More from The Bookshop Band...

Day Three
We sold a book! £1. England in the 18th Century.

Day Four
Mixing has been going really well. So far Ben has finished one a day, and is hoping to up the pace as he goes along. Don’t forget you can come in at the end of the working day, 5.15pm to hear the songs that have been mixed that day.

Beth has also been working on a fledgling music section for the shop, searching out all the music related books. Come in and see what she’s found. We had our first taker for the listening session in the evening. Robin (who helped run the shop a while back) came in and listened to “The Howling Miller”, based on a book called The Howling Miller.

Day Five
We sold a book for £1.20. Beth (started to learn) learnt to "chop" American bluegrass style on her cello, and Ben Mixed 1 and a half tracks. Beth got inspired to write a tune on her fiddle whilst looking out the corner window of the flat above the shop. You can see right down the high street, watch the people come and go, and see the snow covered mountains/hills in the background, apart from when the cloud was low. The view is a great representation of Wigtown. We'll try to record the tune before we leave!

Day Six
We partook in some spontaneous community service, cleaning up some vomit from outside the shop from friday night's revellers, only to be rewarded immediately by our first entrant to the Great Bookshop Bake-off with some superb orange-iced Chelsea Buns. Mmmmmmm It was a huge day for book selling, taking over £50. I (Ben) was especially proud when two guys came in dressed in green camouflage gear looking for bird books. I quickly picked up local author Desmond's book on the Waterman stories. I nonchalantly read the book while they browsed, and when they came to the counter to pay for a nice old hardback on birds, they noticed it and bought that too. Result! It's been a very productive mixing week too. 6 tracks in 5 days, and we've had a really nice little bunch of people coming to have a listen at the end of the last few days of the week. We finished off the night with a wonderful American style film evening hosted by Shaun and Jess of The Bookshop, watching "It Happened One Night" - what an awesome film.

Day seven - A sunday outing
Time to explore. We took the car out to do a bit of sight seeing. It was a sunny day if a bit cold. First stop, petrol as the red light had come on just as we had initially arrived in Wigtown!  We decided, as we only had one day, that we would try to see a few places that had been recommended. We started off at Garlieston Bay where it was particularly cold! Ben found a couple of giant jelly fish that had been washed up on the shore. We started to walk along the beach as the tide was out but the sand was quite soft and wet and we lost our nerve thinking we might get stranded and decided to move on to our next stop.

We drove towards Monreath as we had heard it was worth a visit. On the way, we managed to catch a glimpse of Sorbie Castle through the trees. We also followed a sign to the famous Swallow Theatre but then some how missed it! We followed cardboard signs to another castle which turned out to be someone's house. They were renovating an old castle ruin. Ben's map reading took us on a lovely route and we ended up stopping at the White Loch of Myrton just before Monreith for a walk. The path took us all the way round the loch where we spotted lots of birds, at least seven swans, two dogs and their walkers.

After that, we continued to Monreith where there was a stunning view of mountains, sea and a long pebble beach. Small pebbles, big pebbled and huge pebbles! It was very special and we were lucky enough to be there when the sun was going down and the sky and mountains were turning pink.
We got to Whithorn before it got dark and took a short walk to St Ninian's Chapel. For your information, you get phone reception there. All my messages for the day started coming through as we stepped through the gate!

By this time, even though we'd had a late breakfast, we were getting hungry. We were told that you could get some food and a good beer here but we thought that the pubs were closed when we passed them. We were wrong! Not only was The Steam Packet open but there was a folk session going on with musicians playing mandolins, guitars, autoharps, bodhran and melodeons. After an initial cup of tea and hot chocolate, we were persuaded to stay and have scampi and chips. The landlord was very friendly and the music was a great end to a lovely day outdoors. We drove back to Wigtown feeling fulfilled! The sky was clear so we got a great view of the stars as we went.