Saturday 2 March 2013

Memories....

We went on a trip down memory lane on Thursday. We had reason to go up to Newmilns. A small valley town approx 23 miles from here.

Newmilns was the first place in Ayrshire that I moved to way back in 1994, and spent approx six years there. The children went to school there, I worked there and we loved the place, a small town with a beautiful river walk. We first got Short Dog when we were in Newmilns and so we were returning to her first stomping ground.



Brown's Road with the river off to the left.






It is more run down and depressing looking now than when we left eleven years ago but apart from that it does not appear to have changed much.

The old railway viaduct. 


We started our walk at the carpark at the Greenside, and walked over the bridge at the old folks centre.





Along the river where the path splits into two, one road takes you up through the estate and the other carries on  along the bottom flatter road. We have walked this route hundreds of time, away from the road the dog could get off her lead, the kids could run and play or cycle their bikes.












You can see Loudoun Hill sticking up in the distance in the middle of the picture, it has a lot of history attached to it we have driven past it many many times but never been up it.
You can walk all the way to Loudoun Hill along the old railway path that still runs across the viaduct.
















The horse came over to see what we were doing. 


Its not possible to drive over the edge any more as they have erected fences across the path to stop you getting from the Newmilns side to the Darvel side in a vehicle. You can still walk and cycle though.














We walked down to the dam, only the dam is not there any more.
When we lived here this was a great and very popular swimming hole with the children and teenagers. One side was fairly shallow and safe for younger children, the other side was deep and the teenagers would jump in and go right under. You could watch the salmon jumping up in the autumn.










The run off from some off the fields must contain metals of some sort. There are a few places where the run off causes this colour of sediment. This was actually under a shallow run of water, and I just loved the pattern.










We had three houses in total when we lived in Newmilns, and we went for a wander round them, I may add they were all within 200yds of each other. The first literally faced the post office and I see somebody has painted a big 3A on the wall. When we lived there the post office "could not find 3A" and would put the post through No3. Which was a right royal pain as the old woman no longer lived there and her son came up once every two to three months to check on the house, and I would get all my outdated posted en masse. Guess nothing changed after we moved.




The third house overlooked the river here. I worked from home when we lived here, phoning people in an evening on behalf of a charity. Every night when Eastenders ended I would stop work and we would take the dog out for a scamper. She knew the tune and what it signified and we made a routine , she use to come along to my office and woof woof woof at the door until I came put and we went out.

I remember one very scary morning when this whole river filled up and overspilled onto the road, coming within inches of the houses. Its quite a wonder watching that volume of water speeding by your door.




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