A mill & the swan!

Since Jeff and I were sick (and are still sick...........yes going on a week now) we decided going to Stirling over the weekend would not be the best idea. It's two hours away and we were wanting to take the train. And when you don't feel good, the last thing you want to do is travel two hours away and be "stuck on someone else's schedule" for the return. So we'll try again another weekend..........

The days seem to be okay though. It's when it starts getting dark and we laid down to go to sleep that we both have relapses and feel like we aren't getting any better. And Friday it snowed, so of course we are having some chilly weather. But we had some great sunshine on Saturday and Sunday. So taking advantage of the few hours we did feel good on Saturday, we decided to get out and see the Benholm Mill, by our house. It's not a working mill anymore, but it was up until the 1980's. It's right down the road from our house and we have never been down there to walk around, so we thought we'd check it out. During the spring and summer they are open a few days a week to the public. They have a little museum, as well as a tea room. It's closed right now, but still, it's pretty neat to see the old mill.

The sign in the car park (parking lot) of The Mill

The Mill is kind of down in a Valley, so this is a view as we were walking down the path from the parking lot

A better view of the stream. This same stream runs under the bridge next to our house

This is the view from the other side, the way you walk down to the mill

We walked around there for a bit and I snapped a few pictures. We are going to try and go back in the spring or summer, when the weather is better and they are open! So if we do, I'll follow up on this story.

After we left the mill we headed to Montrose to hit the hardware store for a few items. On the way we were thinking we might see if we can find a place to have lunch. You have to keep in mind that finding a place to have lunch around here isn't an easy task. You can't just drive down a road and find a ton of restaurants and half of them aren't well advertised or easy to locate. So we were driving around Montrose looking for a place to eat and we came across a duck pond on the back side of one of the links (golf) courses. We had to stop and check it out because I seen the biggest swan I have ever seen in my life! There were two of them but one of them was really just pretty and had the biggest wings! There were a couple of kids out there feeding them and one of the girls even dared to try and pet the swan. It kind of just ran off and got back in the water. So pretty and was a nice surprise to see something like that just driving around.

Both of the swans, and one of the girls feeding them....and all the ducks!

This might not seem like a big swan, but it's the biggest one I've ever seen!

Jeff said it was posing for me because it stopped and turned and looked straight at me after I took this picture. I think it was wanting to know if I had food!

A bigger picture of the duck pond. Montrose didn't get quite as much snow as we did but it was still pretty cold!

See.............so we didn't hit Stirling, but we did see a couple things we'd not seen before!
Oh and you know...........we never did find a place to eat.........so we just came back home after we hit the hardware store and heated up soup. lol