Travels in a Campervan: Rockcliffe, Kippford and Dundrennan Abbey

Nido's parked up in the car park of Dundrennan Abbey (///senses.ordering.pursue). There's two more vans here. It's a quiet little place, reminding me of a French Normandy village. The Abbey is closed for renovation works and has been for a couple of years. It seems to be a theme with many of the old buildings in this part of Scotland; mainly they seem to be surveying the sites to see if the structures are safe.

As we had an excellent service point at Caerlaverock, we showered then topped up the fresh water tank and emptied the toilet - van life chores. At home we have a cup of tea in bed first thing (like Derby and Joan!) before another with breakfast. With only one cuppa before leaving we were already in tea deficit - not a good place to be! So the opportunity was taken to pull into the Drumburn Viewpoint to put this right...and the kettle on. The viewpoint overlooks the Firth and we could see the Derwent and Buttermere fells in the distance over to our right.

The road between there and our next stop was dreadful. It's a 60mph two-lane road but with grand canyon-sized potholes. Even though I had slowed down to about 30mph I still hit a couple; we both winced as the tyres banged and the van rattled, so much so that I pulled over to check I still had wheels. In some places I slowed right down and manoeuvred around them over to the other side of the road - so beware if travelling there.

We saw a sign for Rockcliffe beach, so turned off and drove down to a large and spacious free car-park (///stove.beginning.spider). It was relatively sunny and warm, but with some sharp showers passing through, so we took a rucksack and raincoats with us. The beach is lovely, reminiscent of some of those we've visited in Brittany; in fact this whole area has a real feel of France. Perhaps it's the Celtic influence. I remembered we'd been here before when we visited D&G back in 2018. The walk took us uphill and into lovely deciduous woods carpeted with wild garlic and bluebells. We dropped down onto a single track tarmac road at the bottom of a steep hill of granite. Apparently the granite was quarried for many years and was used to make bridges and cathedrals around the world. There were some really lovely (and big!) houses on the granite hilltop, overlooking the muddy estuary.

We walked on and reached the small village of Kippford (///whisk.cascaded.devoured), stopping to buy an ice cream and eating it sheltering from a shower in a covered seating area next to the water. We chatted to a local waiting for the bus. He knew Anglesey quite well, having worked at the old aluminium plant. We carried on up to the marina before reversing our route. After a snooze, Cathy cooked a delicious meal of jacket potatoes cooked in the Ridge Monkey, with some sprouting broccoli and a warmed up chilli we'd brought with us.

The drive to Dundrennan Abbey took about half an hour, thankfully on much better roads than earlier! The long(er) drive gave the Ecoflow power pack time to charge up again. Having said in my last post that the tech upgrades are doing well, I noticed this morning that the new router was out of power. The 12v-5v wired-in converter with USB-C seems to have failed, so it's been replaced with a normal USB-C cable for now; it'll go back to Amazon when we get home. Amazon seems to have become the new eBay, selling quite a lot of tat from China, some of it of dubious quality...lesson learned.

Parked up on a very slight cross slope (feet downwards thankfully) we had a cup of tea before I took Salty out for a wander into a field running alongside the Abbey. On the way back I chatted to one of the motorhome owners, who was flying a drone above the Abbey. The quality of the pictures it takes is amazing and such a great overhead view. I enjoy watching a few YouTube channels of van life travellers and they all make good use of drone footage.

It should be a quiet night here with just the odd tractor and trailer rumbling past; silage cutting is in full swing here. But before we button up the van for the night, a little bit of information about the Abbey:

Dundrennan was home to Cistercian monks. Although very austere, the order became very wealthy over time, and their abbeys became places of grand architecture and decoration. For centuries the monks kept up a daily cycle of worship here. They were assisted by lay brothers. These were members of the monastery who weren't monks: they grew crops and tended sheep in the surrounding fields, generating huge profits from the wool trade. The abbey declined following the Protestant Reformation of 1560, but was to enjoy one final day in the spotlight of history. It was here, in May 1568, that the deposed Mary Queen of Scots spent her last hours in her homeland, on her way to exile in England.