Stirling to Falkirk

 Saturday 14th September. Day 28

We were not sorry to leave the Blair Drummond campsite. Far too crowded and not enough facilities for the number of pitches. I managed to have a shower but the floor was wet everywhere so really difficult getting dressed without getting your jeans wet! Hopping madly on one leg and trying not to topple over! 🤣 I really miss my nice fluffy dry bath mat at home! Anyway we move on…

We drove into Stirling and found a nice big park near the golf course to walk Dex. 


Saw the monument in the mist on our way in.



Stirling Castle dominating over the town.




Kings Park drinking fountain built in 1934.




We had great views of the Castle from the park.




We set off to check out the Castle.


Lots of fabulous old buildings on our route there.





We passed the Stirling Highland Hotel.


Then went past the Old Town Jail. There are even escape rooms there now, not my cup of tea, all that gruesome torture and gore!

We drove up to the entrance of the Castle Carpark and a lady there was waving everyone past and there was a carpark full sign. So our plans to visit were scuppered and we ended up going down a narrow back road and finally found somewhere to pull over where I could at least take a photo from the outside. We have learnt to be pragmatic about these situations now, sometimes you just can’t do what you planned and you just have to see what you can see and go where you can get a parking spot! It’s lucky we hadn’t bought tickets online as we wouldn’t have been able to reserve a parking spot. The castle is quite a climb from the town centre so we decided to give it a miss. With the car park full it was likely that the Castle tours would have been booked out anyway. 







I asked John if we could drive to Stirling Old Bridge, the site of the battle where William Wallace had his victory. The actual bridge is no longer there but the replacement is really old and well worth a visit.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stirling_Old_Bridge









John had a nightmare trying to park at the bridge, it is basically a small car park near a bakery and there were so many bakery customers there was no room to manoeuvre. I rushed off to take photos whilst he tried to turn the van around. All quite stressful for my driver! 


We wanted to find somewhere to park and have lunch and then remembered we had passed a Dobbies garden centre earlier on so headed there. The car park was huge and no problem finding space. Also gave me an excuse for a good look around 🤣 Dobbies one, Castle nil! 😁

After lunch we set off towards Falkirk as we were staying the night at a campsite near the Falkirk Wheel. 
Our satnav that we bought especially for driving the van has died which is a pain as you could set the dimensions of your vehicle and it would plan a route making sure the roads were big enough and suitable for your length and height. Now we were just depending on our phones for navigation. This can go wrong and we ended up faced with a low bridge we couldn’t get under! More manoeuvres to try and turn around and find an alternative route. We got to the site eventually. We had planned to walk to the Falkirk Wheel but the weather turned nasty, raining hard and strong winds so we decided to wait and visit in the morning. Fingers crossed the storm will have passed by morning. 

Comments

  1. Steph15 September 2024 at 00:07

    Shame there are so many tourists around darling! To be honest the countryside views are much nicer than the towns.
    Hope you can fix the satnav as would imagine that's pretty scary driving around not knowing if you'll get stuck 😬 Hope the next campsite is an improvement 🤞😘xx

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