Drummond Castle Gardens and another blip invasion!

Backblip

Up and out after breakfast to Drummond Castle Gardens, which is just 15 minutes from us.

If you are an Outlander fan the gardens will be familiar to you as they were used in Outlander season 2 in the episode “Untimely Resurrection” as the Gardens of Versailles. It was there that Claire and Jamie unexpectedly come across “Black Jack” Randall.  More info here.

After a bit of a puzzling start trying to find the wheelchair access point (the woman in the ticket office had given us a key code to unlock a gate) after searching high and low for this gate, we discovered it was already open!  

The gravel paths are difficult to negotiate but they allow wheelchairs on the grass so once I navigated my way across the stone chips to get to the grass, things got a bit easier.

The gardens are truly breathtaking.  We were a bit early in the season for the summer floral displays but even without those, the garden is still impressive.  The trees are stunning and the setting is wonderful (the driveway up to the Castle is a joy in itself!

Patricia, our Blip friend visiting from the USA is an Outlander fan so enjoyed her time in the garden.

When we left we headed to the golf club for lunch, then back home around  2.30ish to prepare for the arrival of another Blip pal, Strawhouse (Jodie) and her family, who are holidaying in Scotland with their camper van Marshall and gorgeous little cockapoo Archie.  

Jodie and I have followed each other for a very long time on Blip so we were beyond excited to finally meet.  They arrived just after 3.30pm and hats off to her lovely husband Duncan for managing to reverse Marshall into our driveway.  Not easy with the scaffolding using up a lot of driveway space!

What a joy to meet Jodie and Duncan and their daughters Miss E and Miss L who, through the power of blip, I've watch grow up from toddlers to teenagers (well almost for Miss L) And how lovely they were here at the same time as another blipper.

The weather was beautiful so we all headed out to the garden and the Gin Palace to enjoy coffee / tea and cake and chat nineteen to the dozen.

When it was nearing dinner time, Jodie and Miss L went for a swim whilst D and I set out as easy buffet dinner of cold cuts, salads and cheeses.

More chat around the dinner table and over homemade Key lime pie.  Patricia, who's an early riser, excused herself around 10pm but the rest of us were still chatting at 2.30am!!  Well after 10 years there was a lot to say!  

Finally fell into bed and straight to sleep just before 3am.

A wonderful day :-)