I'm over there!

Wednesday today which started as usual with our midweek service, only 7 again today but the quality was good!
After church I took to the road in the car. I have to be at a funeral tomorrow in Troon (I'm expecting to see at least one other blipper). Unlike said other blipper, crossing the 60 miles which is the width of Scotland here is a big adventure for me so I left in lots of time today and am staying overnight. I have to say I am somewhat disappointed by the West coast weather. It's usually warmer over here, but today it is not only cooler, it hit a high of 15, it is also wetter and duller.
The evidence is on my collage. In the first picture you can clearly see Arran in the background, in the second it has disappeared although it did reappear later on the evening along with Ailsa Craig, which I was pleased to see. Edinburgh was warm and dry today, or at least my bit was.
I wandered around Troon this afternoon, never having been here before. As there is a history of high calibre international golf competitions here I was expecting somewhere a bit like St Andrews. It's not like St Andrews at all, well it has golf courses and it's on the sea but that's about it. It is much poorer than St Andrews, perhaps the University there makes the difference, I don't know. People were friendly though and the coffee was good, I didn't have an icecream as the weather wasn't really right for ice cream.
I picked the day when the Glasgow taxi drivers bring children to the area for a treat, so all the shops were decorated with balloons and there were people in strange costumes wandering around - think bearded Peppa pigs, men walking around in inflatable Flamingo costumes and lots of people dressed up as cartoon characters and you get the idea. It was clearly a very special day as there were lots of signs saying Welcome Taxis and similar. Shame it wasn't sunny. I've been on these outings from Edinburgh to the beaches of East Lothian, they are great fun and absolutely exhausting. The kids are very well treated though and have a great time but it's a long day.
The other two pics in the collage are the first of the wild strawberries growing in the church grounds. I had to taste them to check they were ok! They could do with being a bit sweeter so I didn't tell anyone else, I'll need to do some more quality control before sharing. The other is my very tasty and filling prawn cocktail starter from my dinner tonight. Again I missed out on the icecream as I was so full. I had to go out for a walk afterwards to recover!
There are so many birds around here, I saw veritable squads of chaffinches and goldfinches, bullfinches, greenfinches, a lark, blackbirds, sparrows and more. Lovely to see so many different types. My hotel room looks west north west, I was hoping for a spectacular sunset to blip but I think it's too cloudy.
Apologies for the standard of the collage, lol. I was very tired.