The whole notion of love locks was unknown to me until I saw the curious site of lots of padlocks attached to the railings of a bridge at Falls of Feugh near Banchory. Some googling later and I learnt that they are quite popular at various sites across Europe. A lovelock is a padlock inscribed with names or dates that sweethearts lock to a bridge or gate or something similar to symbolise their love. Straight away I had the romantic notion that we had to return to the bridge to attach our own love lock. Of course my husband was also completely 100% behind this idea and couldn't wait to go.
However on arrival and after closer inspection of the lovelocks, I was intimidated by the high standard of padlocks on display and suddenly feared my Poundland padlock and permanent marker may be some reflection of our perhaps poorer quality love so I chickened out. My husband did not find this infuriating in the slightest. So I now have plans to get a nicer padlock, get it engraved and make a return trip. In the meantime we enjoyed the visit to the bridge; apparently you can see salmon jumping at certain times of the year there but there were none when we visited. It was quite a scary bridge as it was so high up and the water thundered below so loudly and the bridge moved a little when people walked on it.
I liked reading all of the inscriptions. Some were very touching. It's obviously quite a new lovelock site so it will be interesting to see if it gets popular.
We followed our lovelock trip with a walk at a nearby woodland; I use the term walk rather loosely here - it was a case of overly ambitious walking plans and not enough chocolate. Still, Little enjoyed the snooze.
Poppet: 3 yrs 2mos
Little : 18mos
