Pro-castle-nation

We're all for castles here in Scotland. They're everywhere and can sometimes be found in slightly unusual locations...

The village of Menstrie (pr. Mens-tray) at the foot of the Ochil Hills has this 'Castle' tucked away rather incongruously amongst a bunch of 'cooncil hooses'. It's been there since around 1560, the council houses since the 1950s. Owned by the National Trust it is open to the public but seems to be mostly a combination of private and self catering apartments now.

The local rag ran a story at the start of last month that said the Castle had been bought and was going to be dismantled and transported to Nova Scotia where it would be rebuilt. There were letters expressing outrage at this in the following week's paper, from people that obviously hadn't made the link between the story and the date that it was published - April 1st.

Having stayed in a street called Menstrie Road for years the name used to cause no end of problems when you were giving out your address to people over the phone and elsewhere. For some reason it sometimes caused giggles as some people thought it sounded like the word for the female reproductive cycle. There's no train station in Menstrie either, so don't go around asking the locals about Menstrie Station. It doesn't exist and it's not funny. Not bloody funny at all.

Still trying to put off the grass-cutting, on this weekend which accusingly is know as 'grass-cutting weekend' here in the UK, and the showers of rain and dark clouds meant I decided to head out with the camera this morning instead of dusting down the lawn mower.

I was also considering a month of blips using only my 50mm lens (inspired by drcraigs just completed month's long project), but having just got the big camera back after a break of two weeks I was struggling with it a bit earlier so may wait until I get my mojo back before committing to something like that.

Procastlenation - it's a bugger innit?