What We Did On Our Holidays

 Since school broke up, I had been saying that I was determined to make a nostalgic trip to Monreith Bay in the Machars of Galloway. Last Easter, I finally got down to the Rhins - Sandhead, Logan Gardens and Port Logan- for the first time in about 35 years!  I had decided last week that, since I was visiting Glasgow from Elgin anyway, I'd try and make it to the other side of Luce Bay. So I rang the Monreith Arms and booked a room- no credit card or phone number required!

We had first holidayed in Port William in 1972 and I think that Monreith Beach was where my brother came down with sunstroke. His blue, Lanarkshire form had probably been wrapped in a duffle coat to protect him form the vagaries of the Scottish summer. The shoreline at the Port is predominantly rocky with little sand and that may be why we went to Sandhead the following year- that, and the fact that my mum's cousin was curator of the botanic gardens. However, we went back to Port William about three years later, after Borgue Bay in Kirkcudbrightshire and Rothesay in the Typically Tropical summer of 75.

The Port

 I stayed with Emma and Roy on the Thursday night .My ticket to Stranraer from Glasgow Central at 8.30 the next morning cost £20.40 and involved a change of trains at Ayr.
I had a few minutes to catch the Dumfries bus at Port Rodie that calls at Newton Stewart. If I missed my connection there, I'd have to wait a further two hours to get the last bus to the village. Such are the complexities of travel for the non-driver.
 Port William hasn't changed at all, really, since the late summer of 1976:

  I think we stayed in the Monreith Arms (on the left of the Square) for a night or so then we moved to a guest house in South Street, owned by Bob and Lily Crawley. My parents stayed with them subsequently a couple of times in the late Seventies. I don't remember much else but I associate this book with that holiday: my print introduction to the necromantic, blood and thunder world of REH.

It was a brand-new publication, actually dated August 1976 ( the weekly UK Savage Sword comic having appeared the previous year) but I had a hazy recollection of buying the book in Gatehouse of Fleet, which would have been quite a detour. Usually, my dad would drive up out of Galloway through the Kennedy Pass, Girvan and Kilmarnock and eventually back to Chapelton.
 Last year, when I visited Gatehouse at Easter, I realised I must have been mistaken and then wondered if it could have been Glenluce. But the post office there,( now a Londis store) although a popular stop with me because it sold old Marvels and DCs in the Seventies, just didn't seem likely.

4 years old when bought off the spinner rack in Glen Luce, en route to Logan Gardens, 1973!

The probable explanation is Morris the newsagent in Newton Stewart on Victoria Street. Maybe you can see why I'd mixed them up, after more than thirty years:

 Gatehouse of Fleet and Newton Stewart

However, I didn't have enough time to check out my theory or to have a look at the public gardens on Albert Street ( the wishing well from my childhood seems to have been dismantled, according to Google Street View). As the rain began, I caught the 12.05 bus that my travel plan depended upon.
I got a glimpse of the pastel buildings in Wigtown, the Book Town and of Mochrum, where we had stayed in the Greenmantle Hotel in 1972. It's now a private residence again:

The rain was running down the street in torrents as we got into Port William and it had been bouncing off the roof of the bus like a hailstorm. I began to wonder if my impulse decision had been a stupid one. Maybe the carnival week, a couple of days later, would have been better...
I checked into the Monreith Arms around 12.45. It was a little worn and old-fashioned compared to the hotels in Elgin but, in the end, I had a quiet night and it was less expensive than the Tigh-Na-Mara in Sandhead.

Fortunately, the pulse of rain died out so I took a look round the Port. It was a smuggler's haunt before it was a fishing village and the familiar odour of seaweed and fish wasn't as pungent as I recalled. I was also sure there had been another hotel with a "sit-ooterie" but it was now a private house with faded marks of signage on the walls, There is a post office, two general stores, a takeaway cafe, a craft shop, a car dealership and a hairdresser. There's also a primary school and a tiny youth centre.The bank was closed, however and there are no cash machines. I bought soup and a toastie and sat beside the bronze man (see further below) to look at the Wee Scaur and the Big Scaur, two rocks in the bay, and work out my next move.
The bus timetable indicated a five-minute journey to the bay. I'm not patient enough to wait for a bus when I could walk the distance (although it turned out to be nearer twenty on foot) so I set off on the two-mile walk along the A747. The traffic wasn't very heavy but it was still a bit risky. I took to the beach just at Port Whapple but first I climbed the extremely steep steps to look at Barsalloch Fort:

It's an Iron Age farm, surrounded by a U-shaped ditch, and commanding a fantastic view of the Mull of Galloway. Then, I continued on to Monreith, along the shoreline; it was now about three in the afternoon.
 As I say, the last time I'd been there, I was thirteen years old and I can remember reading these books on the beach:

 These novels weren't all-ages tv tie-ins. They were adult sci-fi in the British New Wave tradition and captured something of  the pessimistic but strangely spiritual vibe of the European co-produced first series of Space:1999.That "futuristic" date is history now too; isn't it amazing?

I have never forgotten hearing Jeans On by David Dundas at Monreith; also in the charts were the Number One Don't Go Breaking My Heart by Elton and Kiki Dee, A Little Bit More by Dr. Hook, Young Hearts Run Free by Candi Staton, You Should Be Dancing by the Bee Gees , You're My Best Friend by Queen and Boston Tea Party by SAHB (which has been featured regularly on the recent BBC4 repeats of Top of the Pops 1976. Thirteen years later, I would be in a play with Alex Harvey's son and we would remain good friends.) The Philly sound, Disco and Rock: not at all bad really. The Filth and the Fury was still a year away.

 This is a view from the car park, at the top of the 113 steps that lead down to the beach at Monreith. The two tin shacks in the photo are very grim-looking public toilets. The beach was, probably unsurprisingly, smaller than I remembered but it was utterly tranquil. The sea soughs on the shore rather than booming as it does at Lossiemouth.  A couple of women exercised their dog and a guy was fishing on the far-right extremity of the "Black Rocks"; the tide came in quite quickly so I climbed the steps up to the village. I followed a signposted track through fields where cows surveyed me coolly, and through thick grass to a very high point where this statue overlooks the sea:

This is a bronze which commemorates Gavin Maxwell, author of "Ring of Bright Water". To the otter's left, you look down at St Medans golf course on the Point of Lag; I could see the inky blue clouds moving out over the Isle of Man and met a Brummie dog-walker who owned one of the many static caravans in the village. Then I saw this cottage for sale: it's called Clarksburn.

It has extensive gardens at the back and they were asking £155,000; I thought the name was a bit of an omen! I should buy a lottery ticket. There are only something like 70 or 80 people in Monreith; there's really not much more to it than this:

You can just make out the bus shelter in the middle of the left-hand side. I caught the bus back to the Port since you could see the rain clouds coming in from the mainland. The restaurant in the square,called the Clansman. was hosting a birthday party so I ate in the hotel, which had eight other diners. To be honest, neither the food nor the dining room was nearly as stylish as the Tigh-Na-Mara  but the service was pleasant.
There was another shower of rain but the sun was shining on the sea. I went to the library to delete my junk mail and update my Facebook status. The librarian set up my temporary membership and told me the Crawleys had both passed away. Connie the librarian was kind enough to get me logged on just before she closed up at 8pm.

The public library at the Port

I had a beer in the hotel bar, which is the local pub: one small room packed with farmers and fishermen. John the hotel owner, was drinking with the clientele. Before I went to bed, I watched the news on UTV, from Northern Ireland (you don't get Scottish TV without a digibox, I suppose) and deliberately to recreate the whole Bronze Age experience, read my ebay copies of these books:

 From Connie the Librarian to Conan the Barbarian!

 G-S Conan 4 is the fourth episode of the adaptation of Conan the Conqueror by Gil Kane- the final installment didn't appear in colour and the 58-page conclusion (!) was pencilled by Buscema; I read the Dark Horse reprints of  Savage Sword 8 and 10 a couple of years ago. The back-up reprint is by Barry Smith and it's an adaptation of The God in the Bowl ( the talky murder mystery). As the Bronze Age Babies guys say, Smith is fusing Kirby with Steranko and Art Nouveau in this period of his work; I also like the story because it switches the gender of Conan's treacherous employer and whether she's called Aztrias or Aztrian (Thomas can't decide), her callousness and greed make her a memorable, bitchy villain.
"The Return of the Conqueror" is an original Roy Thomas story and a sequel to the G-S Conan novel adaptation. The cover scene reminds me of the Golden Voyage of Sinbad and it weaves the Minotaur legend into the Conan mythos. The villain is scheming King Tarascus, one of the conspirators in Conan the Conqueror. Not only is he decadent and treacherous, he also has a labyrinth of mirrors! The annual also builds up the character of Conan's bride, Zenobia, who was fairly one-dimensional up 'til then; she turns out to be pretty handy with a crossbow, despite her chronically low self-esteem, and the captions rank her with the other warrior-women in the saga: Red Sonja, Belit and Valeria.

The other "man of bronze" sculpted by Andrew Brown (2007)

The next morning the Port was sunny and warm and the view of Drummore across the bay was crystal clear. I picked up a few souvenirs in the Crafty Otter shop. I had been planning to go to Newton Stewart and on to Girvan but the surprise appearance of a bus to Stranraer at around ten a.m. changed those plans on the spot. After a winding journey via Dunragit, I then caught the bus to Ayr, passing through Ballantrae, Lendalfoot and Girvan, where there was a gathering of greying Hell's Angels. A woman on the bus reminded me of the story of "Snib Scott", a well-to-do Dundee banker who became a hermit in a cave, eight miles south of Girvan. He died in 1983 but when my parents told me the story ten years earlier, it was already conflated with that of the "cannibal", Sawney Bean. There was another cave-dweller in Luce Bay until the early 60s- one Johnny Logie, who, coincidentally, shared his name with a famous Elgin City player!
I stopped off in Ayr to wait for the train- I haven't seen the beach so busy in years. Maybe the recession has inspired more "stay-cationers". Like the Rhins, the visibility to Arran was sharp and clear. I walked out to Seafield as usual, for ice cream, and back, then got to Glasgow about four. I'd saved nearly £11 on the return journey!

Seafield, Ayr: yet another Marvel Comics outlet in my childhood.

I was staying with the Mollers again in Glasgow, to catch up with their visitor Amelia from Knoxville. But before I went back to the West End, I watched STG's Shakespeare at Large in the Ramshorn graveyard. It's officially the company's last show at the venue; that's galling because I've performed there since 1992 and the short-sighted bean counters at Strathclyde University have seen fit to end STG's residence in the building as an alleged cost-cutting exercise.
However, there were several performances in this open-air event which were extremely well-judged and entertaining: Gary Miller's gravedigger, Christopher McKiddie's Richard II, a spirited Stephano and Caliban and a very funny Pyramus and Thisbe. The weather was glorious and the performances were well-attended.

I got back to a grey, chilly Elgin on Sunday night. I have a third trip to Glasgow to make at the beginning of August and I was thinking about Portpatrick, or maybe even London. I've never been to the Globe and I'd like to see Shakespeare performed there...

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