Wednesday 26th April, W8D6

A rainbow welcome from the Hopetoun Arms, Leadhills, the highest residential hotel in the UK at 1375 feet, in the highest inhabited village in Scotland. 

And as an unexpected bonus for a BritStop place, I get electric hookup in the car park for £10! And my steak pie was lovely. And if you think the public bar looked cosy, take a look at the lounge, where I'm seated right now. I'm not sure the landlady will be able to prise me out later. 

Enough of that. I'm supposed to tell you about my journeys, as I'm beginning to feel the time to go home is approaching. I received an email reply about my proposed visit to Dunans Castle too late, as I'd already just left my camp, starting to head towards the Borders. Have to come back another time to Laird Cate's baronial hame. I'd aimed to stay here at Leadhills tonight, and called ahead to book a place, and I plotted a course that would avoid getting to close to Glasgow (nothing against Glasgow, just the traffic round the city), and my route went via Callendar, and took in the very fine Falls of Falloch. As I arrived at the viewpoint, there was a hardy matron (can I say that?) swimming in the large pool, without even a wetsuit. 

There were many attractive lochs along the route, some of which allow overnight stays, but I parked by Loch Lubhair and made myself a coffee and a ham and cheese roll and took it down to the lochside to enjoy at a picnic table. It was a quiet site, with one other car parked, and a single kayaker out on the water.

I followed my route over the hills in the direction of Beattock. which used to be notorious for cars overheating at the summits before both the engines and the roads improved, 

I will digress for a note about my trusty vehicle, which has behaved immaculately apart from the broken tailgate latch which I'd had to have replaced in Edinburgh quite early in my journey. She even passed her MOT in the tiny village of Reay in Sutherland. So to my dismay today the van developed a persistent knock on this leg of the journey, and after checking everything inside was correctly stowed or tethered, I stopped at a services near Stirling and looked under the chassis. The problem was/is a light metal baffle which should be attached to the exhaust silencer box, but has perished (or maybe been damaged by my many pothole encounters) and was/is hanging as a loose flap and intermittently banging. I'm hoping it won't cause a serious problem before I get to Deal (or even to Letchworth), however alarming the knocking.

And one other van thing. To paraphrase the radio presenters, my loyal reader may recall that back in Week 4, on Orkney, the interior had developed an offensive smell which despite thorough investigation defied all efforts at diagnosis. I'm pleased to relate, dear faithful reader, that after about a week it disappeared as mysteriously as it came, has never recurred, and remains unexplained.

So tearing myself away from this open coal fire, I finished my pint of Belhaven Best, and had a long chat with meinhost Rab, about the life of the village, and the local music scene. There's an active Leadhills Silver Band! And finally time to climb the hill in the clear starry night to the car park for a night with power, and therefore my electric blanket. And a final wee dram. 

Slainte and Night Night.