Innerpeffray and a twist in the tale of Sannick Bay...

 Well, we are back in Australia and settling in to things here, and gradually de-fuzzing our heads from jet lag.

We meandered our way back down to Glasgow over a couple of days and left as Storm Babet was beginning its run. We managed to skirt the edges of it most of the way, but there was rain, wind and the rivers ran high.

As we crossed Sutherland in the rain, the soft greys and browns were at their best.

We spent a couple of nights in Crieff, which meant we could re-visit Innerpeffray Library and Chapel which we happened upon so serendipitously last year. Always so special, and I hope to make it a regular visit whenever we are there.

Again, we were fortunate to have Lara, the Keeper of The Books to show us around and talk us through the collection and the displays.

We also spent some time in the school house where some lovely displays had been made - the stories of children at the school, and the books they had borrowed, were on all four walls.

But back in the Library itself, after having seen the magnificent Register last year, dating from 1747, I had wanted to know how many women had borrowed books? Lara said there were quite a few, and that in fact,  on the very first page of the Register there was a woman, called Beatrix who had borrowed a book. Not on behalf of her Master or Mistress, but for herself. And that made me happy.

Her name is the very last on the page, and I think the book she borrowed was something like Following Christ the way, the truth and the life. And she returned it.

Then. 

We mentioned to Lara the words of Pablo Neruda carved into stones on the far north coast of Scotland, and the magic of that discovery. She asked had we visited the Corbenic Poetry Path (we exclaimed, we had! Just yesterday!). And then Barry mentioned the second stone we had discovered way up North. I tried to recall some of the words and said something like - "and put my body back together...". 

Lara immediately said "The Marquis of Montrose"! We said "Yes! Something about On the Eve of My Execution". She went straight to a room next door and brought out a book - The Poetry of the Marquis - and read the whole poem to us.

We shared with her how our Librarian friend Liz had done the research and made sense of the words for us, and were excited to think that we had discovered the words and they were so well known and recalled. But as we stood there, Lara turned to the cabinet I was standing in front of and said "That's his Bible. And those are his seals".

Can you believe it? 

Sure enough - The Innerpeffray Library Collection holds the Marquis of Montrose's Bible and some Seals. How uncanny is that connection? How serendipitous the conversation? How amazing are Libraries and Librarians?

We all had a little shiver as we thought about it.

On the left hand page at the bottom, you can see his name Montrose.

And two seals from letters he had written in 1639 and ?1650. I still shake my head at the thought of it.

On our previous visit it had been pouring rain and we didn't venture out into the gardens and grounds at all, just made mad dashes between buildings. This day was glorious and we wandered along a short path and down to the river.

Along the way, we found this.

So many moments of coincidence and serendipity, we marvelled upon them for quite some time.

We hope to return to Sannick Bay to continue our quest to discover more carved stones; and to Innerpeffray Library where there are always magnificent discoveries to be made as well. What a lovely coming together of special places.