After heading back over the channel on the ferry and back down the path to our home away from homes (Milland) Nick and I decided to grab our warm gear and head for Scotland for a week and put off going back to work for a wee while longer. We headed up through England towards the Highlands and headed for Stirling for a look around Stirling Castle. We had a look at the Willian Wallace monument then headed up into the start of the Highlands towards Fort William and Ben Nevis. The scenery up in that area is so stunningly remote with waterfalls cascading off every metre of each mountain. Lots of mist and wind to add to the romance of the place. At Fort William we walked around Glen Nevis to an incredible waterfall. The track was great even though we decided to do a bit of exploring off track and ended up walking through ankle high boggy Scotish marshes.
We headed up past Loch Ness to Inverness but didn't see any large creatures. Inverness was a gorgeous little town with dark Ness River running through it. I think the Loch Ness monster could have easily escaped out the river and into the ocean never to be seen again. We headed out to the Moray region, home of the malt whisky's. We went to a closed down distillery, which had been left as a museum (a wild turkey crossed our path as we left !!!) and also to Glenfidich, which was incredible. It is a 24 hour a day working distillery and no section is excluded from the tour so there is always every stage of the bubbling and frothing to see. They even let you smell 3 different full barrels from different casks (old sherry cask, old bourbon cask and an older whisky in a bourbon cask) just for the sake of the nose. Glenfidich see themselves as special as they are single malt only and bought the entire surrounding mountain to ensure that their water is completely pure. They use this mountain stream in every step of the process. It was a lovely drop after a very wet afternoon.
We chugged on down to St Andrews for a day of golf, castles and a beautiful little seaside town. Nick was in his eliment walking the course, pointing out all the good bunkers especially on the 17th where we almost got collected by some dodgy Americans teeing off over the dog leg on the road hole. A beautiful old course full of tradition. Nick had a run on the Western Sands singing Chariots of Fire. Then we strolled up through the town to the castle.
Edinburgh...and so starts the early nights as the clocks are wound back. We followed the lonely planet walking tour which was great, up and down the ancient closes. We took a walk up the Royal Mile and made our way to Edinburgh Castle and eyed off the Scotish crown jewels and the stolen 'Stone of Destiny' which the English stole 700 years ago and only gave it back in 1996! It really came from Stirling Castle but the guard at Edinburgh claims there is not enough security there when I quizzed him about why they hadn't returned it to Stirling. The people in Stirling disagree. It was haloween so we jumped on an underground ghost tour. Next day wedid a fascinating 'Real Mary Close' tour, which a few years ago it was discovered that under the Court building was a bunch of Closes that run off the Royal mile that had been built on top of at the start of the 18th century and forgotten about. Mary Kings Close dates back to the 1600's. For more info -
www.realmarykingsclose.com. We also got into a bit of Haggis before having to head back down through England on the road back to starting work on Monday.
