In the Railway Café, Kingussie. Having a rather undistinguished mocha and a nice cheese scone. Shame it's accompanied by Lurpak butter. Comfortable café but a bit noisy because it has a lot of hard surfaces
@ninalanyon A cyle route is not necessarily on a regular road - many are deliberately not. Does that section follow the route of a disused railway?
The clock movement looks original to the tower's 1920s design. The plates and other visible parts appear to be of cast-iron, with detail shapes common to late-19C / early-20C mechanical-engineering practice; and the whole machine has a rather time-worn patina. Much earlier large clocks often had open frames built from wrought-iron bars. The electric winding is a modern addition, triggered probably by the positions of the weights. Its stand looks rather modern too: it seems to be a board on columns of square-section steel tube; perhaps replacing a stand that had decayed or corroded.
The painting may have been on that door. It looks glossy, is open, the newspaper is under it.
Those grand, Victorian-era homes were likely owned originally by such people as the proprietors of large companies. Nowadays I suppose you more likely need to be a money-trader, corporate-law barrister or similarly over-paid sports/entertainment "celebrity" to buy one!
Between the café and the bar I wandered at random around the general area. Here are some of the things I saw.
The railway station
A sign for a cycle route. A bit odd it's not on a road so so exactly what the directions mean is a little unclear.
I like the truncated cone roof on the corner of the Star Hotel
From a distance I thought this tower must be part of a church but as I got closer I saw that it stands completely alone. It's hard to see from my photos but it is actually quite new, given to the town in 1925.
The clock chimed two dead on time. The door at the bottom of the tower was open and there was a string smell of oil paint. I'm not sure what was being painted. The door being open allowed me to see the clock mechanism. It's regulated by a pendulum and wound electrically. I wonder if that is the original mechanism?
There are some quite grand houses in the town. I wonder what people do for a living here.
Today's outfit includes a jacket because while it's not cold it is certainly not tropical, forecast maximum temperature today is 20 C here in Kingussie.
