Culross

Daughter #2 who stayed overnight at the castle, remarked as she left for work at 7am that we seemed to be in the throes of spring. That amused me as although we use the term 'the throes of winter', I've never heard the saying 'the throes of spring'.
Nevertheless, with blue skies, temperatures above freezing, crocuses in full bloom and the birds singing in thee trees, it certainly felt as though we had left winter behind.

In a rare flash of gay abandon, his Lordship suggested we drive to Culross (pronounced, Cooross) on the other side of the Forth near Kincardine. It is actually the Royal Burgh of Culross and dates back to the 16th Century, The National Trust for Scotland has done a marvellous job of preserving the centre of the village in it's original state with narrow cobbled wynds, crow stepped gables and colourful houses.

Today it was resplendent in the sun and with few tourists about we could stroll about and blip and blip some more.
We could easily have been visiting a medieval village in France, so foreign did it appear in the sun.
We ate our picnic looking across the Forth to the huge cooling towers of the Grangemouth refinery with the steam billowing out and hanging vertically with the lack of wind.

Fortunately we were leavingl just as a busload of elderly tourists arrived, and we drove back to Edinburgh via the Kincardine Bridge, Linlithgow and Kirkliston with the clouds gathering and everything seeming much more Scottish and familiar again without the sun.

The blip is of Tanhouse Brae in Culross

Edit. I've put the rest of my images of Culross on Flickr