Mileage 3.15
Torrents of rain during the night and heavy showers all day. There was no hope of cycling. I went out before breakfast + posted my small bag to Prestwick.1 Took the 11.27 to Cumnock2 intending if it faired to cycle from there. Nith3 was in top flood + lots of fields had water on them. On reaching Cumnock at 1, I found that the 1.15 to Ayr did not start from the mainline station but on the Muirkirk4 line so I had to rush down a steep hill to Cumnock + toil up a steep one + just got to the station as the train came. A friendly female official kindly offered to get my tickets for me + was rewarded with the 4d being the change out of 3/6. It was nearly fair as I cycled from Ayr to Prestwick + I arrived at Ladyton at 2.20 in time for dinner which I enjoyed. Found Rennie5 well but in some ways failed from March. Wrote Helen6, Kate Mcdonald7 + Eliz. Leithead8 (a daughter of William Leithead formerly at Tinnis) who had asked me for a cert. of fitness for emigration to Honolulu.
1 Prestwick, Ayrshire, Dr Muir’s destination.
2 Cumnock, East Ayrshire.
3 Dr Muir would have travelled alongside the River Nith as the line ran down through Sanquhar and Kirkconnel on its way to Cumnock.
4 Dr Muir was evidently expecting his train to come down the Glasgow and South Western Railway, but instead it was, according to Dr Muir, running on that same company’s Muirkirk Branch (north of Cumnock). If so he did indeed face a stiff cycle – on a route that is not at all obvious – to get from Old Cumnock to the stop at Commondyke, almost certainly impossible in 15 minutes. In fact it looks much more likely that he picked up the train at the stop on the Glasgow and South Western Railway Cumnock Branch (south of the town and not the Muirkirk line) which would have required a run into Cumnock and out again by an obvious route, and one that he could have done in 15 minutes relatively easily.
This is all laid out very nicely on Ordnance Survey six inch Ayrshire sheet XXXV.NE and Ordnance Survey six inch Ayrshire sheet XXXV.SE, both published 1911.
A random connection is that William Renny Watson of the Watson family, textile manufacturers at Hawick, was Chairman of the Glasgow and South Western Railway at the time of his death in 1909.
5 The Reverend James Rennie (1826-1924), Dr Muir’s brother in law, the widower of Catherine Stewart Rennie née Muir. Dr Muir had last visited in March 1923.
6 Helen Frances ‘Mousey’ Muir (1880-1963), Dr Muir’s third daughter and sometime housekeeper.
7 Catherine Isabella ‘Kate’ Macdonald [or McDonald] née Paton (about 1862-1932), lived at 1 Newall Terrace, Dumfries. She was the widow of James Cumming Raff Macdonald [or McDonald] (1859-1921), writer. Dr Muir had stayed with the couple when he cycled to Dumfries on 18 September 1918..
8 Elizabeth Leithead (1880-), born 1 July 1880 at Tinnis, Yarrow, departed San Francisco, California on 14 Nov 1923 en route for Honolulu, Hawaii, where she arrived 20 November 1923. Elizabeth was a brave woman as the manifest records that she travelled alone on the S.S. Maui. A twin, she may well have been one of the 3,366 babies that Dr Muir brought into this world. She was the daughter of William Leithead, ploughman, and Ellen Scott, married 1868 at Roberton, Roxburghshire.
[Source: Scottish Borders Archives & Local History Service SBA/657/26, Dr J S Muir of Selkirk, medical practitioner, journal for 1923]
Rumbling Clint's Scottish Notes 