Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Day 14 - A place of our own
Dumfries to Neilston - 83 miles
'Make sure you have some breakfast before you go,' said the lady in the office, who we
presumed to be Colin's wife. 'Colin has had to go out this morning, but he said to pass on
his best wishes and to make sure you both had something to eat before heading off.'
It was a bright, sunny day and we both felt so much better than we had the day before.
'Good call getting us to stop when we did yesterday,' I said to Ben, during breakfast.
'I told you. I'm always right,' he said. 'Scotland doesn't look too bad in the sunshine
does it?' He was right, for once. It didn't look too bad at all.
The road climbed gradually for twenty miles after Dumfries along the picturesque B729.
We passed through the villages of Dunscore and Moniaive and in 20 miles we saw no more
thanadozencars.Moniaive,itturnedout,hadlittlemorethanthewoodenpostanditwould
have been a real struggle to find somewhere to stay.
We had been told that the Scottish highlands were beautiful, but the scenery north of
Dumfries took us completely by surprise. It all looked a lot greener than anything we had
passed through, and the rolling landscape was scattered with small copses of pine trees and
the occasional ancient ruin. In any other country these would be made into tourist attrac-
tions. Scotland has so many of these, that most of them go unnoticed.
TherewasverylittleinthewayofcivilisationbetweenDumfriesandthetownofDalmel-
lington where we stopped for lunch. Dalmellington was a peaceful, but sad looking town.
Iron and coal were discovered in the nearby hills in the 1800s, and for over a hundred years
it was a thriving mining town. Iron production ended in the 1920s and the coal mine closed
in the 1980s, and now the town feels slightly neglected.
We called into a café on the main street. I say 'main street', but I think there was only the
one street. We were particularly conscious of asking for free food in a place that was clearly
struggling, so we insisted that we do some work in exchange for something to eat. The lady
behind the counter insisted that we didn't need to do anything to help, and provided us with
a sausage bap and a cup of tea.
As an example to illustrate just how quiet and peaceful Dalmellington was, I was nearly
run over by a man in a wheelchair.
I was cycling down the main street, when he pulled out in front of me to cross the road
without looking. I managed to swerve out of the way at the last moment but my foot caught
thefloorasItriedtoregainbalanceandthepedalspunandsmackedagainstmyshin,shortly
before grazing the back of my leg quite badly on the main cog. I turned around to see the
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