Aye, a weekend in the youth hostel at Minigaff (soon to have a lick of paint and be rebranded less literally but more sensibly as Newton Stewart) with some friens. Headed off on Friday morning stopping on the way in Alloway where the National Trust is doing its best to discreetly Disneyfy the cultural and literary colossus (aye, right) that is The Bard. Incidentally, I can only think of two other people known by a single noun - The Queen and The King. Ah the joy of the Burns Cottage. The sublime Tam O'Shanter Experience. The rubbish bins named after Tam's cronies.
But like a feckin' eejit I forgot to charge the camera before I went so the only photos that were taken all weekend were on film (aye, film. How retro is that?) so it might be another few months before they're seen - if they ever see the inside of Jessops.
But Youth Hostels - how come they still exist? There's something wrong with accommodation when it's colder and less comfortable than camping. And it has to be said that youth hostels are a 1950s anachronism, created in the image of Enid Blyton heroes, wholesome boy scouts and bobble-hatted ramblers. Now they're slowly limping towards death. It's an old problem - for decades they haven't charged enough to maintain their old crumbling properties and now they're so crap that they can't charge any more than they do. So when death comes it'll be slow and marked by the fronts falling off of 30 year old kitchen drawers, unheated toilets and showers that either don't work or just dribble tepid water onto your shoulders as you stand shivering on the cubicle's cold metal floor. But we had a braw time.
Friday night was a laugh with Ewan being a wee card shark, playing poker with the men and actually winning some hands even though he was extremely reluctant to fold on some very bad hands. Luckily we kept him off the whisky so no one was shot.
Saturday was a nice wee walk around Galloway Forest Park with Ewan and Hannah on their bikes and Ellen and Malachy being pushed around in their buggies. A fine cuppie was found among the weirdness of Newton Stewart's Christian bookshop. The whole Jesus nonsense completely passed over Ewan's head so he had a bit of trouble understanding why he couldn't buy anything. Saturday evening, Ewan and a few of his wee pals learned to play Blackjack before their tea.
Sunday we head for home via the Cream O Galloway theme park, sorry, experience, err, farm. Not much to say about it. It's an adventure playground on a dairy farm designed to separate you from your money. And it does that pretty successfully.
But nae photies. Sorry.
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