The country altogether from Edinburgh to Glasgow is so delightful that I wonder so few tourists pass along the road.
As soon as we leave the last long straggling village near Falkirk, with its lovely villas surrounded by gardens and trees, and get into the open country, the scenery becomes very pretty and interesting, but on this bright hot day there is a hazy mist lying like a veil all over the landscape, which may or may not be smoke from the great foundries; but despite this, the hills and vales and fertile tree-clad plains are very beautiful to behold.
Stone fences (dykes) by the wayside now divide the honour of accompanying us on our journey with tall hedges snowed over with flowering brambles, or mingled with the pink and crimson of trailing roses. (A dyke in Scotland means a stone or turf fence.)
What beauty, it might be asked, could a lover of nature descry in an old stone fence? Well, look at these dykes we are passing. The mortar between the stones is very old, and in every interstice cling in bunches the bee-haunted bluebells. The top is covered with green turf, and here grow patches of the yellow-flowering fairy-bedstraw and purple “nodding thistles,” while every here and there is quite a sheet of the hardy mauve-petalled rest-harrow.
Four miles from Falkirk we enter the picturesque and widely scattered village of Bonny Bridge. This little hamlet, which is, or ought to be, a health resort, goes sweeping down a lovely glen, and across the bridge it goes straggling up the hill; the views—go where you like—being enchanting. Then the villas are scattered about everywhere, in the fields and in the woods. No gimcrack work about these villas, they are built of solid ornamentally-chiselled stone, built to weather the storms of centuries.
By-and-bye we rattle up into the village of Dennyloanhead. Very long it is, very old and quaint, and situated on a hill overlooking a wide and fertile valley. The houses are low and squat, very different from anything one ever sees in England.
Through the valley yonder the canal goes wimpling about, and in and out, on its lazy way to Glasgow, and cool, sweet, and clear the water looks. The farther end of the valley itself is spanned by a lofty eight-arched bridge, over which the trains go noisily rolling. There is probably not a more romantic valley than this in all the diversified and beautiful route from Edinburgh to Glasgow. Tourists should take this hint, and health-seekers too.
Passing through this valley over the canal, under the arches and over a stream, the road winds up a steep hill, and before very long we reach the hamlet of Cumbernauld.
An unpretentious little place it is, on a rocky hilltop and close to a charming glen, but all round here the country is richly historical.
We stable the horses at the comfortable Spurr Hotel and bivouac by the roadside. A little tent is made under the hedge, and here the Rippingille cooking-range is placed and cooking proceeded with.