A Tasty Lunch

The weather has been rather miserable for the last two days which meant I could have posted a blank white square to show the cloud we’ve been driving through.  Never mind, we’ve reached Ull.  I thought we were at Hull, but after listening to the locals I’ve realised the “H” is silent.

Today we could actually see the countryside and after a brief discuss Jan decided she wanted to see Goathlands.  For those readers who don’t follow the ‘soapies’ on the box the TV name of the village is Aidensfield of “Heatbeat” fame.

The village pubis actually The Goathlands Hotel as displayed on the large sign on the end of the building. 

However the sign on the opposite end of the buildings displays the following

We wandered into the pub to check the lunch menu.  It didn’t impress so we left.

Across the road from the pub is Scripps Garage and Funeral Services. 

The police station and house from the TV series isn’t in Goathlands but someone was quick to cash in on the location by parking this vehicle outside the village shops.  You know your age when you remember driving one of these in your youth! 

Jan parted with some of our hard earned cash in one of the village tourist shops.  I confess to pressuring her to buy the table mats with the Yorkshire Moors scenery. However buying the politically inappropriate Gollywog mug was her own idea.

The range of food in both tearooms didn’t impress us and we decided to move on.

Last time we were this way I remember seeing radar domes high on the moors.  Today we noticed this…….

My assumption is it’s a replacement for those radar domes we saw in 1999.  A three (or four) sided phased array radar?

The car was heading towards Pickering when I happened to notice what appeared to be a pub on the left side of the road. 

The Fox & Rabbit had a good menu.  Jan was also impressed with the local cider. We both opted for the ‘Roast of the Day’(pork) and it was delicious.

After letting lunch settle I again changed the car gps parameters so it would take us on the shortest route to Ull.   This resulted in us seeing some fantastic scenery on narrow one lane roads.  Apologies for the typos…. The faulty keyboard is a trial! 

Instructions for inserting photos from Google Photos

Thank you to our readers who left a comment confirming they could see the post box.  When I thought about the problem the reason was obvious.  The photo was being inserted into Open Live Writer from our Google Photos album and then being published in Blogger.BUT I was the only person seeing the photo in our blog.  The Problem was the photo was not being SHARED.  Once I had changed the album to being ‘shared’ in Google Photos then every reader could see it.

This is how you share a Google Photos Album.

1. Login to your Google Photos
2. Click on Albums in the left vertical menu bar.   This will display all your Albums.   If you do’nt have any Albums you can create one by clicking on the first box.
3. In the image below you will see the Album May 2017 is shared but April 2017 is not.  I’m going to share April 2017
4. I double click April 2017 to select it and then click on the three vertical dots in the top right
5. This brings up a pop-up window.  Select Options
6. In the Options window drag the Share slide at the bottom of the window.  When the slide is to the right just click on the X at the top  right of the box to close it.  Do the same to close the main options box

 

   7.   Your album is now shared

   8.   To insert a photo into OLW open your album and right click on the photo.  Select the “Copy Link Address” option.

  9.   In OLW select Insert from the toolbar and then click on the Picture icon.   Select the “From the Web” option.

  10.   Right click in the top box and paste the photo link from Google Photos.  A preview of the image should then appear in the larger lower box.

  11.   Finally, click on the Insert button to insert the image into OLW

It is only possible to post one photo at a time.

 

1.  

 

Falkirk

I think the nautical term for today would be “Make and Mend”.  It was a short travelling day from Perth to Falkirk. We spent several hours in the laundrette after a week on the road.  The other couple in the laundrette were from Portland, Victoria which is south of Melbourne.  The amusing aspect of this meeting was us entering to find them watching the tumbling washing machine.  They told us they were watching TV and every time the tumble stopped Brexit was off.  But a few seconds later it would be back on. Australian humour!

Once our ’smalls’ were clean and dry we drove to the Falkirk Wheel.  I previous blogged about the wheel here so I’m not going to repeat myself.   The weather was also better during my last visit. Consequentially I only took three photos today.

 

However I didn’t have the 4K action camera last time so today I filmed the wheel doing a half cycle which I’ve posted below.  The video clip has been edited and reduced from 4K to High Definition in order to reduce the file size.  But be warned those readers with a small data allowance. It’s 55Mb.

OK…. can’t insert the video into OLW

If you were able to see the photo of the red post box in the post below then I have worked out how to insert images from Google Photos into Open Live Writer.  I’ll write how I did this in my next post.

Trying again–2nd Test

Test

Have I cracked the problem of inserting images from Google Photos into an Open Live Writer draft post?  There should be two image below

Inverness to Fort William to Perth

This was a long day and due to the weather (rain) not particularly interesting.  We’d driven the road between Inverness and Fort William on a previous UK holiday. It also rained on that trip.  The main difference between the two trips was this time I was determined to get a photo of Urquhart Castle.

This time I remembered where to stop on the A85 to get that distant photo.  Which I; of course; cropped. 

We then drove to the castle car park (free parking) where I took more photos from a different angle.

Fortunately the rain held off for these two photo opportunities.

We had also planned to stop at Fort Augustus and visit the Caledonian Canal.  Unfortunately there were two problems.  The first was getting stuck in a queue of traffic immediately prior to Fort Augustus.  The reason for this turned out to be the raising of the bridge at Fort Augustus to allow two yachts to transit from Loch Ness.  Then it started to rain!

We carried on to Fort William in a long line of slow traffic.  Whilst we have previously visited Fort William (I strolled to the top of Ben Nevis) we’d not looked around the town on that occasion.

If the Model T made it to the top in1911 you will realise how I was able to stroll to the top!

The journey from Fort William south to Perth took us back through the centre of the Scottish Highlands with similar scenery to the trip up. Except it was raining today.

On to Inverness

Today we toured the south east Scottish Highlands, wherever possible staying on the B roads.  The route took us in a northerly direction though a part of Scotland we hadn’t previously visited.

From Alyth there was a steady climb to Glenshee on narrow roads.  By the time we reached the summit at Glenshee the terrain and vegetation had changed significantly.  Rolling hills which reminded me of the land around Benmore in NZ South Island.  Some of it also looked similar to Central Otago.  Of course it was Scottish settlers who established themselves in Otago.  Not because it reminded them of home….. it was the discovery of gold! 

Glenshee appears to be a major Scottish skiing area.  Although with no accommodation people must travel daily.

We drove on to Braemar where we stopped to have a look around.

The annual Braemar Highland Games are held here every spring.   The Queen’s Scottish residence at Balmoral Castle is only 9 miles to the east of Braemar.  We didn’t think it would be polite to pop in for tea and continued north.

In truth we had lunch in Braemar with Jan selecting the macaroni cheese for the third successive day whilst I opted for the Wild Boar Burger. Frankly it didn’t taste like wild boar.  More likely ‘mildly annoyed’. 

Braemar Castle is on the outskirts of the village.  It’s a tourist attraction (of course).  I didn’t find it interesting.  The castle actually looked ‘new’. Or perhaps I’m getting blasé about castles.  This one had too many windows to look old.  Further along the road was another interesting castle or house tucked amongst trees.  We found a layby and I walked 500m back down the road in a effort to take a photo.  The problem was the building had been carefully surrounded by trees.One assumes to provide the owners with plenty  of privacy. 

A check in Google Maps revealed the building as Invercauld Castle.  Wikipedia states “The Farquharson family settled in the area in the 14th century, and constructed a tower house in the 16th century. A vaulted basement within the present building dates from this time, although the tower house was remodelled in the late 17th century. Further alterations were made through the 18th and 19th centuries, and in 1875 the castle was extensively remodelled by John Thomas Wimperis in the Scots Baronial style.^[1] The house retains many Victorian furnishing and paintings.”

Some of the B roads eventually became single lane with passing bays.  Fortunately there was little traffic despite it being the last day of the Bank Holiday weekend.  No doubt they we on the A roads and motorways.

It was whilst were were driving on these high B roads that we noticed pockets of snow on the distant hills.

I’m now harking back to my schoolboy history lessons and if I am correct the Highlands used to be quite densely populated.  However the local ‘Lords’ turfed many of the small peasant farmers off the land and replacing them with sheep.  Many of he disposed Scots emigrated to Canada, America, Australia and New Zealand with others heading to England where they found work in the factories of the Industrial Revolution.  Of course I could be wrong?

Dundee

Somewhat of a rest day from driving after being on the road for a week. Frankly, the ‘frog car’ (Renault Clio) isn’t impressing me.  The gearbox is very ‘knotchy’ and when you press your foot down on the accelerator the car declines to comply.  It wouldn’t pull the skin off a rice pudding!  Perhaps I’m being unkind.  After all It’s a small country with narrow roads and I’m used to open spaces and long distances.  But then….. only milk and juice come in two litres

We drove into Dundee this morning timing our arrival with the opening of the shops at 11am (it’s Sunday).  We both decided against buying an umbrella realising it would be hard to take back on the aircraft.  Jan purchased a very fetching bright pink rain jacket.  She’s now unable to hide from me!   Next we went to Marks and Spencer.  Jan has always shopped here on each of our trip.  She finds the clothing to be of a better quality than Oz.

Dundee proved to be more interesting than I had anticipated.  It’s history of shipbuilding is retained with two ships being preserved down by the river.  The HMS Unicorn is a surviving sailing frigate of the successful Leda class.  Built in Chatham Dockyards, Kent and launched in 1824 HMS Unicorn never saw active service and was never fitted with masts.  She was towed from Kent to Dundee where she served as a depot ship for almost 140 years.  She is now a museum and tourist attraction.

The second vessel is RSS Discovery.Wikipedia states she “is a barque-rigged auxiliary steamship built for Antarctic research, and launched in 1901. She was the last traditional wooden three-masted ship to be built in the United Kingdom. Its first mission was the British National Antarctic Expedition, carrying Robert Falcon Scott and Ernest Shackleton on their first, and highly successful, journey to the Antarctic, known as the Discovery Expedition.”

Dundee is one of a number of cities that have adopted the idea of positioning interesting bronze statues around the CBD.

I would have preferred to take photos in sunshine rather than drizzle.

I haven’t seen one of these in many years!

Robin has left me a comment regarding the insertion of photos from the cloud into OLW suggesting the problem is with the Google API. So today I opened a free account with Canon to store my photos in the Cloud in the hope this would get around the API issue.   No Luck!  I’ll continue to look for a solution.

You’ll take the high road and I’ll take the low road

Or so the song goes.  We’re on the move and because it’s a Bank Holiday weekend we’ve had issues booking accommodation.  Eventually Jan found two nights in Dundee.  Those readers who took geography at school will know it’s on the other side of Scotland. Never mind, the distances aren’t great compared to Australia. We didn’t want to go via the shortest route as that would mean motorways.  Instead we decided to sneak upon Dundee.

  

Jan had read there were a few major events in Glasgow today so we avoided the city.  Loch Lomond is probably beautiful but both times we’ve driven along its western side there has been low cloud and rain.   Moreover there are not many layby where you can stop for a photo whilst heading north.

We had just reached the northern end of the Loch when we got caught up in a car rally heading to Inverness. The interesting thing was the need for each driver to stop somewhere on the side of the road and water the vegetation before frantically racing to catch up with the rest of the vehicles in the rally.  Consequentially we had to keep a close eye on the rear vision mirror as each car caught up and blasted past us.

We stopped in Aberfeldy for lunch.  Jan had macaroni cheese, which she said was very nice, whilst I made a poor choice opting for the mince and potato.

The water fountain outside the cafe as the only interesting feature I noticed in the town.

This fountain was erected and various improvements made to the town of Aberfeldy by Gavin, Marquis of Breaddalbane as a memento of the cordial reception accorded to him and Lady Breaddalbane by the inhabitants on their first visit after the restoration of the marquisate July 1885. 

 

Despite the weather, there were plenty of walkers about in Dumbartonshire and Perthshire today.

Tomorrow we plan to tour the local countryside. No visits to distilleries as Jan doesn’t like whiskey and I’m driving.

Brian I’m of the opinion that Google isn’t particularly interested in Blogger.It’s a poor medium for collecting data as it’s mostly one way (writers and readers) and most bloggers and readers don’t fit the age range that would appeal to Google’s potential advertising clients.  Most of us aren’t young and single with money to burn.

Oh….. I haven’t been able to insert photos from the web into my posts.  They are being inserted from my laptop hard drive.  I’m not sure if it’s Google Photos, me or the speed of our connection.

Galloway and Ayrshire

Today I’m going to see if Open Live Writer will import photos from my Google Photos Album.

We have been exploring Galloway and Ayrshire.  The first part of the journey involved driving from England into Scotland where our first destination was Gretna Green.This was our second visit and I still haven’t made an honest woman of Jan.  The interesting thing was how much the location has grown in size over the years.  I remember the Blacksmith Shop, which now has a coin operated turnstile at the entrance (we opted to save our money). The other buildings were unfamiliar being large souvenir outlets.  This is such a popular spot I suspect the prices are higher than elsewhere.  But that didn’t appear to deter the two coach loads of Chinese Tourists.  Didn’t they realise it was probably all made in China….. and cheaper there! 

The Old Blacksmith Shop

I don’t remember seeing any of this on my first visit.

The plan was to take the coast road to the west via Dumfries where we planned on having lunch.  That didn’t work out and Dumfries provided to be a disappointment. The issue was parking….. or lack of it.  When we finally found a vacant parking space the marking showed “Disc Only”. That’s when we discovered all the parking was “Disc Only”.   The car park sign stated discs could be purchased from participating stores and the TIC. This was just too difficult so we drove on.

The coast road is rather attractive and I would have taken more photos if parking area had been provided.  Unfortunately many of the road side parking areas are located where there is no view!

This part of the country is dotted with small stone whitewashed single storey cottages.  The tide goes out a long way in this part of Scotland and obviously come in very fast catching the unwary.  We could see a large wind farm out in the estuary.

Most of the land appears to be used for mixed farming.  The farmers were busy either haymaking or spreading effluent.  The smell of the latter certainly clears the nasal passages. 

here

When we reached Stranraer the road became very familiar.  It was here that Daniel (youngest son) and I caught the ferry to Belfast.  We had boarded the bus in Glasgow and I thought it was taking us to a nearby ferry.  Daniel hadn’t informed me we had a 3 hour bus trip!

But the coastal road is interesting and I rather enjoyed the views from the bus windows.

From Ayr we headed northeast to Killmarnock.  We’re now in Ayrshire. Our plan was to head inland and explore some of Ayrshire.  The first thing I noticed was the change in the terrain and vegetation. Crops were being grown in the west but as we moved further into the centre of Ayrshire it appeared the ground was poorer. There were some sheep and cattle but much of the land had been turned to pine plantations.   We were driving the B roads in an effort to stay away from motorways.

 

This area obvious gets some wind as there were numerous wind farms.

Tomorrow we head further north.