Keeping occupied and amused

As we would not be travelling anywhere by water for a few days until a new muffler arrived and was fitted, we opted to do some land based stuff. This meant a nice hire car from Glasgow Airport to begin with.

The folks at the Hertz desk were very grumpy - "I've been here since 7am with no food". It was around 12. Actually, they were big enough to have survived for a little longer but we didn't like to point out the obvious. This time the rental car was quite a nice one - a Toyota C-HR trendy crossover thing:

For a 1.2 litre turbo it drives well and actually steers pretty well too with a little feedback through the controls. Horrid wind noise at motorway speeds though and even the fag end basic specification car the hire company uses has a reversing camera. Why? Because you cannot see anything behind through the high and miniscule tailgate glass.

We used it for various excursions, ranging in excitement from shopping to taking the crew to the osteopath as her knee was painful and in need of a service. Better was a nostalgic trip to Loch Lomond via the country park:

and the lovely tiny village of Balmaha. When we lived in Edinburgh we used to trail our little Dory over to Loch Lomond and launch it from the boatyard slipway here. The boatyard hadn't changed much at all:

and brought back many memories - mainly good ones. The village has expanded a little and now sports an excellent tea room. Very very good carrot cake was enjoyed. Probably in the top 10, yes that good.

To avoid a rainy day in the west, we drove over to Edinburgh and revisited our old stomping grounds. Old of course means the 30 years ago that we lived there. The views over the city are still lovely:

and we happened to be around as the "third Forth bridge" (properly known as the Queensferry crossing but that is pretty boring) was going through its many opening ceremonies. Happily we avoided meeting Nicola (the First Minister) during our visit as she seems to be trying to turn the bridge into a nationalist rallying thing. Politics are so sad.

Adding another bridge has changed the view from Port Edgar marina a little:

Impressive when you see them together.

A little trip to Largs and a wander around the waterfront there and the nice Marina area was good too. We also visited Luss for the first time ever. A little village on the shore of Loch Lomond, it was rebuilt many years ago as a "model village". Not model as in minature houses but as in a village set up for the local workers by the landowner:

A conservation village with lovely views over Loch Lomond:

and the regulation old pier for people to walk up and down, lean over the railing and consume vast amounts of ice-cream no matter what the weather is doing:

The drive up the side of the Loch (out of the busiest tourist season when it is madly busy) is still as lovely as when we used to drive visitors around to show them a bit of Scotland during their stays with us:

In between this lot, the corrosion on the curved pilothouse windows got cleaned off, the aluminium was given a nice golden chromate coating and then painted (Bonderite and Awlgrip time again) but thanks to the rainy days, it was a job that took a week in elapsed time!