Sunday 24th May

We discovered at 4:50am that we could hear the sparrows outside with the window closed.  I had an idea on how to make some earplugs later for tonight and hopefully they'll work and I'll get a decent nights sleep tonight.  Still, almost 5 hours wasn't too bad, I've coped with much less than that before!

We decided to take it relatively easy today.  We did a walk not far away from where we were staying which was right on the coast and through quite a large amount of forest.  In the forest, aliums were in flower along woth bluebells and pink campions so it was rather colourful!  Before approaching Cruggelton Castle we had to cross a field of cows which, as we safely crossed to the other side, we realised that they were a little lively, having RAN (I would say charged but this was a cow not a bull) to where the cyclist we had just passed was going through the gate on the other side.  We didn't like the idea of going through that field again if the cows were going to be super interested in us...! We had a look around the Castle which was basically the remains of an arch on the site of an Iron Age Hill Fort, and by the time we had finished, many cows were grazing at the end of the field over the route which we would have taken back.  So, we went on up the existing field around the cows and managed to get to the farm track, around the cows and into the field on the other side.  It wasn't east climbing over a wire fence but it was either that or potentially get trampled and beaten by cows....!

On the way back we stopped off for our lunch which we had packed, and continued on back to the car.  We then made our way to Whithorn where we popped into the Museum before taking a look around the Priory ruins, and the guy there actually gave us a personalised 'tour' of the museum, which contained a large collection of Christian gravestones, early and late.  He told us he was the handyman for the trust but I think he had soaked a lot of information in and enjoyed learning about local archaeology and history.  This was a Sunday so we assumed he was volunteering for this today.  We thought maybe he'd given us the tour because it was a quiet day but he continued to do it for everyone else so it's probably his thing!  I wonder how many other people who work there go to the same lengths as him?

After the Priory, we went to 'The Whithorn Story' which was a little museum and cafe.  We watched a short video and saw two galleries - one of the archaeology and history of the area and the other was St.Ninians Gallery which was the same thing but just for everything St.Ninian related.  I bought some gifts from the shop before we headed back to the cottage, popping off to a small giftshop on the way which sold locally made set honey for Mathew to have for his breakfast!