Friday 15th - Saturday 16th May

After a half day at work on Friday, we left home at lunchtime and headed on up north. Traffic was heavy around Manchester and Liverpool and it took us an extra couple of hours to get to The Fox and Pheasant in Armathwaite where we stopped for the night. We had booked a table for 7 and we arrived just at the same time so we postponed it for a short while as we settled in.  Dinner was Seabass and salad for me and Mathew had battered haddock and chips. With full bellies we went upstairs, had showers and had a very good nights sleep in a huge bed!

After breakfast we left around 9am and headed on up further north. Traffic was light from here onwards, but we were in no rush. We stopped off at Tesco to get some food and lunch before heading on to Dumbarton where we went to the Castle.  Here we discovered just how windy it was today!!  There were lots of steps here, and its basically on a rock but in a good position - you can see why a Castle was built here!  The rain just about held off, in fact it was quite nice in the sunshine.  We went back to the car and had our lunch there - we had found some salad pots which were quite handy.  We pushed on towards Inverary and further round to Kintyre.  Past Lochgilphead we headed on down the peninsula until we reached pur cottage in Carradale. We were welcomed in and showed the basics before being left to unpack.  The place was small and cute, the bedroom was actually like a snug in the corner, the idea was that it was reminiscent of traditional box-beds.  We settled down, unpacked and put the kettle on!