Why was there a Beatrix Potter museum in Birnam? This was Scotland, not the Lake District. Because Beatrix spent her childhood summer holidays nearby at Dalguise House. I'd actually walked passed it yesterday. It was the Victorians who first put Scotland on the tourist map, when affluent Londoners realised the air was much cleaner and fresher up here. (Did they not have midges 100 years ago?)
While the men engaged themseves in the manly sporting pursuits of hunting, shooting and fishing, the ladies drank tea and played Croquet on the manicured lawns. Their offspring, normally confined to sedate walks with Nanny in Kensington Gardens, got a taste of the freedom of the great outdoors. Spending long days splashing around in the rivers, climbing trees, and generally getting their white smocks dirty, Beatrix was one such child and her fascination with wildlife, plants and animals began right here.
The museum was small and very child friendly. I was itching to sit down at the activity table and start crayoning a picture of Peter Rabbit, but I didn't think the other children would like it, and so I went on my way.
Just beyond Birnam I bid farewell to the River Tay, as the cycle route headed towards Bankfoot. The cycle route is deceiving, in that it wiggles here and there, making your original mileage calculations way, way, off the mark. For instance: Today should have been about 14 miles but was probably more like 20. Whatever it was, it was a long way from Bankfoot into Perth. The sign told me I was entering the "Perfect Centre" Well, obviously everyone, and everything has it's best side. Clearly this wasn't Perth's. To match the ambiance of the grey suburbs it started to drizzle with rain. I plodded on to the bus station ready to go "home" to Edinburgh.
"You can't get on this bus, it's booked" the driver informed me. "But, I have a City Link Pass" I cried in dismay. Clearly relishing his moment of "jobsworthness" he jabbed his fat finger at the back of my pass "Read the small print darling" and he actually smiled. "You'll just have to wait for the next one and hope that's not full. Should be along in, ooh let me see now (running aforementioned fat finger down the timetable), in an hour and a half"
Well, I could understand why people wanted to leave Perth en masse on a drizzly grey Sunday evening, but as I wandered through the deserted shopping precinct, I wondered what I was going to do for the next 90 minutes.
Make one cup of coffee in a dreary pub last for an hour by doing the crossword in a discarded newspaper, that's what.
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