Parks and Chapels

22 March 2007



Mike had class this morning, so Mom, Dad, and I headed over to Pollock Country Park. The park is easy to get to and is a great city escape. I had been to the park in November, so it was wonderful to be able to walk through it now when everything is in bloom and green. On the left is Mom and Dad on a really neat park bench. I love the otter carving.

The Pollock House was thankfully free still. Come April 1st it will be £8 to get into and will stay that way until November. Now that we have gone through it, I am glad I will not have to pay the rather steep entrance fee. The house was great and beautifully decorated, but not really worth the £8. The outside is gorgeous though. They were just starting to plant the flowers for all the gardens. I would love to go back mid-May to see everything in bloom.
Then we headed to the wonderfully eclectic Burrell Collection. I not only love the building (huge glass windows looking into the woods and rest of the park), but the collection itself is amazing. Anything you could think of that may be classified as art is here. Old stained glass windows from Churches, wall, doorways, window frames, spoons, vases, tapestries, entire rooms, furniture, etc. are all here. And barely half of the entire collection is on display. It is absolutely amazing.

Then I got to try my hand at driving on the wrong side of the road. On the highway. At least then I couldn't accidentally move into oncoming traffic. We went down to Roslin to see the chapel made even more famous for being in Dan Brown's book and then the movie, The Da Vinci Code. Its out in the middle of no where in this beautiful valley. Unfortunately the chapel was packed with people. Since its new found popularity, tour companies pack buses full of people and cart them down there. We tried to explore and stay away from all of them, but it was rather difficult. This is just one of the many pictures I took of the interior of the chapel. All the detail work was absolutely amazing.



The roof has to be redone on the chapel. At one point in time, in order to restore and preserve the ceiling, Historic Scotland put a coating on the ceiling and walls. Unfortunately this coating did not allow for any moisture to leave the walls. SO... when it rained the moisture just stayed and therefore everything was green. According to one of the workers there, it was so bad that they used to marvel at the detail work of the sculptures by comparing the carved ferns to the actual ferns growing out of the walls. While they are gathering funds and doing repair work, there is a massive umbrella-like covering on the chapel and scaffolding that you can climb up and walk around the top exterior of the chapel. It might have been disappointing at first to walk up to all the scaffolding, but it was great to be able to see all the stone work that closely. And the view of the valley was great!


Then we walked down into part of the valley to examine the castle ruins. This was one part of the ruins, and the biggest section. There was not a whole lot left, but the walk was great. It would have been nice to do more of the path, but there were signs all over the car park saying that they would lock the rental car in at 5pm. Granted the village is small, but I really didn't want to invest the time walking all over it looking for someone to unlock the gate.

Near Glasgow is a city called New Lanark. This part of the city is a recreation of a milling village. You can go through a factory, mill, tenements, etc. We got there too late in the day for it to be open, but we were there to see the Falls of the Clyde. Mike and I had read that we would be able to walk less than a 1/2 mile and see at least two of them. Not so, and the path was quite uphill and as it was becoming dusk, we decided to just see the falls that were easily within reach of this little village. Being stuck in the woods after dark with no flashlight did not sound appealing.