OS Explorer map 309, Stranraer & the Rhins – I do not own this map, and had not visited it before starting this blog. Visited for this post 20th July 2018. (This is the twelfth of fourteen posts concerning my July 2018 trip to Harris and Galloway with my Cambridge friends.)
On the evening of the 20th July, the last day that the six of us would all be together (since the next day I was taking Erithacus to the airport to go and meet her family in Italy), we decided that rather than cooking we’d try to get a takeaway for dinner. Nowhere would deliver to the caravan park, which is hardly surprising given that it was in a little village, however I found a greasy pizza place in Newton Stewart that did takeaways, and I could just drive there to collect them. Therefore we put in an order for a few pizzas, pakoras, onion rings and chips, and off I went.
However, the perceptive among my readers may have noticed that the title of this post is not Newton Stewart. My friends, you are right. I had made rather a big mistake, and the takeaway shop was not in fact in nice ten-minutes-away Newton Stewart, but instead in forty-minutes-away Stranraer. I stopped the car when I realised, called to delay our order, and informed the others that their dinner would be rather late before I continued the rather longer drive than I had planned.
Naturally, being there only to pick up a takeaway, I didn’t get to see all that much of the place. I actually arrived five minutes earlier than the delayed time I’d given the pizza place, so I popped into Morrisons quickly and picked up some hazelnut milk with which we could make hot chocolate later. (Vesper is a vegan, and Erithacus mostly vegan, so we couldn’t use milk, and the almond milk they usually use is a bit thin for hot chocolate.)
I then went into the pizza shop, where my order was awaiting me on the counter; I paid, checked for the third time that there was no cheese on the pizza that was for the vegans, and was helped to carry the things to the car by one of the serving staff. I was soon off again, driving through the centre of Stranraer a little more on my way home. It seemed like a pleasant enough town, and I would be very happy to see more of it someday.
The takeaway, though late, was well received, and we spent a happy evening eating that, eating cake, and generally enjoying each other’s company as we watched some Merlin and messed about with each other’s hair.
Visiting all the maps! 