‘Your shadow is in the photo!’

I confess here at the start – there are no ‘bears’ in this post – and – apart from the Can Am three wheeler under ‘H’ in the thumbnail – no spyders either.

But – for some daft reason – ‘Cave Bear’ was the only thing to come into my head when I was wondering what title to use for this post. It can happen at the start of the day when faced with a clear screen on your 74th birthday.

No worries – that’s the difficult part done. Yesterday saw us take a ‘ramble’ of a different nature. Wasn’t all about Spyder’s either although caves and spiders did figure in the life of King Robert the Bruce in his days as a fugitive.

So did Whithorn Priory which was last visited by King Robert in the days leading up to his death – when – in his early fifties and suffering in the latter stages of leprosy he made the arduous journey from Dumbarton Castle to thank the Order for their much needed assistance during the dark days of his reign.

A vist to the priory wasn’t even on the horizon yesterday but somehow we landed there and were struck by the far spread graveyards. Which – going back quite a few centuries in some cases were still well tended. With fresh flower arrangements in abundance.

Whithorn Priory was founded by St Ninian fifty years before Columba is credited with bringing Christianity to Scotland through Iona. It seemed like a good day to walk the woodland trail to his cave down by shore with views to his homeland across the Irish Sea. Splashes of unusual fluorescent yellow on the far side of a muddy burn saw me traipse across the log for a closer look —

Bog Arum is but one name for this unusual plant —

Very excotic —

and a far cry from the ‘bare cave’ where the good saint Ninian had spent his ‘me’ time in meditation 🙂