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Published: July 28th 2008
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'Morning!
We're going out of town today. Hurrah!
Our breakfast ( the best so far ) was hot porridge and milk, cereal, a Scottish breakfast with the usual stuff plus fried black pudding ( not really my thing! ), toast, ( bowls of prunes and fruit salad if you were so inclined ), pots of tea and hot chocolate, even “The Small young Gentleman” managed a plate of scrambled eggs. He particularly wanted the porridge 'cos I had tried to make it at home but I wasn't very good!
Our coach was to leave at 11:35 from the Aberdeen Bus Station. I had decided that we would go to a little town called Banchory. ₤6.70 for me and ₤3.70 for “The Small young Gentleman” Return and we were on our way. We were on the intercity coaches and the journey took just 1 hour and were dropped on the “High Street”.
Again, we were so lucky with the weather. It was hot! Hot!! Hot!!!. We were even luckier with the day itself as Banchory had a festival event for July taking place only on this day! It was an Agricultural Fair consisting of farmers' ware, demonstrations, exhibitions
and the judging of cows, sheep, dogs and horses. They certainly took advantage of the day as it cost us ₤7.00 to get into the event!
Anyway, we had a whale of a time so I gave “The Small young Gentleman” ₤2.00 as his pocket money for the day!
I still wanted us to go to the Castle though so at 4 p.m., we took a coach ( a combined fare of ₤2.35 ) to Crathes Castle.
Crathes Castle is the seat of the ancient family of Burnett of Leys which looks down on the river Dee. It is one of the finest specimens of Scottish baronial architecture. It has 600 acres of woodland, farmland, ponds and a river. There are also 6 way-marked woodland walks to enjoy so we took one of them to get to the castle. A 20 minute walk!
We didn't manage to get to the Castle before closing time but we did get into The Garden. It normally costs ₤8.00 but the sales attendant let us in for free as it was 5 minutes left for guests to actually go in!
The Garden was great. It's walled and has historic
topiary, colour themed herbaceous borders and diverse plant collection. We were given an “I Spy” activity sheet which “The Small young Gentleman” set upon with much gusto!
After finding all the clues, we went for a walk along the estate. What a shame that we didn't have enough time to go on the trails.
We'll be back and this time we'll go straight to Banchory rather than to Aberdeen. Sorry about that but Aberdeen really didn't push my buttons!
We were back in Aberdeen at about 7:30p.m and bought a shared supper of steak and gravy pie with chips. Junk food all the way!!!
We were so exhausted that whilst getting “The Small young Gentleman” to settle down, I fell asleep with all my day clothes. Whoops!
Onto Inverness.
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