Today I'm in Lanark in the central belt of Scotland. I arrived the night before last and used the Park4Night app to locate a quiet car park at the side of Lanark Loch. I couldn't see anything of my surroundings in the dark, but I woke up to a beautiful view. Take a look at this:
I'd been the only vehicle in the car park last night, but there were now about twenty cars and lots of people out for some morning exercise. It was a fresh, chilly morning with the sun out and blue skies, so I decided to go for a walk around the loch before breakfast.
The loch has a footpath all the way round it, so I didn't have to wear my hiking boots.
It didn't take long to walk around this little loch. It's not much bigger than Roath Lake in Cardiff, but it felt good to rack up some steps right at the beginning of the day. A positive, healthy start.
Then back to the van for some breakfast.
I walked down into Lanark and found the library. It's in a lovely big category B listed building and they had a spacious IT room where I could plug everything in to charge and work on my blog.
From there, I went to the Tesco Superstore to check out their vegan all day breakfast (my late lunch) as recommended by my Mum. I wasn't disappointed: two vegan sausages, half an avocado, flat mushroom, baked beans, wilted spinach, roasted tomato and toast, all for just 5.50 pounds. What a bargain, and it tasted great. I'm already planning to have it again today after I finish this blog post.
By the time I'd blogged, eaten, called my son and organized everything in the van, there wasn't a lot of daylight left. I drove over to nearby Castlebank Park for a look around and a walk.
This is Castlebank House in the grounds of the park. It looked like it was in residential use.
There were some nice rose gardens to the front of it, and I also found this impressive wooden sculpture of Braveheart, Sir William Wallace.
This is the sunset view of the woods from Castlebank House's rose gardens. Looks lovely. At the time I took this video, I didn't yet realize I'd soon be navigating those woods in near darkness.
I followed a little path called the 'Dell Path', leading to the Clyde Walkway which goes along the banks of the River Clyde and loops back to Castlebank Park ... if you follow the correct route.
Unfortunately, when I got down to the Clyde, instead of following the fork to the right, which would have returned me to the park (The Clyde Walkway), I turned left and followed a path which went along to New Lanark about 1.5 kilometres away.
I really enjoyed my walk through the woods, and it wasn't too muddy with a carpet of leaves and pines along the paths. After ten minutes or so, I'd zig-zagged down the slopes and was near the banks of the Clyde. It was fast-flowing and looked icy cold.
As I walked on, I was aware of the light starting to fade and I increasingly wondered when the path was going to loop back towards the park. Eventually I realized it wasn't going to rejoin the park and had almost certainly taken me beyond the edge of the park's boundaries.
I came to a handy wooden platform which gave me this elevated view of the Clyde. As you can see, there was still plenty of light at this point, so nothing to worry about really.
It was maybe another fifteen or twenty minutes before I came out the other side of the woods. I found myself with a few houses dotted around and lanes going off in several directions. One of them was signposted for New Lanark.
At this point, I discovered I couldn't get a signal on my phone, so I couldn't access Google Maps and work out the best lane to take me back to Castlebank Park and my van. My walk through the woods had left me disorientated and I didn't want to pick a lane at random that might take me even further from the van as the evening turned from cold to freezing.
I made the decision to retrace my steps back through the woods. I calculated that I'd been walking for about forty five minutes and if I set a brisk pace I could be back at Castlebank House in thirty minutes. With any luck, I'd have enough remaining daylight.
In the twilight, the lovely autumnal woods suddenly became sinister and eerie. Just like in a horror film, there was an occasional owl hoot and the sounds of woodland animals in the undergrowth. To make things worse, once I got into the trees there was very little light at all and I wasn't following just one single path; there were a number of forks where I had to try and recall which route I'd come along.
This is the last picture I took on my phone, as I was saving my battery in case of the eventuality of having to use the phone's flashlight to navigate in the dark.
I love walking through woods and forests in the daylight. In the nighttime, not so much. The path through the trees got really creepy and I was so relieved to find my way back to the Dell Path and up the slope to Castlebank Park. The walk wasn't that long, but I don't care to repeat it.
I got in the van and returned to the Inn on the Loch car park with my heaters blasting on full. It had been a cold day, with the temperature staying at 6 degrees or lower, and I knew I was in for a very cold night.
Shout out to my brother's friend, Rich Cox, who sent me a kind message to say he's enjoying the blog. Thanks for reading!
Till next time, stay warm everyone,
Brian
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