My Everyday Views

Despite having been born and brought up in Glasgow a mere 30 or so miles away, I had only ever been to Stirling on a handful of occasions (twice that I can remember) so I was very pleasantly surprised at how attractive it is- so I thought I'd share some piccies of Stirling with you, I took them all this week.

The commute: I now take about 20 minutes to get to work by bus instead of the 1.5 hours each way into London it used to take. I could walk to the uni in 40-45 minutes but that'd mean I have to get up earlier! I do intend to cycle there when it gets lighter for longer...honest!

Views from the bus stop where I wait in the morning- seriously! The old bridge across the Forth, now only used by pedestrians.

Another bus stop view: the 'new' bridge and the castle on the hill (the cream one that looks like a house)!

The Office. For some reason I have been given an office of my own- either I am going up in the world or I was a nightmare to share with (I originally shared with 3 other people which was cosy)! It does look rather like a white cell, as a colleague kindly calls it, but it's all mine!

View from my office window - ok I have to stand up to see it but I know it's there! It's of Dumyat (Dum - eye -at) Hill, which we climbed the other weekend, peeking out from behind the offices opposite. In April every year a bunch of odd people race up the hill and some others do it regularly for fun! The uni buildings are not so lovely, unlike the setting, having been built mostly in the 70s (the one below is more modern).

The lovely campus and wildlife of Stirling Uni - I saw these cygnets durnig a walk round the loch during my lunch break, there are a lot of resident swans and ducks and a heron. I also saw a cormorant which is a regular visitor but it was too far away for a clear shot.

A campus view- bloody lovely!

There are 2 lochs on campus and large grounds including a small castle, a golf course, tennis courts, football pitches, swimming pool, cinema, theatre...

Sunshine & Forest walk

I thought it was time to experience a bit more of the wonderful Scottish countryside so we drove the 20 miles to Queen Elizabeth Forest Park by Aberfoyle along the narrow country roads (slightly faster than I would’ve liked…). The temperature today was pretty mild around 9-10c with only a few spots of rain – we even saw some sunshine (I took my Peruvian hat but it stayed in my bag). See http://www.forestry.gov.uk/qefp

There are loads of marked walks in the forests – we decided to try the Highland Boundary Fault Line trail (they have marked where the actual fault line is- more memories of O-Grade geography). It’s supposed to take 3 hours to go 4 miles- it only took 1 hour 15 minutes, either we’re much fitter than we thought or they were a bit generous with the time estimate (the latter seems more likely considering how quickly I got out of breath)! It was very steep on way up but had a more gentle winding slope on the way down- we should’ve done it the other way round! The nice weather meant we got a pretty clear view from the top. Before coming back to Scotland I had forgotten how beautiful hills and mountains are!

View from the top from the conveniently placed pinic bench

They’ve built an adventure park for adults/ big kids in the forest - the Go Ape trail – with Britain’s longest zip slide (I have some nephews who'd love it!). Sadly it wasn’t open for the season yet - we were planning to go back to try it out but at £25 per adult, maybe not! We did consider flinging a scarf over the wire and going for it!

I was hoping to see some red squirrels or deer but I think we were too noisy. There are also ospreys in the forest but the visitor centre was shut so we couldn’t find out where to go to see them (although they usually keep the nesting sites secret so people can’t steal their eggs). We have, however, seen some interesting wildlife since we moved here including red kite (reintroduced after persecution), kestrels, bats (including one in the corridor at work), weasels and deer. I think we might have seen a pair of eagles too near the castle, but they could have been some other large bird of prey.

Tree covered in lichen and mosses (looks like snow!), Queen Liz Forest Park.

It’s not getting dark now till after 4.30pm - yippee. (This is my first Scottish winter for 7 years and Michael’s first ever so we are watching its progress with interest).

Flood update! The River Forth has gone down quite a lot now and is looking less likely to flood. Neither of us has lived this close to a river before (30 feet away) and it’s a bit unnerving!

River still rising

The rain stopped today so I was able to go out and take these photos before it started up again. The photo above shows how high the river is getting against the 'new' bridge.

Our next door neighbour told us that the river came up to the bottom of his driveway in December 2006 and that the neighbours a few doors down have only just moved back into their house after it was flooded a year ago. They think that the opening of sluice gates up in Callandar to the north contributed to the high water level (let's hope they don't open them again).

At the lowest point on our road the water has reached pavement level.

Below is the rowing club on our road which regularly gets flooded- you can see they've had to evacuate their basement of canoes (we might have to borrow one!).

Michael is glued to the Flood Watch website....

River Forth Rising & Burns night

After a night and day of heavy rain the pedestrian underpass into town is flooded and the river opposite our house is rising worryingly high...
The storm damage to the trees in front of the rugby club happened a few weeks ago when the wind also blew the roof off a local primary school and overturned a lorry on the M9. Apparently the rugby club across the river from us was badly flooded in December 2006 - it is very close to the river as you can see. This is part of the view we have from our house - sometimes it's so misty you can't see the hills at all. The view is always changing.
The photo taken from our garden shows how close the river is and how high it is getting- might be spending the weekend evacuating our belongings from our one-storey bungalow at this rate! We've been assured by our letting agent that the house has never flooded before (and they never lie to us- ha ha). You can just see a hazy Wallace Monument in the background of the photo.

Burns' Night Supper
25th January was the birthday of Robert Burns so we celebrated a day early at a friend's house in Menstrie with a meal of a huge haggis (traditional and vegetarian - no prizes for guessing which one I had but Michael wimped out and had the same as me!), a good single malt Scottish whisky (Clynelish) and a fantastic bottle of red wine from Catalunya (so smooth - called Abadal), 1 of around only 4000 bottles made per year, courtesy of one of the guests who is a wine maker from near Barcelona (NB it's true what they say about not mixing grape and grain!).

A photo of our host Ailsa slicing the traditional haggis - mm, look at that lovely sheep's stomach- you can see the veins!

It was an international gathering of several Catalan people, Scots, English and Ghanaian people. Our collective effort at reciting Ode to a Haggis was amusing but not as good as this one from YouTube, which very handily also provides the modern day translation: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=3kzYaIphbzU

We Scots thought Scotland was doing quite well to have 2 main languages (English and Gaelic) however that paled in comparison when we heard that Spain has 5 official languages and Ghana has about 45! One of the group from Barcelona knew far more about Scottish history and literature than we did cos he lectures in Scottish literature at the university - it turns out our romantic ideal of Burns as a poetry-wrting farm labourer wasn't exactly right since he did actually go to university! It takes a Spanish man to come and teach us!

Dumyat Summit Jan08

We finally took a walk up the Dumyat Hill behind the university - we've been saying we're going to do it for months (I have a view of it from my office window - well, if I crane my neck!). Although it was cold (bitingly cold wind at the summit) and we had a bit of rain the view from the top was amazing and we could see right across to the Trossachs, all of Stirling, the nearby villages and the uni campus. I was amazed by how many people had also chosen to do the walk on a cold January day- even small kids! It was very muddy though and boggy in places. Michael slipped on the way down and got a cold muddy backside for his efforts.

On the way up we startled a grouse- first wild one I've ever seen!

This is a picture of me being blown by the wind at the top wearing Michael's favourite one of my hats (think Peruvian knitting with tassels) - he usually won't be seen in public with me when I wear it. You can see the snow on the hills behind me -think they're the Ochil Hills but don't quote me on it!

You can see the River Forth winding its way through the valley in this one- oh and my hat! As I told Michael, to his fascination and delight, Stirling lies in a u-shaped glaciated valley (well it is as far as I recall from O-grade geography...).