A November Walk Around Lochwinnoch
Nov. 13th, 2011 03:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
endlessraritiesWe should have been out on our bikes today, but J couldn't be bothered. This is something of a red letter day - I'm usually the one who can't be bothered, but after years of apathy on my part, suddenly the situation is reversed...
So we went for a walk instead, from the visitor centre on the Castle Semple Loch up to the top of the Johnshill, where a new path has been created with a viewpoint looking over the loch.
The viewpoint is accompanied by a handsome stone plinth bearing a couple of lines by local poet Betty McKellar, who writes the most marvellous poems, often in Scots, celebrating the area's wildlife and history. She has kindly given me permission to reprint one of her poems with you all at some point - since it combines the Sempill family with mountain-biking and industrial archaeology, it's definitely a poem after my own heart, but I fear that today is not the day...
Anyway, here's a taster of her work - in English!- and I must admit the day we chose for the walk suited the words extremely well:-
The Semple Loch was indeed grey today, as was the Lochwinnoch sky...
It's impossible to see at this distance, but there's a castle located on the tiny strip of land that separates the two main bodies of water in the picture. Of 16th century origin, it's the latest of three castles built by the Semple family in the area around Lochwinnoch:-
So we went for a walk instead, from the visitor centre on the Castle Semple Loch up to the top of the Johnshill, where a new path has been created with a viewpoint looking over the loch.
The viewpoint is accompanied by a handsome stone plinth bearing a couple of lines by local poet Betty McKellar, who writes the most marvellous poems, often in Scots, celebrating the area's wildlife and history. She has kindly given me permission to reprint one of her poems with you all at some point - since it combines the Sempill family with mountain-biking and industrial archaeology, it's definitely a poem after my own heart, but I fear that today is not the day...
Anyway, here's a taster of her work - in English!- and I must admit the day we chose for the walk suited the words extremely well:-
The Semple Loch was indeed grey today, as was the Lochwinnoch sky...
It's impossible to see at this distance, but there's a castle located on the tiny strip of land that separates the two main bodies of water in the picture. Of 16th century origin, it's the latest of three castles built by the Semple family in the area around Lochwinnoch:-
The castle was successfully besieged in one of the many skirmishes that took place during a long-running feud between the Sempills and the Cunninghames in this period (the Sempills, as those of you familiar with my historical novels will probably have guessed, became increasingly entangled in the Montgomerie family's affairs during the early 16th century, and wound up taking their side in the Montgomerie-Cunninghame feud...). In fact, a small bronze gun of 16th century date, presumably used in the siege, was once recovered from the loch in Castle Semple's vicinity. It can now be seen in Kelvingrove Museum...
I really must do some writing now, so I'll leave you with some more images of the loch, as seen from the walk down from the viewpoint towards Parkhill Wood, a preserved section of designed landscape which still survives from the old Semple estate:-
I really must do some writing now, so I'll leave you with some more images of the loch, as seen from the walk down from the viewpoint towards Parkhill Wood, a preserved section of designed landscape which still survives from the old Semple estate:-
