Eglinton Park

May 3

Today was our first full day in Glasgow. We must have thought it was another free day considering how long we all slept but it really wasn’t, so we ended up with a later start than we had planned.

Today was Bryan’s day!

After the last trip to Scotland he did a lot of research and found that his family heritage has Scottish ancestry on both sides. His maternal grandmother was a Montgomery and the Montgomery clan had their own castle in the area, so finding that was our goal for the day. 

We didn’t get out of the apartment till noon and went straight to the central train station. We found the  station mostly because we ate fish and chips at the Blue Lagoon the night before in the underpass under the train station. The employees there were super kind and assured us that the loud rumbling that kept occurring was no earthquake, it was the trains going by overhead.

Anyhow, we arrived in the area of the fish and chips place and couldn’t find the entrance to the train. We found a teenage looking chap and asked for help. He didn't reply right away and just stared at me with the same kind of blank stare that I have been giving others around here lately. It was almost as if he couldn't understand me. He had a really strong accent and since I don’t have an accent at all I figured he shouldn’t have any problem understanding me. Finally he figured out what we wanted, and in spite of the rumbling overhead the kid wasn’t sure where the trains were or how to get up there. He wasn’t any help at all, I wanted to leave him with a tip to go work on his accent. 

We finally found the entrance, got tickets and caught a train to Irvine near the town of Ayr, which is the area where the Montgomery clan was from. Irvine was a small coastal town and reminded me of small New England towns in the U.S. The kind where there is some odd murder mystery that upsets the otherwise sleepy little port town. We found a delightful little restaurant/bar that had some excellent food. They had the best meat pies ever. And they had cider, one of my favorite things here in Scotland. The doors to the pub were so small though I don’t think anyone overweight could get in. Probably a good idea if you were serving a buffet.

Next we needed to find out how to get to the Montgomery castle. It was in a public park called Eglinton Country Park. We did the best thing we could, asked the young guy working in the pub for directions. Again the guy had some kind of strong accent and apparantly wasn’t paying enough attention to us, he often answered with blank stares. In fact he was getting quite a kick out of listening to us talk. He was really friendly though and I thought he was going to pull up a seat and join us so he could listen to us talk, but we weren't saying such nice things about him at the moment. He was familiar with Eglinton Park and called it Eggy. But he couldn’t give us directions. He did say it was close enough that he walked there once but with his extra weight he won't be doing that again.

We exited the pub and caught a taxi that took us to the park. The taxi driver told us all sort of stuff about the park and we understood enough to know that bus #11 would take us from there back to town, but we didn't catch much else. The people in this area must all have some kind of speech problems.

Finally we arrived at Eglinton Country Park. The castle was a highlight of the place but unfortunately it was mostly in ruins. The footprint of the castle was quite large. The original Eglinton Castle was burnt in 1528. The current castle was built in the late 1700s in Gothic castellated style dominated by a central 100-foot large round keep and four 70-foot outer towers, it was second only to Culzean Castle (where ever that is) in appearance and grandeur. The foundation stone of the new Eglinton Castle was laid in 1797, the 12th Earl of Eglinton, was proud to have the ceremony performed by Alexander Hamilton of Grange, grandfather of the American Hero Alexander Hamilton. 

Amongst many items of interest, the castle contained a chair built from oak timbers inlaid with a brass plaque which bore the whole of Burns' poem Tam o' Shanter. In 1691 the 'Hearth Tax for Ayrshire' records show 25 hearths in use, the highest number for a single dwelling in Ayrshire.

After taking lots of pictures we wandered the grounds of the park and then headed out to find bus #11. We walked quite a ways looking for the bus stop and finally reached it, but didn’t know which side of the street to be on to get back to the train station. A young fella, maybe mid 20s, also showed up about that time so I proceeded to ask him directions and explained that we needed to get back to the train station. He looked at me with a stare like I just dropped my pants. I let someone else take a turn. He finally seemed to get the point that we needed to catch the train and he gave us some directions. When he was done I looked at the rest of the group, did anyone understand that? It was like talking to someone deaf when you don’t know sign language. We stayed around till the next bus arrived, talked to the driver and told him we needed the train station. He said something unintelligible and gave us tickets. So we sat down and hoped for the best. The young guy we were talking to at the bus stop also got on the bus with us but he sat as far away as he could.

As we were headed down the road a friendly lady who overheard us talking to the driver piped up. She was talking up a storm and pointing and signaling. I hadn’t a clue what she said but I caught the word 'train' and the word 'right' but wasn’t quite sure if she was asking a question, 'right?', as if I understood the directions or if she was telling me to turn to the right. After a couple stops she got all chatty again and excited and pointed and gave directions and we jumped up and off the bus. None of us had the slightest idea what she said, but the young man that got on the bus with us also got off at the same place. 

We followed him a little and then saw the train tracks. Finally! We made our way to the station and so did that same guy. We’re looking at him and thinking, that crazy kid was going to the same place and could have just told us to follow him. This was the third young person today that seemed to have no clue of the obvious. The first kid didn't know where the trains were and had to speak up to get over the sound of the trains. The next guy knew about Eggy park and even through his town was no bigger than a Walmart supercenter he couldn't give us directions and now this guy giving us directions to the same place he was going. What is up with these kids? I was starting to wonder if all the fried food was affecting their brains. And here we are trying to communicate with them and acting like a flock of headless geese squawking around and not knowing where to go. They probably would have understood the geese better with all the looks we got. We found that to be the case everywhere in Glasgow. Their accents are so strong, it is hard to make out any understandable words.

I looked up the Glasgow dialect on the internet and found the following:

“The Glasgow dialect, popularly known as the Glasgow patter or Glaswegian, varies from Scottish English at one end of a bipolar linguistic continuum to the local dialect of West Central Scots at the other.” I’m not sure what all that means either but the word bipolar explained a lot. I’m just going with the fact that they are all crazy here and I should do less talking and more pointing.

We ended back up at the same fish and chip restaurant, the Blue Lagoon, so we stayed for more fish and chips. The lady recognized us and welcomed us, I think, and talked a little about the day. I wasn't sure what she said so I just smiled and pointed at the picture of fish and chips on the menu.