go on holiday. The village of Tighnabruaich is in Argyll, situated on the east coast of Loch Fyne, and is a very pretty village indeed. We walked along the beach and had a lovely lunch sitting outside in the warm sunshine..

The road was narrow and twisty, but we all got fantastic views out over the Kyles of Bute, which is a narrow strip of sea separating the Island of Bute from the Scottish mainland. In this photograph, the Island of Bute is on the right, and the mainland is on the left - only 300m separates them. The Waverley Steamer and other ferries visit piers on both Bute and the coast, with one calling in at Tighnabruaich.

What a great day out we had - the weather was warm and bright, and the scenery was magnificent!

Our Grand Tour of Scotland: 2010 - Part 6: Scotland's Industrial Heritage

As the weather was mixed during the first week of our grand tour, we bears and Tony decided to investigate Scotland's inudstrial heritage and keep out of the rain.  This involved 3 trips:

• Ben Cruachan Power Station
• Summerlea Industrial Heritage
• Titan Crane, Clydebank

Ben Cruachan Power Station
We drove to the Ben Cruachan power station, which has a rather nice visitors' centre overlooking Loch Awe.  The visit included a short film about the power station hidden deep within the mountain, photographs taken during the building of the power station, and a bus tour inside Ben Cruachan itself!  Being inside the mountain and seeing part of a working hydro-power station was great fun, and Bev said the damp, musty smell reminded her of the Glasgow underground railway.

Summerlea Industrial Heritage, Airdrie:
We have been here before, but it has recently had a facelift courtesy of the lottery fund, so we all decided to go back and visit this fascinating museum.  The facelift has allowed the museum to make some exhibits more user/bear-friendly, so we got to operate an iron foundry and play with the displays, which was great fun.
Another improvement is that they have opened up a stretch of the canal so that you can walk along it and see the kind of industrial machinery that would have been used.  Here is an example, though we have no idea what this machine was used for:

Other exhibits include a working coal mine, workers' cottages, a saw mill, and a working tram to take you around the site.

Titan Crane, Clydebank:

This was a fascinating trip to one of only 4 Titan cranes remaining on the Clyde.  The crane is a Category A Listed Historical Structure, so it was decided to turn it into a tourist attraction, with a lift taking visitors 150 feet up to the jib platform.  This is covered in a strong mesh flooring, which means that you can see the ground when you look down - definitely not for people or bears with a fear of heights!  However, the views up and down the Clyde are amazing!

You can follow the path or get the bus from the booking office, which takes you past the old John Brown shipyard, slipway and fitting out basin where ships like the QE2 were built and launched.  The Titan Crane was used to lift the engines and other loads into the ships in the fitting-out basin.

This was a great day out and we thoroughly enjoyed the views from the top of the crane.  An attraction not to be missed unless you suffer from vertigo!

So what did we bears and Tony learn from all of this?  Well, we can now operate an iron foundry, we know how a hydro electric power station works and how huge cranes were used in the shipbuilding and ship fitting industries.  And while the boys were out on their educational tours, Phoebe and the Nice Lady were enjoying themselves at a health spa where they were having pampering sessions.

Our Grand Tour of Scotland: 2010 - Part 5: Bees and Honey!

Ok, Bees are a bear's favourite insect because they produce HONEY!  Yummy, scrummy honey!  Well, Bev's dad pointed out that the lavendar bush outside their house was full of bees, and he was right - we bears spent ages watching them, licking our lips and following them to find the honey.

Bev wasn't interested in the honey but she was interested in photographing the bees, and she did remarkably well:

This is a cute and furry little bee on the lavendar.  She also caught these cuties flying around the lavendar:

And here is her quintessential Scottish photograph of a bee - on a thistle:

So, while we think Bev's photographs of the bees are great, we prefer the sticky, sweet honey that these little guys produce - if we had thumbs, we'd put them up to the bees, our favourite insects!

Our Grand Tour of Scotland: 2010 - Part 4: Morar and Mallaig

With a scorcher of a day promised, we packed up all our camera gear, a picnic, swimming trunks and towels, then headed off for Fort William and the Road to the Isles.  Last year we took the same route on the steam train, but this time Bev wanted to drive it so that we could savour the delights of scenery and take lots of photographs.   And what a gorgeous day it was - blue skies, plenty of sunshine, warm weather with a fresh breeze off the sea!  Bliss!

We drove to Fort William and then headed out on the brand new road to Mallaig - previously, this road had been a rather busy and tortuous single-track road, with tourist traffic and fish lorries from Mallaig fighting to overtake using the narrow passing places.  Bev had driven the road once before and said it was Hell and far too busy to appreciate the scenery!  Now the road is a smart new dual carriageway, which meant the drive was a doddle.

First up was Glenfinnan, with its monument to Bonnie Prince Charlie and the raising of the standard at the start of the 1745 rebellion.  We stopped to have a quick look at the Glenfinnan viaduct (from the Harry Potter movies) but headed off again as we still had a long way to go.

Beyond Glenfinnan was a much wilder and less touristy place, with stunning scenery of mountains and lochs.

We stopped in a pretty bay to have lunch and look out over the stunning sea loch, Loch nan Uamh, where Bonnie Prince Charlie was rescued by a French frigate and taken back to France after the failed '45 rebellion.

Next up was Morar and its silver sands, which looks like the Bahamas or the Mediterranean, even if the water temperature is only just above freezing!  We took our shoes off and walked along the beach in our bare / bear feet, then sat on the beach savouring the stunning views.

We drove further along the road to Mallaig, and stopped to take in the absolutely amazing views out over the Isles - from a viewpoint we could clearly see Rhum, Eigg, Cana and the Cuillins of Skye.  Here is a view of Eigg from near Mallaig.

 

We visited Mallaig but didn't stay long, then drove back via the single-track road to Arisaig and reluctantly headed  back to Fort William.  With the light fading and the old codgers in Stirling finishing their cocoa and getting ready to partake of the big zeds, we really did have to leave.  Sadly, we drove back through Glencoe, which was bathed in soft evening light.

Today was definitely a highlight of our Scottish holiday!

Our Grand Tour of Scotland: 2010 - Part 3: Highland Wildlife Park

Bev had been really excited at the prospect of visiting the Highland Wildlife Park at Kincrag, and when she saw on the news that the Scottish wildcats had had a kitten, there was no holding her back. 

The park is part of the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland and is linked to Edinburgh Zoo.  It is known for its collection of animals native to Scotland now or in the past - Scottish wildcats, Pine martens, Red Squirrels and Capercaille, but it also has some other animals suited to the climate of Kincraig - arctic foxes, wolves, Siberian tigers, Lynx, Beaver, and of course Mercedes the polar bear.

We got there early but a whole day was not enough time to see all the animals.  The highlights were definitely the wild cats and their kitten, Mercedes the polar bear who went for a swim and played with a ball in the water, seeing European beavers and the beautiful Amur tigers.

Here is the female Scottish wildcat - she has eyes just like Kitty's.











This is the male Scottish wildcat in one of the aerial runs in the trees.

Here is a European Beaver - we were very lucky to see him, as the staff had just thrown some fruit and vegetables into the water, and one appeared, grabbed a cabbage leaf and disappeared back into his lodge.  The notice at the beaver viewing platform said that they had just provided the basic area for the beavers, and the beavers had carried out all the DIY work and improvements themselves!

And Mercedes off for a swim to cool down!

We also saw an arctic fox, a wolf, the tigers, horses and some deer. 

We would thoroughly recommend the Highland Wildlife Park to anyone who is interested in wildlife, though we would suggest getting there early as most animals go for an afternoon snooze once they have been fed!  Actually, that sounds just like us little bears, who love nothing better than climbing back into bed and sleeping off our big lunches!

Our Grand Tour of Scotland - 2010: Part 2: Oban

As I said in my introduction to our Grand Tour, the nice lady was keen to visit Oban but Bev said she remembered it as a  run-down touristy location.  So, we all bundled into the car and drove there to see what it was really like.  And we were all pleasantly surprised.  It was a busy, thriving town in a very pretty location, overlooking the island of Kerrera, with Lismore and the mountains of Morvern in the distance.

We all wanted to visit McCaig's Folly or Tower, which is a well-known local landmark on a hillside above the town.  Commissioned by John Stuart McCaig, a wealthy baniker, it is a miniature version of the Colosseum in Rome, with  a circumference of about 200 metres using 2 tiers of arches. The structure was completed in 1902.

Unfortunately, the weather was rather wet and windy, but we had some lovely spells of sunshine so managed to walk round McCaig's Folly and view the town in it's full glory before the rain returned.  Bev took a photograph from the Folly looking out to sea.

We had a scrummy lunch before leaving Oban, then drove back home via a very wet and misty Glencoe.

Our Grand Tour of Scotland: 2010 - Part 1: Glen Etive & Glencoe

Unfortunately, the start of our grand tour was rather wet, but we weren't daunted by rain, mist or midges!  We headed off towards Glencoe, one of Bev's favourite locations and drove down Glen Etive to where the road ends at the side of Loch Etive.  It was a beautiful drive through an area of lush green vegetation, wild rivers swollen by the heavy rain, impressive waterfalls on the mountains and deer peeking curiously at us from under the cover of trees!

Here is Buachaille Etive Mòr, taken from the road to Glen Etive.
Bev got rather wet taking this photograph, not helped by the fact that she slipped and fell, but luckily the peat is soft and bouncy, so she and the camera weren't injured :-) 

Our Grand Tour of Scotland: 2010

The blog has been very quiet recently, but there's a good reason for this - we have been on a grand tour of Scotland and have only just returned home.  It was a holiday of highs and lows, but most of all it was fun.  Oh, and we were visiting the grumpy old man and the nice lady from Stirling, which was lovely, but the nice lady fed us too much tablet and fruit pudding, so we are now fat little teddies and one chunky chimp with a muffin top above his kilt!

Ok, so what happened, what did we see, and where did we go?  Well, Bev had made a long list of places to visit on our grand tour and the ones we did see were:

• Ben Cruachan, which has a hydro-electric power station inside the mountain and you can get a guided tour of part of the station
• The Titan Crane in Clydebank, one of only 14 left in the world.  A lift takes you 150ft up to the viewing platform, from where you get wonderful views up the Clyde River and over Clydebank.
• Oban - for some reason the nice lady had an obsession about visiting Oban, and when we went there it was much prettier than Bev had remembered it and we got great views from McCaig's Folly
• The Highland Wildlife Park at Kincraig, where you can see Scottish Wildcats and their new kitten
• Summerlea Industrial Heritage in Airdrie, which is a brilliant industrial museum, with its own coal mine and a working tram
• The Silver Sands of Morar - looks like the Caribbean but the water is only just above freezing!
• Rannoch Station, Loch Tummel and Fortingall with its thatched cottages and 5000 year old Yew tree
• Loch Goil and Carrick Castle
• Loch Lomond and Luss and the Trossachs
• Glencoe and Glen Etive
• Charles Rennie Mackintosh house for the Blackie family at Helensburgh (Hill House)

Loch Lomond and Ben Lomond from Luss.

Tony is looking forward to his Scottish holiday

Tony has enjoyed his last 2 Scottish holidays so much that he wanted to prepare properly for this year's foray to the Highlands.  So he went onto the internet and purchased his holiday outfit from Build-A-Bear!  Hamish and Dougal are a little jealous of his posh outfit so we have promised to take them shopping very soon.

Here is Tony in his new outfit - let him know what you think.

The good news, the Scottish news and the downright strange news!

Ok, we have lots of news this week, and some interesting photographs as well.

Firstly, the good news - Bev has a new job and started work on Monday.  She is thoroughly enjoying her new job and paws crossed it all works out well for her.

Then the Scottish news - The Nice Lady from Stirling was 80 last week, so we went up to see her and make sure the candles on her cake didn't set fire to the house.  She and Carlos were fine and happy to see us all.

And now for the downright strange news - Kitty has taken up car mechanics as his new hobby, and we have photographs to prove it.

Here is photographic proof that Kitty is showing an interest in what goes on "under the bonnet"!

Paul's fekkin tarts!

Paul and us bears have taken a liking to Sainsbury's Ecclefechan tarts, but because Paul is English he can't pronounce them correctly so we have taken to calling them "those fekkin cakes" to make his life easier! Naturally Bev, who is Scottish, can pronounce them with ease, though it always sounds as though she has a furball stuck in her throat when she gets to the "ch" part of the word!

Anyway, we don't care how they are pronounced, they are very tasty and, like most Scottish food, very filling. Our advice is not to eat more than one at a time and definitely not to go swimming afterwards - you might find it difficult to stay afloat :-)

Our adventures in Scotland, Part 9

Our last day in Scotland was probably our best - a trip to the Isle of May to see Puffins! And what a trip it was - the weather was warm and sunny, the boat trip was excellent and the puffins were incredibly photogenic!

The boat sailed from Anstruther and we caught our first sight of puffins as we approached the island. There were also gannets and Manx Shearwaters flying around the boat. We landed at a tiny inlet, and then had to run the gauntlet of the nesting terns before reaching starting point for walking round the island. We had a lovely walk round the island and saw lots of puffins, though they were mostly too far away to get decent photographs. However, Bev struck off along a narrower path and came out at a point high above the cliffs where there were hundreds of puffins. These puffins were nesting in the burrows by the cliffs, so both Bev and Paul got lots of closeup shots of the puffins with sand eels in their beaks.

We bears loved the trip to the island - we ran along the paths, peeked in the puffin burrows to say hello to the pufflings and generally had a great time. Then it was time to say cheerio to the puffins and head back to the mainland - the 3 or 4 hours on the island had whizzed past and we still hadn't got any shots of the gannets or other birds on the island. This trip is highly recommended, and both Bev and Paul would do it again!

Our adventures in Scotland, Part 8

On another of our adventures, we visited Glasgow's wonderful Kelvingrove museum, which has just had a £28 million refurbishment. Bev remembers this museum from her childhood when her grandfather and parents used to take her there at the weekends, and she had lots of fun looking round at all the familiar (and not so familiar) exhibits. Her favourite painting, the Christ of St John on the Cross by Salvador Dali hangs in this museum.

We also visited the Macintosh House for an Art Lover in Bellahouston Park, the Kibble Palace in the Botanic Gardens, the People's Palace on Glasgow Green and the Tenement House museum in Glasgow. All were very interesting though the exhibitions at the People's Palace were a bit disappointing and the lunch in the adjacent Winter Palace was seriously disappointing (dirty table, average food and a very scary waitress). Despite that, the overall impression of Glasgow's museums was excellent!

Our adventures in Scotland, Part 7

Our next adventure in Scotland was a visit to Rosslyn Chapel, just south of Edinburgh. This visit is highly recommended - the Chapel itself is absolutely fascinating and the 1/2 hour talk from the curator was very informative and funny.

The interior of the Chapel is beautifully decorated with intricate carvings, which was in total contrast to another trip we made - this time to see the interior of Glasgow Cathedral. Glasgow Cathedral is a much larger building than Rosslyn Chapel but is quite plain inside. We visited the crypt, which wasn't as creepy as we were expecting, but we did see St Mungo's tomb down there. In addition to Glasgow Cathedral, we visited the Necopolis (see photograph) which was fascinating - this is where approximately 50,000 of Glasgow's wealthiest people are buried, and it is based on Père Lachaise in Paris. It is looking a little run down these days, but hopefully Glasgow City Council will turn their attention to it and spruce it up!

Our adventures in Scotland, Part 6

We spent a couple of days in the Cairngorms as part of our great Scottish Adventure! This started with a trip for Bev, Paul and us bears to the Landmark Park at Carrbridge, where they have a tree-top walk and red squirrels in an ancient Caledonian pine forest - Bev was determined to see these elusive critters after Paul spotted one at the Scottish Deer centre. The weather was sunny and warm for most of the day, with the result that we had a gorgeous tree-top walk through the ancient pine forest. The red squirrels remained elusive for the duration of our walk, so that Bev and Paul were beginning to think they didn't live there at all. However, they then spotted two on the bird feeders near the end of the walk, and another squirrel, probably a juvenile as he had no ear tufts, also came down to feed, so Bev and Paul got some good photographs of them and Bev was a happy woman at last!

Our next adventure in the Cairngorms was a trip with the nice lady, to the Cairngorms plateau in the funicular railway. Travelling on the funicular railway to Britain's highest railway station was great fun, and the views from the top were spectacular! We had lunch high in the clouds and spent some time admiring the views before heading back down again and driving home for tea with Carlos.

All in all, both trips to the Cairngorms were brilliant fun for everyone. We bears had great fun at the Landmark Park running through the forest, chasing the wildlife and scaring the children at the Adventure Park, and we thoroughly enjoyed the trip on the funicular railway. Bev, Paul and the nice lady also had a great time, and as a bonus Bev and Paul got some really good photographs!

Our adventures in Scotland, Part 5

Our next big adventure was a trip on the Harry Potter train from Fort William to Mallaig. We thought the nice lady and Carlos would come too, but when we said it would take 2.5 hours to drive from Stirling to Fort William, they blanched and said they would stay at home!

So, we headed off early in the car, with Bev whizzing round the lanes, across Rannoch Moor, through Glencoe and on to Fort William in time to catch the train. Paul parked the car while Bev rushed off to the station to get the tickets, only to discover that they were sold out! Oh no! However, there were some spare tickets at the guard's van, so Paul and Bev went there and got 2 first class tickets on the beautiful Jacobite steam train.

On the way to Mallaig Bev and Paul had to sit with other people, so Paul sat with a nice group of people who chatted about the scenery and the train. Bev, on the other paw, had to sit with a group of Americans tourists, who not only ignored her completely, but slept all the way from Fort William to Mallaig! Doh! What was the point in going on the train if you weren't going to admire the beautiful scenery along the route to Mallaig? Never mind, Bev listened to her iPod and delighted in the wild scenery.

When we got to Fort William, we piled out the train and into a fish restaurant, where we had the most amazing haddock and chips. They were YUMMY!

And then it was time for the return journey on the train, with Bev and Paul having seats together this time. It was very relaxing, and again the scenery was fantastic. The Americans slept on the way back, though when they awoke they amused Bev and Paul by saying that they wanted to travel the world! Travelling the world is not the same as sleeping your way around the world - travel is supposed to engage you and expand your mind, it is not supposed to be time when you partake of the big zeds! Doh!

You get fantastic views of the Glenfinnan viaduct on the way back, and the driver kindly slowed down so that people could take photographs. All in all, it was a great day out, and the drive back through a mean and moody Glencoe was the icing on the cake!

Our adventures in Scotland, Part 4

Our next stop, with the Nice Lady from Stirling, was Dunnottar Castle. Carlos decided to stay at home as he was waiting for a parcel to be delivered, so he missed the scenic drive up the east coast to Stonehaven and the yummy pub lunch.

Dunnottar Castle comes highly recommended by us bears and Tony, as well as by Bev, Paul and the nice lady. The nice lady walked down with us to the cliff edge, where you get superb views of the castle out on its rocky promontory. We then left her there, telling her not to stand too close to the edge, while we all headed down the steep steps to the base of the castle. We did some exploring round there, then paid to get inside the castle - Paul and Bev paid, but we bears climbed the cliffs and got in for free!

Anyway, inside the castle was a bit of a surprise - we had expected it to be completely ruined, with little to see, but it was mostly well preserved and the biggest surprise was that there were beautifully kept lawns and flower-beds at the top of the castle! It was a steep climb to get up there, but the views were spectacular and the inside of the castle was well-worth the visit.

Paul even spotted a couple of puffins nesting on the steep slopes below the castle, but he couldn't get a photograph of them.

After struggling up the steps back to the car and the nice lady, we recovered from all the exercise and headed off to a place called Arbuthnott, which is where the Lewis Grassic Gibbon Centre is. For anyone unfamiliar with Lewis Grassic Gibbon, he wrote what is probably Bev's favourite book, Sunset Song. His real name was Leslie Mitchell, and the museum had a small but beautifully-presented display of his life and work, as well as a short film about him.

And then it was time to head home for tea with Carlos.

Our adventures in Scotland, Part 3

Our next adventure was a day at Scotland's Secret Bunker near Crail, followed by an afternoon at the Scottish Deer Centre near Cupar.

The Secret Bunker was fascinating, with stairs and a long cold tunnel leading down from an innocuous farmhouse to the nuclear bunker. The bunker has hermetically sealed 3-ton blast proof doors and a 3-meter thick outer shell of solid concrete reinforced with tungsten rods. This is where Scotland's senior ministers and key civil servants would have been evacuated to in the event of a nuclear attack. It was definitely worth a visit and you can see more at http://www.secretbunker.co.uk/

The afternoon was spent at the Scottish Deer Centre, though the highlight of the visit was not deer but wolves and red squirrels. Only Paul saw the red squirrels and he got a very good photograph of one as it scampered up a tree. We all did a treetop walk to see if we could see more red squirrels, but they proved to be very elusive critters, so we headed off to see the wolves being fed. This was lots of fun - the wolves were very impressive, particularly Lupo who is a Canadian wolf and the alpha male. While the wolves were being fed we were given a talk about the plans to reintroduce them into the wild, as part of a wider plan to control the red deer population. Paws crossed they will re-introduce bears into the wilds of Scotland - we are very partial to a bit of venison!