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Dear Stomach: I appreciate that you tire of all the delicious fish & chips that I am eating. I do not care. Stop attempting to make me regret my food choices. Vacation will soon end and I’ll eat all the damn vegetables you want me to eat. Just stop waking me up in the middle of night by pretending to be on fire. I had toast for breakfast. A lot of toast. Just toast. Much to the confusion of our server. (Americans are weird, the lady just ordered toast.)

We didn’t have much of a plan today. We figured we’d head to Glasgow and then towards Peebles to check it out, maybe do some hiking.  I wanted to go to Glasgow to see the wall at Tennent’s Brewery. My great-grandmother was a Tennant (yep, spelling changed once across the water) and I wanted to get a few pics.

We stopped to try to get a cache at the Lady Well which is an artesian spring that probably dates back to Roman times or earlier. It’s right behind Tennent’s. It’s also right in the wall of the Glasgow Necropolis, only street level. So yeah. That’s something to think about. It is now sealed, at any rate. And there was an ambulance idling right by the well, so I didn’t find the cache. Boo.

The second reason I wanted to stop in Glasgow was to visit the Necropolis. It is absolutely amazing. I could wander through it for ever and every and never tire of it.

I love old cemeteries and honestly, the monuments here do not disappoint.

After that whirlwind tour we headed on our way to Peebles. It is an adorable town. I know, I keep saying that, but it’s hard to beat old towns.

We had a bite to eat and found an earthcache – it was the town’s boundary stone, a white granite erratic, sitting by the side of the road. When visitors left town they drank from the stirrup cup. I have no idea what that is, but that’s what the sign said.

Chad really wanted to visit Traquair House and it was only open until 5:00, so we abandoned plans for a hike, took a quick look at the ruins of Cross Kirk and then headed out.

Ditching the hiking and going to Traquair House was a brilliant decision! First we took a little walk through a yew forest. The trees were enormous and bent to the oddest shapes. It was delightful, until the midges found us.

The house itself was crazy amazing. It hadn’t really been modernized during the Victorian era due to lack of funds. It was a perfect visual of why the aristocracy was always so broke. Since the house was closely tied with the Jacobite cause there were some pretty amazing artifacts on display. And the libraries. Oh my god the libraries. As Chad said, the house was so full of bits and pieces and things that you’d really need to have some kind of frequent guest pass to be able to really take it all in.

Our ending spot for the day was a small place called Inverlethen where we had lodging at a B&B in a Victorian home originally built by a doctor. Our room was called Moorfoot, which we found very appropriate considering all the walking we’ve undertaken and the number of times we’ve gotten “bogged”, as Chad calls it.

Around about 9:00 we were both in danger of falling asleep, so Chad suggested we go out for a drink. On the way into town, I saw a sign for St. Ronan’s Well. It was only a half mile away, so we figured we’d take a look. We didn’t get to see the well – I’m guessing it was in the visitor center – but we did see an information sign that had a trail map supposedly leading to the ruins of an Iron Age fort. So we decided to head up, up, up and see what we could find. What we found was a great view of Inverlethen and Traquair House.

Check out yet more the photos below. Clicky on the tiny photos to bring up full sized images.

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