Geology

Again, unfortunately, today was a lot of km day. It was also an awful weather day. We did go for a walk in the pissing rain, to a cave called Cave of Bones. We stopped at as many of the geological things we could see but I was a little disappointed with the ‘trail’. We couldn’t find any handouts on it and the signs came up so fast we almost always had to do a U turn and go back to them. The weather really got me down. In the end we just drove, a lot. All the way to Skye.

North west Scotland

Today we had to put a lot of km/miles beneath our wheels, a lot of it on single lane roads with ‘passing places’ almost all of it through extremely spectacular countryside. We crossed the entire north of Scotland, then down a bit of the west coast.
We had planned to go to the Mey Castle which was the queen mothers favourite house, but as we were there at 20 past 9 and it didn’t open til 10.30, we gave it a miss. We did stop at a flagstone quarry are and an ancient church/chapel site, these were both quite nice strolls. At the chapel I discovered that our pom-pom plant, which I was under the impression was native, is in fact from here, as it was growing all over the cliff there.
We stopped in a cool cave with a waterfall inside it.
All the countryside we were driving through was so big and so spectacular. I couldn’t photograph it. Every time I tried, the photos just looked so poxy. The roads were madness! Stoopied tourists and sheep and narrow.
Before we got to our accom (in an ex-manse in the middle of nowhere, really nice though) we looked at a really old castle called Ardvreck (15th century)
We found our home for the night, got a recommendation for dinner, which was great, and headed to a nearby lighthouse to watch the sun set (Ohhhhhh!) we’d never done this before, and before you knew it…. That’s right, we were both bored. The pictures turned out well though!
Wow! It’s 11pm it gets dark so late it’s hard to judge the time, bed for me now!!!

Orkneys

Today was the day of the tough choice: go to the Mey Highland games or the day bus tour to the Orkney’s. We chose the Orkney’s because we worked out we’d be able to go to the Skye games. Given the hangovers we both had (bloody Scots men) I’m not sure either would have been a good choice. I skipped breakfast in favour of more sleep. Neil had a few rocky moments whilst eating.
The ferry trip was….. interesting. Anyway, we arrived on the Orkney mainland. We got piled on to a bus and started our trip round the island. The driver was a native and interesting to listen to. The sites we saw were great but the bus trip and all the people really did detract from the place for me. We went to Stromness and Kirkwell, the tow main towns on the mainland, A really interesting stone village that was buried under sand for thousands of years, a stone ring from a similar time period and a church built by Italian prisoners of war. The bus driver reckoned you need a fortnight to see the Orkneys properly and I recon he wasn’t exaggerating. We missed a lot.
In Kirkwell we saw some people coming out of the main church there just after they had been married (very pretty, bloke in perfect tartan of course!) we went to a jeweller and got some on sale earrings, (no ring, still got the mankie hair tie)
The boat trip back was fine, then we fell in bed, unconscious.

Nearly out of petrol!

We stayed last night in Tain and had curry for tea, which was ok. I was very tired. We got up early and we south to Loch Ness TM. My God! Could there be more tacki tourist stuff in one small location? I got a nessie t-shirt. We then went to Urquart castle. Personally it was ruined by the amount of people there. It was unbelievable bad. We went back north through yukkie Inverness and stopped at the Black Isle brewery. How they got a food production licence I don’t know, but Neil recons the beer is good.
The rest of the day was spent driving to John O’Groats. We saw some, what looked like, oil rigs being made or serviced, we also went to a really really cool castle/home called Dunrobin.
We very nearly ran out of petrol, we filled up 43L, we recon it must have been a 45L tank as the light was on for about 30 miles. We made, but it was a tad stressful.
John O’Gorats, what a hole! Dinner at the pub was OK. We go drunk with the Glaswegian journalist and some Germans. Yum, cider.

not Inverness 2

Today we went to Elgin Cathedral (off our passes), we stopped into Johnson’s Cashmere mill on the way to Spynie Palace, which was were dome Bishops lived, ages ago.
We drove the coast road to Inverness. We wanted to use the web and book some accom. This took 3hrs and we only had 20 min web time (for a £1) what a CROCK. We made a quick stop a Culloden Field (the battle from the ’45 rising of the Highlanders against the English) and then went to the Balnvaran of Clava (ancient rock burial grounds). Loch Ness will have to wait till tomorrow.

not Inverness

This morning I nearly bought a rain coat. We got some “heather gems” jewellery then ordered Neil’s kilt. This was, of course, a few hundred £ but I’m happy with it, I also ordered a shall-ey thing to go with it. They should arrive at home when we do.
Then we nipped back down the road to Dunkeld. I passed on the randel.co.uk branded scottie dog purse for £40 in favour of finding if they have a shop in London. Neil decided he couldn’t go past a beautiful gold and silver welded together necklace. They had really shiny rings there too.
After a long drive through the moors and other stark but beautiful landscape we arrived in Aviemore, an awful tourist town, were we just missed another bloody steam train. We had a reasonable pie and I did get a biscuit that looks just like Gromit!
Just outside Aviemore was a National Park, where you could take dogs and the camp ground looks just like the Peninsula at Christmas, with a really high mountain called Cairn Gorm. It has a special train (funicular) running up it, that we went for a ride on. We got some photos of the view, whilst being blasted by the really cold wind.
It was at about this time we found out that accom for the night was going to be an issue. We eventually gave up and rang the booking service and found the really nice converted church we a re staying in.
Dinner was one of the best meals we’ve had so far at a really traditional looking pub with a low ceiling and lots of wood work and open fires.
We currently watching he German version of ‘up late’, the only difference is that the chick hosting it is topless.

Pitlochry - tour of too much

Today started off with a plan. It even followed the plan for a bit. We left Pitlochry and went to the Dunfallandry stone, a really old Pict Cross. We the passed Dunkeld to go to the Meigle Pict stone Museum (from our Historic Scotland passes) Not being “insitu” detracted a bit (they were in a an old church) but very impressive. Neil acquired a seahorse picture. So far so good, plan still on track. As we had started out passes, and you can go to a many things as you like once you have had that day marked off, we decided we had to get two places in on this day, as we added Edzell Castle to the pan. Unfortunately this took rather longer than I thought, but the wan was really very nice and friends, the castle was really interesting, ~I met some nice Westies and their people, then my camera went flat. We went on to Brechin to a train, that was closed, which was a bummer. Then, on the way to Dundee, which we were already starting to run late for, Neil added two more historic places, (both of which were good, but that’s not the point!) there were some more Pict crosses, which were just sitting on the side of the road and two huge fill forts (white and brown caterthun), also from the Pict era (we only walked up one).
The trip to Dundee was uneventful, apart from running late, it was in Dundee that things went wrong. We got really lost. Stooopied maps didn’t help a bit, then it was peak hour. It mean it was after five by the time we got to Perth so we missed the glass maker and the Scone palace. I mean the observatory in Dundee was ok, but……….
We stopped in Dunkeld on the was back to Pitlochry to check out the stuffed we missed (a jeweler and the Beatrix Potter display). We decided the jeweller and a leather shop we found were worth a trip back there in the morning. We went back to Pitlochry, had dinner, a beer and went to bed. We were both completely dead!
Oh Yes, I accidentally bought 2 polar fleeces and a pair of trousers.