Meander to Gourock

I was prepping this post and accidentally pressed publish instead of save!

I was delighted you enjoyed accompanying me to Milngavie and hope you might enjoy another little trip this time to Gourock. I must admit I am enjoying considering how I might present familiar places that I take for granted to you and it is making me think. I went there the Saturday before last and am just getting round to uploading the pics. Not a very interesting one but I could safely take the pic. If you ignore the ambulance you are on the A82 at Great Western Road often called the Boulevard and are looking towards the Kilpatrick Hills.

This time we are going south of the River Clyde. Port Glasgow and Greenock are more urban, industrialised areas with long associations with the heavy industries predominantly shipbuilding. Gourock is more residential and very pretty but all have amazing views up, down and across the Clyde. I was at Cardwell Bay Garden Centre which has a fabulous craft shop which I'd visited the week before and came back for their jewellery making class....you didn't think it was just for the scenery did you....?

The class was great fun and the group were most welcoming so I had a fun hour making my jewellery brooch. I'd really have liked it as a window dangle, but two cats and window dangles don't make a happy human or intact glazing. It needs a little tweaking but is 90% there.

I'd fancied toast before I set off from home but had no bread or desire to start cooking something. There was tons of fruit but I'd been gorging on new season strawberries and blueberries and didn't think it safe to push my luck and find the tipping point that was one piece of fruit more than could be contained! 'Breakfast' was lentil soup after the class in their lovely café and obviously a popular option as they were selling it by the gallon. Soup and bread is nectar to me and would be my forever meal. I'm so fond of it that I often recall places by the soup they served and this one was perfect and even better it was hot but not molten lava like some.

The one view I can't share with you was from the Erskine Bridge as I was driving. It is a view that speaks to my soul as when you cross it you are high above the water and the vista is stunning in both directions. It is now free to cross but I used to occasionally pay my 60p just to drink in the amazing view instead of using the nearer Clyde Tunnel. It has been a place of sadness as some have chosen to end their lives from it but it is also the scene of life affirming drama too. Glasgow hospitals are the main centres for the Islands and every year many remote and rural patients arrive by all forms of transport including helicopters which go over and occasionally under if a new little scrap of life needs a flight to come in slow and low to given them the best chance of survival.

Cardwell Bay Garden Centre is massive and I didn't even manage to see everything. I thought it was lovely how the interior and exterior just seemed to blend.

The duck pond

They had a pet area with rescue animals and I was very taken with this lovely little budgie.

 There were guinea pigs

bunnies 

and chickens

 This sign made me laugh as it didn't make it clear who the cockerels had been rescued from and I wondered if it might have been the owner's neighbours who were after their noisy necks!

 

I've been lusting after a buddleia and when I realised I could get a white peony I just had to have one too. I also picked up a camellia but I'm not sure I'll manage to keep it alive until it is time for it to flower.

I'm still a novice gardener and hadn't quite thought through how I might actually get them home.

 I'm hoping the fact a leaf fell off as soon as I touched it is not a sign of the rest following.

 First time I've had plants as passengers! And yes, I did talk to them as I asked them not to curl up and die on me!

I'm not obsessed by houses but when I go somewhere I always wonder what it might be like to live there. So if a house by Tannoch Loch in Milngavie didn't 'float your boat' how would you fancy one on the Esplanade at Greenock? The house.....

 The view from the house...

This place is a haven for strolling, dog walking and is the site of a ferry terminal where cruise ships come in as it is a deep water site and visiting ships 'born' on the Clyde will often return to visit.

 

 love the seagull to the left

The weather was very changeable but then what's new here....!

 

This a sculpture that I only found out about a few weeks ago when I was reading Shortbread and Ginger who is a Greenock based blogger with a cracking line in finding fab charity shop treasures. Her pictures are much better than mine as the Girl with the Suitcase is hidden under a canopy of trees. I took these photos the week before and hoped to get you some brighter ones on my next trip but the light was actually worse.

 

 Just a pic to show that sometimes the sun shines.

I hope you've enjoyed this meander and I will think of somewhere nice to take you next time.