Hill walk
routes to climb in SW Scotland - also coastal paths and National Scenic
Areas with maps, pictures and other useful information based on extensive
local knowledge |
|||||
Walks
on the East bank of the River Nith |
|||||
Click on
the left side of the image below to go back to the previous page or, on the right side of it to go to the next page. |
|||||
|
|||||
06 On Friday 7th September 2012 the tearoom and shop building on the pier at Glencaple was officially opened by Princess Alexandra. There used to be two old black warehouse-type sheds here such as you commonly find around working harbours. The designer of the new building has tried to retain some flavour of industrial type harbour image about this new building - as you can see in the second picture. Notice the seat in the foreground of the second picture which is in the form of a boat. It has nails driven into the top surface making up the names of 28 ships which were built here in Glencaple between 1806 and 1858. Place names are used to name the ships such as "Glencaple", "Coneath" "Morton Castle", and "Kirconnel"; personal names include "William Thomson", "Mary Thomson", "Blackeyed Susan", "Duchess of Buccleuch" and "Lord Nelson", and then there is "Perseverance" and "Prosperity" to add a bit of stiff backbone to the the whole endeavour. There is another seat/boat just a little bit further south and this one says that in 1853 "Enough tea leaves were landed here to make 14 million cups of tea" and that in 1750 "Enough tobacco leaves were landed here to fill 750 million pipes". On a third seat/boat there is the story of a two masted brig of 260 tons called "Duchess of Buccleuch" which was built in Glencaple in 1735 by William Thomson who was owner and master of her last voyage. She sailed from Bristol bound for Havana but was wrecked on the Cuban coast. Everyone survived the shipwreck and managed to get to the Cayman Islands where many of them, including William Thomson, caught a fever and died. His widow survived and eventually found passage home. The third picture shows the view from the pier back to where the previous picture was taken from. On the 1850 Ordnance Survey map of Glencaple a ship building yard is shown on the road that you can see here running south towards Caerlaverock. This yard was very close to where the new shop/tearoom is situated but on the other side of the road (on the left heading south). |
|||||