Mike Vickers' Blog

We have been walking and today was glorious sun.

The walk was on the south side of the Forth starting and finishing at Blackness Castle and there are a number of sites that viewers of will recognise.  The walk is short of about 6 miles – see OS Map

 

 

The walk including MidHope Castle and Blackness Castle and includes a lovely path at the top of the hill.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And you get a distant view of tower above the House of the Binns – the home of the late lamented Tam Dalzell

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The high light of the walk is Mod Hope Castle

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is also beautiful church half way round, Abercorn Church, and we have a wee story

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When we used to live in Peterborough in a rented house on the main road into the city; one day there was a knock on the front door and a lady with two horses asked could she come in as she was born in the house.  We said, of course. She and her companion were riding on horseback from Santiago de Compostela in Spain to Abercorn Church in Scotland following an old pilgrims way.  They did have a horsebox for stabling the horses at night.

It took us a few more years to come so close to Abercorn!

The Pillar Box also at Abercorn has been like this as long as we have been in Linlithgow and may have been so from Victorian Times.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On the return you pass over the Mid Hope burn

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And of course there are excellent views of Blackness Castle on the return walk through the woods just inland from the Forth.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And almost returned.

In the Castle Shop you can get an excellent coffee to warm you up.

 

 

Looking out from the foreshore you can see the three bridges crossing the Forth and a distant one of the 2^nd Queen Elizabeth aircraft carrier being built at Rosyth.