Our penultimate concert of our tour was Ayr. We took a detour on our shortest drive so far to go to Grey Mare’s Tail and walk up to the waterfall. This was beautiful and was fantastic to get some fresh air and exercise as so far we had only been driving and eating lots! We were now ready to head to Ayr via our premiere inn.

We quickly checked in and packed our bags before going to the hall. We set up in the church hall and started a quick rehearsal that was great! We then chilled out by going for a walk on the chilly coast and sharing funny videos on Instagram which helps us relax and calm nerves before the concert. We had some tasty meals brought to us by the lovely people of the club.

The concert was a great success, in the hall we had a very good audience filled with club member, students, family and trombone friends! The audience was very encouraging and were very easy to interact with and created a really great atmosphere! After the concert, we mingled with our audience and sold some CDs whilst also having some photos taken of us for the local paper!

We then headed back to our premier inn for some refreshing drinks and a local takeaway to get us ready for our last day of the tour, Dunblane.

Everyone in Howick had warned us about the drive over the mountains to Moffat. On top of this, we had winds of up to 40 miles an hour.

The drive was incredible, it turns out. We had the most amazing views of the mountains and a few Lochs.

It took us about an hour to get over to Moffat. We went to a local bakery and had Scotch pies and soup before meeting our hosts for that evening.

Katherine and Mike were fantastic hosts, we even managed to persuade Mike to come to the concert!

Katherine was the president of the Moffat Music Club and showed us to the Old Well Theatre.

This was a beautiful old church, converted into a theatre with a capacity of 70.

After a hearty italian meal in ‘Claudio’s’, we headed up to the church and performed to a full audience. We had an amazing response from the audience once again. So many people were delighted to experience the trombone in a completely different setting to what they usually do.

After the concert, we visited the local pub for some light refreshments.

After our lovely stay in Crieff we had a beautiful drive down the east coast to Hawick near the borders. We went first to the lovely Andy and Mary’s house who were putting us up for the night in their amazing house. Mary had made us a lovely soup and let us spend time with their dogs, which was the perfect way to relax before a concert!

On our journey to the Hall we had some bad luck and Isobel got a flat tyre – a quick session with AA and thankfully the day was saved. Finally we made it to the hall and with a quick coffee we were ready to have our rehearsal/sound check for the concert. After our successful sound check in the lovely hall, we had a few hours off before the rehearsal to relax, practice and fill up on biscuits!

The concert was lovely with a warm, excited audience sitting round tables after having a group meal. Everyone was so kind to us and many enjoyed hearing a trombone quartet for the first time! It was amazing to share what the trombone is capable of to new audiences. We then headed back to a lovely night with our hosts for curry, ice cream and whiskey before having a well earned rest before heading to Moffat.

Our next concert was in Crieff for the Strathearn Music Club.

The weather was fantastic with views for miles just south of the Cairngorms. After about 2 hours of driving we checked into the Myrraypark Hotel in Crieff.

In the hotel, there was a bridge playing club. Rob asked the receptionist if any of them would be interested in a trombone quartet concert. Her answer was, quite bluntly “no….”

Despite this, we had around 60 attending the concert. The concert went down well and we had a couple of young trombonists in the audience.

We made our way back to the hotel and enjoyed a couple of hours in the bar.

We’re very lucky as a quartet to have Angus’ home in Helensburgh.

We had a lovey time staying with his family to break up the journey from London/Berlin.  The next day we started our trip up to Inverurie. (NOT Inveraray…)

First stop at Kemnay was the farmhouse cafe, where Merin helped himself to 4 butteries before realising how unhealthy they were.

We then had dinner with some trustees and organises of Inverurie music.

Inverurie were a fantastic audience of around 60 and were very surprised to see 4 trombones on stage at Kemnay Town Hall.

The concert went down a treat apart from 1 member of the audience that heckled when Merin called Loch Lomond a lake…!

Sylvia, was a fabulous host. We shared a bottle of wine and chatted until early hours of the morning.