Tuesday, September 8th, 2009: Driving South to Dumfries and Robert Burns Country.

We drove South in a driving rain along the shores of Loch Lomond and thence around Glasgow. Visibility was poor, trying to bypass the city was difficult, and coping with the impatient Flying Scots on the congested roads was a chore. Just past Glasgow we stopped at a Lidl store in Darnley to buy bread, meat and cheese partly because we needed the food and partly because by that time I really needed a break from driving. My break turned out to be much more expensive than I had anticipated because besides spending 8 pounds for all the food, we splurged on 41 pounds for non-food items. Our impulse purchases included two pairs of shoes (Bob's shoes cost 17, Monika's shoes 9), a new fleece jacket for Bob for 10, and a small portable blood pressure machine for 5. All useful items, to be sure, but did it make any sense at all to purchase them while driving around Scotland? (no) After all, we still had a couple weeks to go before taking the cruise ship back to the U.S. and we had to find places to stuff all that stuff!

In Mauchline we saw a curious castle-shaped memorial at the side of the road for the poet Robert Burns, who lived in the town with his wife Jean Armour for a few years. Not surprisingly, his old residence in the town had been turned into a rather nicely done museum, where we spent an hour or so. Burns was a curious guy who combined a poet's sensitivity with an unrelenting pursuit of women before and after marriage. It was an interesting, but all too brief, history as like many other brilliant, creative people he died quite prematurely at age 37.

From Mauchline it was only another hour to Dumfries. However, the drive was interrupted when we had to patiently wait for a herd of cattle crossing the road. In Dumfries we stopped at the local Visitor Information Center across the river from (you guessed it) the Robert Burns Center. They did find a B&B for us in town, but only for one night. Since Bob had been driving all day and driving in the congested streets of Dumfries turned out to be quite difficult (we were both having trouble figuring out the traffic signs indicating traffic flow), we were glad to at least have a place where we could rest for the night.