2nd Friday – A Stirling day

Over breakfast this morning I chatted with Carolanne’s husband, Graeme, who has retired from a career in QA and now helps run the B&B. We talked a bit about the upcoming referendum for whether the UK should leave or stay in the European Union (“Brexit”), and it sounds like most Scots are keen to stay in the EU. That certainly concurs with what I mostly heard in Ireland too – including the Republic, where they’re concerned that they might end up with border controls etc again if Northern Ireland is no longer part of the EU, while the Republic of course is in it. Polling seems to suggest though that the vote will be reasonably split, so I guess there must be a strong ‘Leave’ contingent in England.

Just funny

We left Troon for Stirling, via Dalry where my dad’s maternal grandfather was born. Dalry was another place I ended up driving round in circles (and in and out of town a couple of times) trying to find somewhere to park. In the end we gave up and took photos out the car windows. Sorry to say the highlight of Dalry was seeing a squirrel run across the road and through someone’s section (as we went up a little suburban street to do yet another U-turn).

Balfour Street, Port Glasgow

We stopped in Port Glasgow, where Charles and William Jnr were living in Balfour Street at the time of the 1841 census, aged about 27 and 20 respectively. These were the two eldest sons of William (Charles being the one whose line we’re from), both of whom were also civil engineers! This was during the time of William’s tenure as engineer to the Clyde River Trust in Glasgow, so I suspect the sons were there at the Port helping him, by taking tide measurements and the like.

Balfour Street is still there, but number 34 is just one end of an apartment block now. At least the railway goes through right next door - I think they'd have liked that!

Ghosts of engineers past?

Port Glasgow is a funny wee town, which seemed to have a very eclectic mix of shops. We went to a hardware shop to buy a phone charging cord, and were greeted by a friendly turbanned Indian proprietor, and his cutesy dog walking up and down the counter. We found a Subway (which prepared the “Levi special” – salami, cheese, gherkins jalapenos olives, BBQ sauce – with barely a raised eyebrow) inside a superette, along with a post shop, but couldn’t find anywhere that looked like it might sell t-shirts.

As close as we got to the Wallace Monument

Late in the day – too late to go to any more attractions – we arrived in Stirling, where our accommodation for the night is Dunard B&B, in a lovely house on the lovely (and attractively named) Causewayhead Road, with lovely hosts. In the evening they lit a fire in the guests’ lounge at the front of the house, and it was really nice to sit on the sofa by the open fire (catching up on this blog!) rather than just stay holed up in our room. Also had an interesting chat about IT roles and organisations with the husband, who is a programmer in the GIS team at Scotland’s Environmental Protection Agency. (They have Business Analysts in the business groups, and Systems Analysts in the IT group; those two roles form the interface between business and technology for development projects. No architects, and no project managers!)