and meets herself coming back.....

Well, sort of.....Actually I'm stealing Dogstarke's subject matter with this post. Yes it's a post about walkies! On Easter Monday we drove to Glen Etive, which you may have seen in a certain movie  a few years ago, and walked westwards along the north shore of Loch Etive.

looking north to Glen Etive, Easter Monday

 Yesterday we drove up from the Connel Bridge, where the Falls of Lora were in full flow, past Ardchattan Priory to Bonawe where the public road ends. We parked up and set off east ,towards the head of the loch.

looking north from slightly further south, yesterday

In the best tradition of Winnie the Pooh we fortified ourselves with ".....pro, pro, things we take with us..." and stopped for a picnic lunch along the way.

everyone got a picnic

Now Loch Etive is nearly 20 miles long and even though we'd started our walk nearly half way along we had  no plans to walk all the way to the head of the loch, we were aiming for the spot we'd turned around on our eastward trek. But tempted by signs for this bridge

quite a bouncy bridge....

.......over this

we took a detour, passed by this offgrid hideaway and then after finding ourselves in quite a boggy spot had  a final cup of coffee and  decided it was probably time to head back home.

If you like the sound of this walk you can find another description here. 

Today I was pleasantly surprised that  I wasn't too stiff but my toes were sooooo happy sunshine let them  get some respite from boots.

putting my feet up, today

Soon we're off on a mini break back to Edinburgh so I'm hoping to report on some nice clean sheets. Last time we stayed at the Novotel on Lauriston Place but this time we'll be trying out somewhere new. I'll be sure to let you know.

Marina x

and got to go inside

I love ruins and abandoned places, particularly modern ones. I was thrilled by Simon Inglis' description of the Houston Astrodome in his book "Sightlines",  regularly track the decay of a once lovely house  as we drive past,  and mourn the demolition of Lanrick Castle whose burnt out facade used to be glimpsed from the A84.   Last summer I managed a sneak look at an iconic twentieth century ruin,  St Peter's Seminary at Cardross.

For a long time when, we drove through the area I would scour the countryside for a hint of  its whereabouts. Then two things came to my aid. First, the news that the NVA organisation was planning an event there, and the SatNav installed in our new car.

Armed with this extra information  I persuaded MrS to try and find it.

Our first attempt was thwarted by fairly serious "Keep Out" signs at the road end. Undaunted we headed back into the town and approached from a different angle.

This time we were successful and found the remains deep in the woods.

Now MrS is fairly law abiding and I am a bit of a wimp really (and was wearing unsuitable footwear) so we took notice of all the  "danger unsafe building" signs and just peered in through the security fence.

It was still quite thrilling. And sad. This huge modern masterpiece decaying among the trees.

This week we got to return for Hinterland.

last light as we waited to enter

queuing

light to guide our path

first glimpse

It was beautiful. Haunting. Music and light. And darkness.

looking back

I can't do it justice here; and  it ends tomorrow and is sold out, so you can only visit the website. But it's not the ending for St Peter's, NVA have plans for future development.

  So this great building can rise again.

Marina x

and looks back, not through the looking glass

I got a jolt recently.  Channel 4 is trailing the Rio Paralympics. Olympics time? Already? How can that be? Surely it's no time at all since London 2012?

It seems like yesterday.
It seems a lifetime away.

The summer of 2012.

My first blog.
My first tweet.

A latecomer to social media, (I only joined Facebook last year) my first blog was private, a way to share my holiday with family and a very limited number of friends. And I had a brand new shiny iPad, an early birthday present, to write it on; my old laptop was too heavy to take away with me.

The Olympics are important to the story because they seem to epitomise a time of innocence. Is that silly? Everyone was happy; there was that amazing opening ceremony,  so many wonderful performances, so many happy tears.

The fairy dust  even seemed to follow me across the world, there was a welcoming party when we arrived in Brisbane.  Ah no, that would be for  Queensland's returning heroine Sally Pearson who came in on the same flight.

We had a lovely holiday and saw some amazing sights.

 And then?

Well in the Autumn, prompted by the imminent arrival of......

DogStarke aka @southfieldchat

.........I started this public blog.

But something else had changed. Sometime between the euphoria of the Olympics and the end of my holiday, my mother had got sick. By Spring, she was gone.

The end if not of innocence but of being a child. Not completely because my father is still here, but the death of a parent shifts the generational perspective.

2012

        2013

               2014

                      2015

                             2016

                                   So much has happened.

                                                        MrS retired,  DogS arrived,

                                                                                   we lost our mothers,

                                                                             we travelled

                                    we sold a house, MasterS moved out,

                we sold a flat, we bought a house, we rented a flat,

       I had a landmark birthday, I resigned from my job,

 we made a permanent move.

And so to the present. We have a new home, a new business,  we are making new friends. I spend a fair bit of time using social media. I've taken up new things - yoga, and revisited some for the for time in thirty years - drama. I still have that iPad but write mostly on my Macbook. In May we'll vote for our next Scottish Government, in June on our future in Europe. August will bring the XXXI Olympiad, or  Rio 2016.


73 blog posts
6,204 tweets  

Not quite Spring 2016

It seems a lifetime away
It seems like yesterday

                       
Still travelling

Marina X