New Years Day

As New Year's Day was so nice there was time to go for a walk to work up an appetite for dinner. I decided to go to Dollar. Dollar is a small town in Clackmannanshire, Scotland. It is one of the Hillfoots Villages, situated between the Ochil Hills range to the north and the River Devon to the south. 

The walk was from the town of Dollar through Dollar Glen to Castle Campbell. The castle was originally known as Castle Gloom, possibly deriving from the Scottish gaelic:  glom, meaning a chasm, and referring to the narrow gorges to either side of the site.

Torwood Castle

Finally a break in the storm allowed me to get out for a few photographs of Torwood Castle after Christmas. The Castle is a ruin near the village of Torwood in the Falkirk Council area of central Scotland. It has been estimated as being built around 1566 for Sir Alexander Forrester (so the local stories of Robert The Bruce staying there before the battle of Bannockburn are slightly off by about 200 years). The castle is a Scottish Baronial style castle.

The castle is undergoing a slow restoration, now under the auspices of the Torwood Castle Trust, but there is not much evidence of this going on.