Port William, Easter 2015

The real Port William this time, not Portwilliam the layout. A week in Kippford over Easter provided an opportunity to call in on ‘my’ village and have an extended wander around in glorious sunshine for a change. Previous visits have either been fitted in on the way to or from somewhere else, or have taken place in fairly dreich weather, but this time I got the best of both worlds. Unfortunately I also got my first real experience of the Port William Pong – as a result of a bit of dodgy 18th century harbour design seaweed washes in but doesn’t wash out, it collects at the landward end and just rots. The smell at low tide is indescribable, and we visited during a very low tide. Fortunately the breeze was offshore but the immediate vicinity of the harbour was pretty rank.

Our base for the week – Kippford. The Caledonian Quarry Co’s private tramway didn’t enter from the left and run along the street towards the blue fishing boat…

A few years ago I took the fragrant Mrs P to Galloway on our honeymoon, and we wandered into a fairly major military exercise. She shares my obsession with railways and tolerates my other obsession with anything military, but I did rather push things a bit when (as she tells it) I nearly got us both arrested in Dalbeattie. We were poking around the outside of what used to be part of Ministry of Supply Factory Dalbeattie, later Royal Naval Armaments Depot Dalbeattie – what looked like an old Land-Rover parked in a dark corner turned out to be a rather new Land-Rover, partly concealed by camouflage netting and with a variety of non-standard sticky-out bits poking out. A variety of gestures from a very hard looking chap with a gun saw us doing a quick 360 and we re-joined the main road only to then get stuck behind a large convoy of 4-tonners all the way to Creetown.

Well this year we managed to book the same week as Exercise Joint Warrior. I was expecting the odd fast jet or helicopter but halfway around Threave Gardens this turned up:

Damn shutter lag ! Fortunately the next one turned up while we were standing on Stroan Viaduct – lucky or what !

So we got to Port William, wandered around The Square and South Street a bit, then walked onto the harbour.

Jackpot !

There were half a dozen Royal Marines offshore raiding craft tied up in the harbour as well but that one came out a bit dark unfortunately (dark green boats, deep shadow, muppet photographer etc). An enquiry revealed that they were going ‘up the coast’ later that evening followed by an explanation to a slightly confused Number 1 Son about “Army hovercrafts” and the difference between the Army and Royal Marines. And nobody waved any guns at us this time.

For those of you wandering where the railways have gone, here’s “Sir James” (Andrew Barclay 1550 of 1917) outside the Devil’s Porridge museum in Eastriggs. Well worth a visit (although a bit pricy for what it is) and it includes a large display on the Quintishill disaster as well as a very good history of HM Factory Gretna.

More later …