A trip to the Museum of Rural Life, East Kilbride, Scotland

We took a nice sunday trip to the Museum of Rural Life today. It was just under an hours drive from where we live to the other side of Scotland. Its not somewhere we've been before, so seemed like a cool new place to check out.

The weather was quite variable, with showers and a bit of wind - but when the rain clouds cleared we got some lovely views out over the farm lands !

As the name suggests, the museum aims to capture the history of Scottish farming and rural life. It consists of a purpose built museum (above) and then a working farm. I loved the museum building, it was designed to look like a farm barn/shed, and it really was quite impressive inside.

They had a lot of farming equipment from the days of yore on display.

I loved the machine above - look at those back wheels - mean machine !!!!

I'm pretty sure that the contraption above is what they used to mint the first ever Bitcoin !

Having looked around the museum, it was time to make our way to the other part of the experience !

The main attraction for us was the farm. The people who used to live here donated it to the National Trust for Scotland back in the 90s, and it was turned into the museum. The inside of the house was lovely - it had been kitted out as it would have been around the 1950s, and it looked so homely.

My daughter pointed out that the piano has candle holders on it - how cool is that !

The furniture was just beautiful - I really love the stuff from that era. Its so well built, not like a lot of the flat pack mono-board stuff we get these days.

What a homely place !

They had quite a lot of animals around, being a working farm. These sheep had just been sheared for summer !

They had around 10 or so of these lovely big Tamworth pigs. My wife loves pigs and is always asking to get one !

They had some new born calfs, like this lovely wee one called Valor. One of them was really friendly and was licking our hands - their tongues are just like sandpaper - quite rough !

And if you ever wanted to try milking a cow, then they had a simulator ! The teets had water in, and some of the younger kids were trying it out and were absolutely loving it !

They had a few Clydesdale horses aswell, which are really cool. They are huge - although you couldnt tell from this photo. This one was quite friendly and was trying its best to get us to feed it some grass.

In the same field as the horses was a number of this years lambs. The were bleating quite loudly looking for their mothers, who were the ones getting sheared in the yard.

They also had a few chickens on the go as well !

Thats the cow byre above. They get taken in here in winter as the winters can be harsh here.

Well I have to say we really enjoyed the visit. We spent a good few hours there by the time we'd been around the museum, visited the cafe and went up to the farm. It was quite a nice setup and well run. The staff were lovely too ! Well worth the visit !