By Richard Hinchliffe
First Published 17th April 2022
A
short post about our recent break in Gatehouse of Fleet, Scotland
My
lovely partner, Emma, and I have just returned from a week in Scotland. We
stayed in the beautiful East Cally Lodge, in the picturesque village of
Gatehouse of Fleet, in the Dumfries and Galloway area of South West Scotland.
The lodges are basically a pair of miniature mansions, originally built as
gatehouses to the Cally estate in the 1700’s. In such beautiful and elegant
surroundings there is a temptation to swan around, pretending to be Laird of
the Manor. As you can see from some of the photographs, this temptation was, at
times, too great for me 😊
You
can find out more about East Cally Lodge here:
Of
course, when running a small publishing house, no holiday is just a holiday, so
my laptop, and a briefcase full of ongoing projects went with us. When we did
manage to go out on walks in the village itself, and the surrounding
countryside, our thoughts often turned to books and writing, (to be fair, our
thoughts often turn to books and writing).
Walking
in the picturesque village, we happened upon a side street, off the main road,
called Hannay Street. At the sight of the name, I was immediately reminded of
John Buchan’s character, Richard Hannay, the main protagonist in his classic
adventure novel, The Thirty-Nine Steps, and its various sequels. A little
checking, however, revealed no direct connection. Hannay happens to be the name
of one of the Clans from the area, whose ancient seat is at nearby Sorbie
Tower.
One
could hardly be disappointed, however, bearing in mind the inspiration to other
great writers that the area has provided. At the top end of the High Street in
Gatehouse of Fleet stands a public House called the Murray Arms. It is in this
inn that Robert Burns wrote “Scots Wha Hae” in 1793.
A
few hundred yards down the High Street and over the bridge is another public
house with some literary history attached to it. The Ship Inn, at No. 1 Fleet
Street, on the corner of Fleet Street and Old Military Road, was originally
called The Anwoth Hotel. It was here, in 1931 that the great Dorothy L Sayers
penned one of her Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries, Five Red Herrings, which is set
both in the village and nearby Kirkcudbright.
Also
on the High Street in Gatehouse is The Bakehouse: Bakehouse Community Arts is
an organisation based in South West Scotland, dedicated to poetry and the
spoken word. You can find out more about them here:
HOME
(thebakehouse.info)
The
surrounding area is also home to many bookshops, selling a wide range of works
by a range of authors, from local historians to the world famous big names in
publishing, along with a healthy number of antique and second hand bookshops,
which I always find a joy to explore. On an all too brief visit to the bookshop
in the local arts centre in the village, called The Mill on the Fleet, I picked
up copies of a couple of the old ‘Bulldog Drummond’ shockers, along with a collection
of George Orwell essays that I didn’t already have in my collection.
For
those of you interested in cinema history and cult horror films, both Gatehouse
of Fleet and nearby Kirkcudbright provided filming locations for the 1973 cult
horror classic The Wicker Man, starring Edward Woodward. Although Dumfries and
Galloway is a long way south of where the film is set, (the Highlands and
Islands), the scenery is beautiful and remote. This may well be one of the
contributing factors to the sheer wealth of creativity in the country.
Scotland
has more than its fair share of creatives, be they authors, poets, sculptors or
painters. In any of the small towns and villages in the area, it seems
virtually impossible to go more than a few hundred yards without coming across
examples of Scottish creativity. It is a part of the world where writers and
artists are respected and encouraged by their local communities, much more so
than many other places. This attitude seems to stretch the length and breadth
of the country.
Much
further North than our little break, one of the first authors that we worked
with at Brindle Books has been a resident of Perthshire for twenty years. He
has been inspired by the history of his local area to write many books, one of
which; The ‘Lost’ Village of Lawers, we have been very proud to publish with
him in eBook format. The book tells the story of the ‘lost’ and abandoned
village of Lawers, on the shores of Loch Tay, and of the mysterious ‘Lady of
Lawers’, who made eerily accurate prophecies about the area.
The
‘Lost’ Village of Lawers is also available in paperback from various outlets.
You can find more information about this, and Mark’s other work here:
Mark Bridgeman Author
https://books2read.com/u/4DPX27
If
you’re a writer, and you are searching for a location that will inspire you, I
would definitely recommend a visit to Scotland.
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