We were a bit sad to leave the Lakes District but the excitement of seeing Till for the weekend way outweighed that emotion.

Shortly after leaving the Lakes District we had a bit of a water pump drama but were very lucky to find a great guy in Lockerby who worked late on the Friday afternoon of a long weekend to get it going again.

Once fixed we raced up to Preswick to catch up with lovely sailing friends for dinner.  Jim and Anne McGillivray and Anne’s brother Ian.  We had a great pub meal together and lots of laughs.  Then it was a race up to Glasgow airport to pick Till up.

Luckily she loves the van and ‘gets’ our lifestyle.  She just wanted to chill and do long walks so that was pretty easy to accommodate.

We had a wee drama finding the Park4Night spot which entailed us driving into a golf club entrance that wasn’t actually a road.  Till commented that John’s skill at manoeuvring the van is incredible.  He certainly is good at getting us out of trouble even if it is 12 o’clock at night.  We eventually found the right spot and it was perfect.  In the middle of a huge park outside a stately home in the middle of Glasgow.

These gardens were outside the stately home … Till photo bombed the photo on the first photo.

Saturday morning we heading straight up Loch Lomond and found this great park for the night about three quarters of the way up. The weather was a bit inclement so we spent a lot of the day chatting and catching up on Till’s life.  There was one pub nearby … 100 metres … so we had a late afternoon drink while the roast pork was sizzling away in the van.

We were all very relaxed by this point so splurged and had a bottle of red.

Till was really keen on a walk …. John always is … so off we went the next morning for a walk above the Loch.

Till in my old trekking boots!  Lucky we kept them?!?!?!?!?!

We left Loch Lomond in the afternoon and headed up through The Loch Lomond and The Trossachs National Park.  We passed numerous lochs searching for a pub for Sunday lunch … ended up at Loch Tay and found a pub at Kenmore.

We went on to The Hermitage which is basically a sort of river …. another walk.

We found a park for the night at Pitlochry and were all in bed pretty early.

Pitlochry turned out to be a nice little town and we were surprised to find everything open even though it was a Monday public holiday.

We wondered down to the river to look for salmon jumping upstream.  Till saw something jumping.  We found the dam and the fish ladder which has been built so that the salmon can still head upstream.

Next stop Blair Castle for a very quick look at the outside.  Then headed to Perth for a late bite to eat before heading straight to Glasgow to drop Till off.  She was pretty impressed that she was given an upgrade to Business but was feeling slightly like trailer trash after a very easy going weekend with no makeup etc.

John and I both loved seeing her and the first few days of our Scottish adventure.

It was snowing pink petals as we drove through Glasgow!