Wednesday 16th July - Visiting the Laidlaws' Ancestral home - The Gair inEttrick

Wednesday 16th July - Visiting The Gair, the Laidlaws' ancestral Home

This was one of the main objectives of this family trip to the Scottish Borders. 

The house was built by The Duke of Buccluegh in 1760 for our ancestor, his tenant farmer Andrew Laidlaw. Andrew was born about 1724 and had been living with his wife and family in the village of Glenkerry just up the road, the B709.

The house was built of stone with a slate roof - and an earthern floor!


Chris was very hospitable and invited us to have a walk up the hill behind The Gair before it rained. There was an archway at the start of the track. Here are Kai and Emi waiting for the rest of us:


It was a pretty steep climb:


The solar panels provide power for the house:


The rain held off so we were able to get back down dry for afternoon tea and a chat. At about 4:00 pm we headed off to the Balmoral Hotel for dinner




Comments

  1. Kate Corfield18 July 2025 at 18:32

    A handsome Pub, that's the sort of place I like to visit for a while! T

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Thursday 3rd July - Denver

Image
 Thursday 3rd July Fine blue sunny morning with not much wind. Eliza cooked me a croissant for breakfast this morning which was lovely. After breakfast we we went for a walk round THe Coyote Trail - one of the numerous trails with a distant view of The Rockies: The walks are broad enough to accommodate bikes as well as walkers On the way there were many places to access to the edges of the lake. There were lots of frogs and dragonflies. We went for lunch at a nearby strip mall. Eliza got this huge bagel:  From there we went shopping at CostCo, had a look at Eliza's new middle school Aspen Creek PK - 8 School with its own EV charging station: and home again to Lilac Street: Had a good day!
Read more

Friday 4th July - Denver, WildLife

Image
 Woke up to another blue warm day! Almost too hot to be outside. After breakfast went for a morning walk in the heat along one of the walking Trails to try and see the Fly-past of the American Air force jets for Independence Day All we got was a very distant view of some dark fast moving dots. However on the side of the trail we did see lots of Prairie Dog Burrows ... and in one of them there was a Prairie Dog- Still no jets though! At the back of the house, by the back fence, are two squirrel tees. Very occasionally I see squirrels running along the top of the fence. ... and by the path this morning there was a Bull Snake by the front path It is non poisonous and just goes after rodents mostly - so quite useful to have around your house - if you like snakes.
Read more

Wednesday 2nd July - Denver

Image
 Wednesday 2nd July Cloudy, cool morning. Set off at 10:00am for the Hamilton bus station where I was due to catch the Intercity Bus to Auckland Airport at 11:30. We found the Intercity Bus at Stand A at the Hamilton Bus Depot. Had a good drive all the way to Auckland and got to the airport at 1:30. I had a long wait till 7:30 when Air NZ 8 left for San Francisco - so I had a whisky! It was a long flight to San Francisco -11 hours and I had forgotten to make my sleep tablets readily available so I sat there wide eyed for 11 hours. I was quite concerned about making my connecting flight with United Airlines from San Francisco to Denver, but United Airlines were very good at communicating the necessary information  so I had no need to worry, and got to gate F17 without any trouble. The United Airlines aircraft was full to capacity - all economy - and took two and a half hours to get to Denver. It was quite a trek from the aircraft to Security and Customs, but I got there pretty...
Read more