Wednesday 16th July - The Glen Cafe and The Grey Mare's Tail

 Wednesday 16th July

 Scattered sunshine for a change

I got up early at 6:00 am and found James awake as well, so we had coffee together. Then Julia arrived. We had a good chat over breakfast. James was waiting to hear what was going to happen about his flat tyre. He was told that a Towie would

Eventually, after waiting nearly all morning, James was told that a towie would arrive between 10:00 am and 1:00 pm. Sure enough a contract towie arrived with his truck and took the car and James back to Hertz in Edinburgh where James would get a new rental car.





Glen Cafe

Then Julia, Ian and I drove down to the Glen Cafe just up the road to buy some things for afternoon tea at the Gair. 


They had a great selection of cakes and slices so we were able to get a good selection of things. While Julia and I were talking to Lisa, the lady on the counter, about the fact that we were staying at the Chapelhope Farm AirBnB, one of the people in the cafe heard our discussion and profered some information about the history of the place. Her name was Ceilidh March, and had worked at Chapelhope as the cleaner. 


Maddie                                            Ceilidh                                                Lisa

She said that the lady that owned it, and the whole estate, had furnished the house with all the beautiful paintings and furniture that were in there. The house has big rooms, high ceilings and as a result quite an air of decayed elegance.


The Grey Mare’s Tail


After lunch the rest of us went in Ian’s car down to The Grey Mare’s Tail, an impressive waterfall about 15 minutes down the road, while James was in Edinburgh getting his rental car sorted out. 



The kids went to play in the Tail’s Burn that ran down from the waterfall. After about an hour we drove back to ChapelHope Farm to wait for James coming back from Edinburgh with his new car. He arrived back in a Mercedes! I had an afternoon nap at 4:45. At about 5:30 Ian came and asked if I wanted to go back down to the Grey Mare’s Tail as James had gone down there with Julia & Eliza to walk the track up to the top, and Loch Skeen. . 

While we waited for James to come back from the trail to the top, we wnet up the short but steep track to a viewing point:



At the end of the track we could see The Grey Mare's Tail:



On the way down I found some Scottish Bluebells



The Tail burn found its way down to the Moffat Water under a beautiful stone bridge :



After lunch we were ready to go down to The Gair






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