Today I snoozed through my alarm, so we missed out on breakfast! Damn! So we eventually woke up and got ready. We picked up some fruit from the supermarket then drove down to Dumbarton, to see the Dumbarton Castle. This place is more like a fort than a castle, as its mostly just batteries and magazine rooms and guard houses. It was mostly outdoors, and there were so many stairs! From the entrance, you had to climb HEAPS of stairs just to get to the next part! But it had some great lookouts from each of the vantage points, and huge cannons everywhere. There were a bit of upkeep works going on, so we couldn't see every part, including the Wallace tower, which we're not sure if its where William Wallace was kept when he was captured, or where he stayed when he was in control of the castle.. The castle is situated on a big hill, which is the only hill in the direct vicinity, so it's always been quite safe and ***********quer, but getting to the top of that hill was a struggle! (Nowhere near as bad as Arthur's seat though!!) From the very top we had awesome views in all directions, and there was a big Scottish flag. It was pretty cool, and a good workout! After Dumbarton, we drove back through Balloch, up the eastern side of the loch to a small town called Drymen. We had a little walk through the town and had lunch at an old pub called The Clachan which has been around since 1734. Then we walked through the rest of the town, had a look at a few shops, then had a look in the Buchanan Arms Hotel. Darren's ancestors would have been from clan Buchanan, so he was pretty interested in the Buchanan history, and this place had a lot of historic pictures and documents hanging up in the bar. After that we went back to the car and drove to the golf course, where there is apparently the ruins of the Buchanan Castle. As we were driving up the road, we could see the castle looming up in front of us! I was expecting much more of a ruin, but it was still standing tall! There was no roof or windows and it was overgrown with ivy or something, but it still looked pretty impressive. The only problem was there was a massive fence all the way around it, with big signs saying "Derelict Building Access Prohibited". But we didn't want to let that stop us! We went around the back, to see if we could get in somehow, and we had to make our way through the overgrown grass and shrubs and trees. I think this must be Darren's ancestors! Almost looks as good as our house did!!! We couldn't find a place where the fence was low enough or gone, and then a couple of dogs from the house next to it started barking like crazy at us, so we headed back out and around the front. The front of the castle was blocked by about 10 metres of plants taller than our heads, so we went to go around the other side. Bingo! We had to go into someone's driveway, but there was a section of the gate that had been pulled down a bit, so we snuck in and scrambled over that. We had a mission to get up over the window ledge, but we eventually made it. We explored through the castle, which was so cool! Pretty dangerous, cos there were m***********s in the ground and rotting logs everywhere. It was so overgrown, there were even massive trees growing from the ground. It was like a jungle in there! It was amazing! There were these old decrepit stairs that looked like they were gonna fall down any minute, that had no support or anything, so naturally we decided to go up there too!! It was a bit scary, but awesome! Got some awesome views out the windows, and we wrote our names in a tree trunk. Darren sat on a window ledge, and part of it crumbled underneath him! The walls were so old, they would crumble beneath your hands when you touched them too! We decided to take a video from the top, of us getting down to the bottom, which I think will look awesome! (But beware of the **********s, when we're jumping back out of the castle!) After we made it out alive, we got back in the panda and drove back to Balloch. We stopped at the info centre to pick up some brochures, then dropped our stuff back at the B&B before going down to the Dog House for a drink. We had one drink there, and Darren had a chat to some people he had met the other day who were there, then we went next door to Corries, for dinner and music. Apparently there was a folk session on that night, so we thought we'd hang around there to watch. We got some food, the same as we had for lunch the day before, and had a drink. As we were finishing up, there were a bunch of old guys coming in, who were starting to move around the tables and set up their instruments. We decided we'd go get one more drink at another pub, the Lomond Hotel, down the road while they were setting up. Then we went back to Corries. All the musicians (mostly over 60), had set up and were sitting around the tables in a circle, and each person would have a go at choosing and performing a song, and anyone or everyone else in the room were welcome to join in with them. Most of it was traditional, Scottish, and folk music, and it was really nice to just sit back and enjoy the music. One of the guys stood up and recited poetry, rather than play a song, which was cool. His poetry was really funny and clever, and after his turn, he came to chat to us, and gave us his book to flick through. He had one poem about how in the order of reincarnation, the highest level is a koala, and the poem was about how Mother Theresa was somewhere in Aus, getting stoned in a eucalyptus tree! Another one of my favourites was where Jesus is at the pearly gates, and thinks his father, Joseph, is coming through (did you have a son who was not yours, with nails in his hands and feet?), but it turns out this Joseph is Pinocchios maker. Hilarious. Wish I had written that one down! I ended up buying one of his books. But it wasn't the one with that poem in it! After a bit more music one of the other guys, Joe, came to chat with us and was talking about all sorts of things to do with music, and trying to get Darren to join the circle. Darren didn't think his songs would fit though! After a while longer, when everyone had packed up and gone, we thought it was finally time to head back, so we said goodbye to the remaining few, and headed back up the street and went to bed.