Sunny lovely lowlands and lodges with Guinness

Location: Polbeth, Camilty woodlands and the Pentland Hills

Moodmusic: Happy back in the lowlands for the fourth time this year

Today’s memories and soundbites

A beautifully warm and sunny trip to the Scottish lowlands I have landed at the Gatehouse Lodge of Harburn House.  I really don’t believe it, but the story of Cromwell which has unfolded throughout this summer’s wanderings continues.  It seems Cromwell was here too in 1650 during the second phase of the Civil War with the Scottish campaign.  The original Harburn House was destroyed at that time.  It was rebuilt in 1804 for Alexander Young part of the family to which James Paraffin Young belonged.  James Young had a massive influence on the area here around West Calder and Bathgate.  Paraffin Young patented a process for distilling at a low heat crude oil from cannel coal a deep mined oil-bearing shale and went into business with partners E.W. Binney & Co. at Bathgate and E. Meldrum & Co. in Glasgow.  From 1851 onwards these companies refined oil at such quantity that for a  few years Scotland was the major oil-producing nation of the world.  At it’s peak the industry comprised 120 oil works extracting more than 100 million litres (22 million gallons) of oil from 3 million tonnes of shale annually in West Lothian, and employing up to 40,000 people. By the second decade of the 20th century, the industry began meeting competition from crude oil pumped directly from the ground in the USA and the Middle East.  The waste material from the oil shale extraction work was dumped in the form of “bings” which dominate the local landscape.  I have spent the last few days at the base of one of the Five Sisters.  Shale bings have become important to local ecologies, with more than 350 of the 800 species plant species that have been recorded in West Lothian, including some of the rarest, found on them.  Livingstone continues to provide the impression of a thriving industrial past in that it feels like a town bigger than its boots.  Today the area looks more rural than industrial, and an early evening walk last night involved honeysuckle, a hedgehog, deer, kestrels and farmers hay carting.

Moved on to Hamilton.  Not much to say about the place other than it has some nice old buildings and is very, very bereft of real ale houses.  Even an emergency call on Twitter didn’t help.  I did laugh again though when I found yet another reminder of my old friend Cromwell.  A plaque on the Cadzow bridge over the Cadzow burn in the middle of Hamilton commemorates the Battle of Heiton against the English forces in 1650.

Drinks

The Golf club

Went to the local golf club in search of ale, but it seems there are no local brews or much in the way of real ale in the area.  Settled for a Guinness a rather than a Tennants.
Guinness, Guinness (4.2%)

Reactions

Emotional: Aaah well ….

Critical: Easy drinking when there is nothing else, but seems to lack body compared to the last time I drank this in 1998!

The Windsor, Hamilton

Guinness, Guinness (4.2%)

Emotional: better than the golf club

Critical: Ambience in the pub makes up for the factory-style brew

Andiamo, Hamilton

Peroni, Nastro Azzurro (5%)

Emotional: Aaah well …. again ………

Critical: Easy to drink in a very hot room, on a very muggy night.  What more need be said?

West Calder view

Summer grass, I love it, and Pentlands on the horizon

The far end of Five Sisters bing at 240m high

My digs, nicer than a Premier Inn surely?