The Angus Shoreline

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Now that we have the car, our days don’t have to start as early so a bit more sleep is the side benefit of that. We were up at 7 and down to breakfast at 8:30. Breakfast was the standard everything for a Full Scottish, but two types of eggs, scrambled and fried. Remember fried in the UK means sunny side up.

The whether was overcast, which makes for good driving. The day started at the farthest point South of the County Angus, Dundee. Dundee is not in the running for a potential summery retirement home, but it is one of the 7 cities in Scotland and close to other places we are considering, so we did want to see what it had to offer. The attraction here was the Dundee Law. It is about a 90-minuted drive to Dundee from our hotel. The driving went much better, Jerry even read the guide book to me about the places we were going, so he was much more relaxed.

The Law offers the best views of Dundee and surrounding Angus Glens to the north and the Fife coastline to the south. The Law, which actually means hill, is 1,640 feet above sea level and you can drive right to the top. There is a WWI memorial at the top and the hill is actually an extinct volcano.

From here we headed to Broughty Castle. The castle, was originally built to guard the Tay Estuary (the entry to the port of Dundee). Most of the grounds are ruins, but the main building is now a museum that focuses on fishing, ferried and the history of the area’s whaling industry. It is free and there is a very convenient car park close by. The castle is in Broughty Ferry, a suburb of Dundee, on one side of the castle is Broughty beach, a nice sandy beach. I am imagining the water is Oregon Pacific Ocean cold, it is the North Sea after all. This is also where we were scheduled to have lunch, just a short walk from the castle, so we didn’t’ even have to move the car.

Lunch was at the Ship Inn, a classic pub, where you order your food at the bar. Lunch was a simple affair; I had a steak & ale pie (still not the pie of Windsor) and Jerry had smoked haddock & spicy onion fish cakes. Both were good and what you would expect for pub fair.

Back on the road and to start the real summer retirement location. The first seaside village we came to is a true contender, Carnoustie. There is a train station right in the center of town, a co-op for groceries, and very cute. It is a small village walkable and bikeable and a very quick train right to Dundee for anything we can’t get here. Jerry starred this village. Next up the road was Arbroath. Also, a seaside town more than village. It is much bigger than Carnoustie, and not near as cute. Jerry liked it much more than I did, I thought it had a hard edge to it.

There was another reason we stopped here and that was to see the Arbroath Abbey. The Abbey was founded in 1178 and is basically just the ruins left. They are doing major restoration and preservation to the site so we were unable to go in. This was a point of frustration, because once again we were allowed to book a tick online for the Abbey and paid for it, but when we got there said the website made an error as only the vaster center was open and that is what the ticket should have said. Well, it didn’t say that it just said Abbey Tour. I am fine with restoration and not being able to go in, but they should have offered our money back, which they did not.

That was really the last stop for the day, so we opted to piss the Google Map lady off and not follow her directions. Instead, we just drove following different signs pointing to quaint villages, castles, manor homes and the wonderful countryside. This was Jerry’s favorite part of the day. Google had to recalculate every 10 minutes. After about 2 hours of just driving around we did end up back in our hotel.

Dinner again was a change in plans, we could not get reservations at the best seafood place in Aberdeen (Silver Darling) and the other place Moonfish was not open on Tuesday, so we were back to Miller and Carter, but not for steak. We got the same server. The food was good but really rich (as I write this the next day, my stomach has been not great most of the day).

For a started we took one of their entrée items and split it. It sounded so good on the menu, Roasted Shallot Tarte Tatin, unfortunately the tart portion was pretty small as they filled the plate with potatoes and mushrooms.

Jerry had the Chargrilled 14-day Himalayan Salt Aged Pork Cutlet. Served with diced potato, tenderstem broccoli (its broccolini), fine green beans, chargrilled apple and a rich bordelaise sauce. What they call a cutlet is in fact a bone in chop, it was cooked perfectly, very moist. The sauce was not very good, tasted packaged. I had the pan-seared hake with a mushroom, white wine & crème fraiche sauce. It was good not dish of the day good, but it was good. What was dish of the day worthy was the side I substituted for the mashed potato that came with the dish. Instead, I upgraded to Camembert Mashed Potato, it was amazing. Very simple concept, really good mashed potatoes topped with camembert then through in the oven so it all just melted together.

Jerry had another Drambuie for dessert and I had Banoffee pie; biscuit (meaning shortbread crust, think graham cracker crust made with shortbread), whipped cream, caramelized banana, all drizzled in a toffee sauce. It was good, but I think it can be made better, using my grandmother’s banana cream pie recipe for the pie filling.

That ended the day, much easier on the feet since we were in a car most of the time and only 6,178 steps, with few hills.

Tomorrow we are again in Angus and Aberdeenshire.

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Photos

Camembert Mashed Potato
Dish of the Day