Kiddam Hill is a quaint cottage amongst towering pines. Walking in a pine forest which was once a wild rugged moor, one feels as if the dark windless expanse of trees aught not to be there. A thick carpet of pine needles coats the forest's floor and the smell of pine sap settles in and around you as you walk further and further into the trees. On the inside of the trees, branches have no needles on them. The trees appear to be almost dead but if you look up you can see green needles high above you. Maybe you will stumble onto a clearing, where moss covers the small patch of ground where the sun light still manages to shine through. If you stand in the centre of the clearing and look back into the trees you notice why no other plant may grow there; no sunlight can penetrate the thick covering of the pines needles.

Out on the moor cotton grass and buttercups dance with the chilly wind. Down in the valley a stream merrily makes its long journey to the sea.

Water gurgling through the rocks. A pheasant lets his cry echo over the valley and a hawk sails high on an updraught. Two little fawns lay cuddled up next to each other in the thick grass, you walk up almost able to touch them. A log lays some what slanted over a small valley. Walking over it you think what would happen if you fell, and wobble... But don't fall, you just keep on walking until you reach the other side. You walk further and you are in a meadow of blue bells, upon lying down the sweet scent of the flowers finds it's way into your nostrils, cooling and calming.

Opposite you is a cleared hill, dismembered tree branches lie scattered over the hillside like after a battle. Grey stumps stick out of the mass of severed and crushed limbs, severed by the chainsaw and crushed by the bulldozer. A single tree stands, it is dead and some what alone, in the mass of destruction. Sadness overwhelms you as you see this sad sight.

Mum, Abbey, Dad and I have seen some places over here where we have said 'I would like to live there if we won tattslotto' (most of the places are the 'big house' of the property). In the time when the 'big hooses' (as they are called in Scotland) were in their day, there would be in a estate a big house and many little cottages that belonged to the big houses owner, for example Kiddam Hill, Thickside, Pengrain and Ashybank the cottages and Garwald is the big house. Eskdalemuir is very remote and beautiful, but I could never leave our home, our friends and our animals.

James is a falconer (they say FOL-coner and we saw fAlconer). He breeds hybrids, and has Merlins, Peregrine and one that starts with G but I can't remember its name! He has 'hat birds' they are falcons who have been raised by him so they think they are humans and when they are older the start 'soliciting' us humans aka checking us out! The reason they are called hat birds is; they mate hats. Weird isn't it? And really gross too!

We are now at Gordon's place and have, in the past few days, met Hilda and her sons (she one of Mums old school friends), seen Rachelle (another school friend) and her parents then visited Anna and Garth (Tong-Len funds peeps) and their grandchildren and daughter, went shopping in Edinburgh I bought some jeans and some tops and abbey got some stuff two. We saw the Castle, it has cliffs all around it except for the entrance. We looked at the Irvine family names and then at some kilts and badges.

When we were at Gordon's I read 'A Shop On Blossom Street'. It is a really nice book (maybe not for boys) about a lady who has had cancer two times and after the second time she sets up a shop called A Good Yarn. There are three other ladies; Alix the punk who has anger problems, Jacqueline a lady who her son (in her eyes) has married beneath him and Carol a lady who really wants to be a mother but twice the IVF has failed and this is her last chance... Any way they all go to Lydia's beginners knitting class and ….........

Since we didn't have time to finish Darby, let alone Rasin or Strange Town, here are some photos of Darby...

I have to go and clean the caravan, because Abbey and I have been sleeping in there while Mum and Dad sleep in the house! So the caravan is very very very very very very very (Do you get the picture ?!) VERY messy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Write More Soon

Frances

We wake up and get dressed. Today we are going to Edinburgh to look at a castle where the King and Queen of Scotland lived. We walk up a windy path to the castle. We see the price and decide not to go in.. We go to a Scottish shop and look at the tartans. There are many of the tartans so we look for mum's tartan which is the Ervin, but they don't have it so we look for the other way of spelling it which is Irvin. They don't have Irvin either only in a tie that dad does not want so we go down the stairs to look for more but there aren't any. We discover mum's family coat of arms which is something with holly on the top of the helmet and on the shield.

We leave and go down the royal mile for a bit and then we go shopping for clothes for me and Frances. I get a green and a black top with black three quarter length shorts and tight jeans that need a belt. Frances, as she told you, gets one pair of cool tight jeans and two or three cool tops. After we go back to Anna's place and have a lovely Indian meal that Anna's daughters Indian husband have made; it was so good. We say he should start up an Indian shop in Tasmania (that's where they are moving ). The next morning we leave for Gordon's, a friend of mum's.

We stayed nine days in Eskdalemuir. We all wanted to stay longer but we can feel the time passing too quickly and there is still such a lot to see and friends to catch up with. Still, I think I have managed to introduce my family to the joys of aimless rambling up and down the hills and valleys of wandering streams. The girls also climbed Ettrick Pen on an incredibly hot day and Abbey climbed it repeatedly as she spent some time sliding down the steep face of grass at great speed! The last day I took them to the waterfall at Garwald thinking only to show them as I was sure it would be too early in the season to swim but to our surprise it was deliciously warm and we had a wonderful time. I caught up with Rachel then, she drove up from England and met us for dinner. We walked around Garwald and the cottage that she had lived in remembering old times.

The next day we met again at Hilda's for lunch at her beautiful farm on the Castle Milk Estate near Lockerbie. Its nearly 30 years since I saw Hilda but we were good friends at primary school and wrote for many years. Her family are lovely and it was a short but enjoyable visit. Then we rushed back to say our goodbyes to James, Edda, Thiane, Chelsea and Tina (Edda's mum is visiting from South Africa) before we took the windy road through Ettrick to Lindean, near Selkirk, where Rachel's parents live now.

Allan and Marie have not changed at all... well except for the fact that we all have much whiter hair than we had in those days! They tell a good yarn and we stayed up late catching up on as much as we could. Next day we were off to Alnwick Castle where Harry Potter was filmed so we had to press on but I am sure we could have talked for longer. While places seem to have shrunk since I was little, people's conversations have grown. They have both retired now, from gamekeeping and nursing, with all the things they know about forestry and wildlife, estates and their politics, the stories are fascinating...

The castle was excellent - still in use by the Percy family who took it over 700 years ago. They have a wide range of activities to amuse children and adults but just wandering around the stately rooms in which they live for the winter months was awe inspiring. Both girls are determined to marry Dukes or other such Castle owners that may be available!!

We pressed on to Edinburgh to camp at Anna and Gareth's. There too, we kept them up late talking, about Tong-len. They are the fund raising peeps (as Frances says) and it takes all their waking moments and its all voluntary. Thank you to those of you who sent your donations to our little friends - be assured that nearly every cent is directly given to the children - the building of the new hostel that will take another twenty children as well as the new teacher for the tent school, uniforms and books for the tent school kids that are able to go to government schools, and of course the health care, leaving only a small amount that must pay Tashi and Jamyang to direct the whole project. We met Rachel and her husband Powan and their three boys. Both were instrumental in the setting up of Tong-len. Rachel is a nurse and put together the health program and Powan, apart from being a brilliant chef, was the nursery teacher before Veeru.

We wandered around Edinburgh, gave the Castle a miss as we thought Alnwick may have been sufficient for the price!! and checked out the clans. Irvine in all its various spellings has a family motto that goes 'Sub sole sub umbra virens' - Flourishing in sunshine and in shade. Funnily enough, although there were a few clans in the northeast of Scotland there was also those that lived just near Eskdalemuir!! Maybe that is why it feels so much like home. It was raining so we didn't venture to the zoo or the botanical gardens but the shopping was good for the girls!

Next day we drove to Gordon's passing by Loch Lomond on the way to Tarbert. Gordon is working so we spent yesterday catching up on those things that one does whether or not on holiday. Today the weather is fine again and we will go see this new world. On the weekend we will go rambling with Gordie!

Camille

Well, Eskdalemuir was/is certainly a revelation. It still maintains its majesty, amongst the plantings of pine and extractions for pulp and electricity. Etrick Pen, the waterfall, the meandering walks all met my mind well, and thence onto Gordies, via friends, Castle and Edinburgh. Pleasant days indeed and a library of books, some marked by age, but none who words fail to engorge a patient and enquiring mind. So what of Gerard's mind rambles I hear you mutter...here is something for you to ponder from Gordon's treasure trove, from Henry Thoreau's Essays on walking 1862.

“I wish to speak a word for Nature, for absolute freedom and wildness, as contrasted with a freedom and culture merely civil, - to regard man as an inhabitant or a part and parcel of Nature, rather than a member of society. I wish to make an extreme statement, if so I may make an emphatic one, for there are enough champions of civilisation: the minister and the school committee and every one of you will take care of that.

I have met with but one or two persons in the course of my life who understand the art of Walking, that is, of taking walks, - who had a genius, so to speak, for sauntering: which word is beautifully derived “from idle people who rove about the country, in the Middle Ages, and asked for charity, under the pretence of going a la Sainte Terre,” to the Holy Land, till the children exclaimed, “There goes a Sainte Terrer,” a Saunterer - a Holy Lander. They who never go to the holy lands in their walks, as they pretend, are indeed mere idlers and vagabonds: but they who do go there are Saunterers in the good sense, such as I mean.... For every walk is a sort of crusade, preached by some Peter the Hermit in us, to go forth and reconquer this holy land from the hands of the infidels.

…...So we saunter toward the Holy Land, till one day the sun shall shine more brightly then ever he has done, shall perchance shine into our minds and hearts, and light up our whole lives with a great awakening light, as warm and serene and golden as on a bankside in Autumn.”

Gerard