June in Scotland

I was in Scotland on holiday with my husband recently and came across a castle with a secondhand bookshop. Naturally this was a draw. I asked if they had a particular Hornblower book my husband wants to find. The gentleman in charge said he hadn't seen any for a long time. He went to check in the back room. He came out and said no, and older books coming in generally got pulped.

I said, let us know and we'll come over from Ireland and look. He took me in to the back room and showed me shelves full of shiny modern hardbacks, the quarter-tonne weight ones. Jeffrey Archer, John Grisham etc. I said, those are definitely not going to sell, they are too heavy. I produced my Kindle and told him I had 300 books on it.

Then I found a Gillian Baxter pony book as a hardback, with a paper cover showing the kids on ponies in the days before they had to wear hard hats. This was sitting in a box on the floor with several other weary looking hardbacks of nondescript type. Rather than let this lovely book I hadn't read get pulped, I bought it for a pound.

West coast Scotland is beautiful and between rural areas, picturesque villages and rugged coastline, there are wonderful sights. We visited Ayrshire and saw the harbour town of Girvan, a major distillery, the island Ailsa Craig which is the remnants of a volcano, and Culzean Castle, a stately home now operated by the National Trust. We saw several strutting pheasants, as well as birds of prey and jellyfish. This is not an expensive part of the world if you stay and eat locally rather than in more impressive establishments - Culzean Castle is partly operated as a hotel and their menu starts at twenty-seven pounds for a cream tea. Luckily the National Trust operates a separate café in the former stable yard.

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