Solway Tide – in this case it’s the bistro cum café I’m referring to. Tidy and old fashioned in the interior and street frontage —
But I had biznez through the alley this morning and stumbled on a hidden gem in the sunshine out back. There’s a tree shaded garden with a few scattered tables but what caught my eye this morning was the mural taking place on the south facing back wall —
An artistic couple are giving the old place a Mediterranean flavour with their choice of colours as they paint the sunflowers while on the right we have a typical Scottish hill shepherd and his collie dug in the hills with his flock —
The only thing lacking with their shepherd is a puff of pipe smoke and it could have been my father-in-law who spent a lifetime as a shepherd in the hills above Loch Awe and Loch Lomond.
Callum had started smoking a pipe as a ten year’s old schoolboy and lived till he was 83. I fondly remember the early days when I courted his daughter and would be regaled with a lifetime of tales of herding sheep on the old drove roads to Dalmally market as we drank dram after dram in the old bar at Inversnaid Hotel. As well as being a midgie deterrent an occasional puff of pipesmoke under the blankets was apparently a surefire way to pacify the fleas in some of the hovels around Port Sonachan where they would overnight on the two day drive to market 🙂
Solway Tide
from-a-distance 