Southbound
It was relatively quiet as we left Gleneagles this morning, with few people about the hotel.
Plenty of activity over at the golf course though - I don’t think we have ever come past here without someone teeing up ready to play their shot.
There was a bit of mist over the hills as we joined the motorway southbound.
We got a good view of the Kelpies as we passed by though!
Having skirted around the suburbs of Edinburgh, we were soon in the Scottish Borders and shortly after, the sea came into view on our left hand side.
Time to get my camera ready for the English border then, which I managed to snap with the camper van right there in front - you’ll have to believe me that those flags are planted firmly in the ground and not poking through the room of the camper! The red and yellow flag is Northumberland, which flies together with the Union flag and the English cross of St George.
We were heading for Alnwick Castle, or more specifically, Alnwick Castle Gardens, another interesting outdoor place to break our journey and one that’s been on our list ever since we read of the developments here.
For the Duchess of Northumberland had been somewhat brave in her ideas to develop the gardens here and had been quite candid about capitalising on their potential for income generation. We got a good measure of her success when we parked the car - it was very busy indeed.
The part of the garden which had, understandably, attracted the most attention had been the Poison Garden and it was that which had piqued our curiosity the most. But it was closed until 12.30pm, so we decided to explore the grand cascade first. Very grand it was too!
The design of the whole garden felt contemporary - this was no Capability Brown landscape, for sure - and it was interesting to see a modern take on traditional features. No sooner had we begun to walk up the side of the cascade than the fountains began to play.
There were water features and small fountains to either side of the main cascade too and if we were to name the one feature which impressed us most, it would be the water: the rills, pools and falls were really lovely.
The traditional garden at the top of the cascade was laid out very traditionally with all the plants labelled clearly. Our first thought was with the family garden designer who would surely love it here!
Through openings in the neatly trimmed hedges, we caught glimpses of cosy corners with seats, not that we ever found one without someone already sitting comfortably.
Coming across this photo however, makes me question our favourite feature - was it really the water or was it these magnificent tunnels of trees to walk through and be led somewhere different? Some had windows cut into them but all were impeccably maintained and of course, could only really work on this grand scale.
By the time we reached the lawn again, the Poison Garden had opened its gates to visitors once more, but the queue was pretty long. Time for an ice cream whilst we waited for it to go down a little.
As we entered through the gate, the staff member issued instructions: No touching the plants, no sniffing and definitely don’t make a salad!
I’m not sure what I expected, but my first thought was, this wasn’t very attractive. There was a great deal of bare earth and thought everything was as well maintained as the rest of the garden, this fairly small area just wasn’t very interesting to look at. Some of the plants had barcodes in place for further information about their toxic properties, but our interest soon began to wane.
The other thing to note was that the most toxic specimens were kept in cages, and those included a marijuana plant amongst others.
We’d soon seen what we wanted to see though and decided it was time to go. We still had a couple of hours drive to get to our destination and who knows what the traffic would be like?
We hadn’t gone very far before we encountered traffic jams and horrendous weather, enough to feel thankful that we’d not lingered further back there. Our satnav kept increasing the anticipated delay on our route and with a dinner booking tonight that we did not want to miss, we were glad of the extra breathing space.
As we passed the Kelpies earlier this morning, my Hero had mentioned that perhaps we’d pass the Angel of the North as well? We weren’t too sure where it was or whether our route would take us anywhere near, but just as I was fiddling about with my camera on our way through some suburbs or other, I happened to glance over my shoulder and there it was…
