Day 17 Braemar to Nairn

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Although we were up earlyish, for some reason we took longer to get on the road, but we must have been off by about 9.15am. I think we were talking to some other hostellers - 1 of the conversations told us the record for Lands End - John o Groats is 1 day and 21 hours- amazing !!! We had about 80 or so miles to do today (compared to the last 2 days of about 50) and so tried to get some miles in nice and early. Lovely Scottish roads and on a Sunday morning not too much traffic. Along the River Dee, this has Balmoral on the other side and so was very attractive - good road surfaces as well so we were tearing along watching the pines fly by. One thing though it was quite cold here in the Cairngorms - to be expected I suppose - but I did think since nearly summer would be warmer !!

Anyway we gradually made progress and then arrived at a huge hill that someone over breakfast said you can avoid if you take a path just before it, then a mile or so over a rough patch then it links up with a special path the Sultan of Brunei has built !!! On hindsight it sounded like the yellow brick road and too good to be true. Well while it may exist we took the path and then hit the rough patch but could not find the other newly built path - you can see here how you can easily get badly lost since by this time we had put in about 45 minutes to an hour off the road and so had to find it otherwise we had wasted nearly 2 hours by the time we got back to where we had left the road. But that decision was exactly what we had to do since we were lost with no signposts and no idea where we should go.



So back to the road by about 2pm and still another 60 or 70 miles to go oh dear. Gradually though we got through it and eventually got down from the Cairngorms and then did the last 20 miles through some great roads to Nairn with only a few cars around.This was the one place we didn't have pre-booked accommodation though so we had to wander and ask to find some - in the end we found a B&B which turned out to be excellent just a short stroll to the beach and next to a good pub for dinner.

(this poem to be recited in a London accent)

Stayed the night in a breakfast and bed

Lovely breakfast 'nuff said

Owners from London they did move

No going back now and all was smooth

Always sunny, beach down the road

No more for me, the frog and toad

Born in Paddington, that was all good fun

But from on in I'm a Scotsman

House prices a slice of what they are down south

And I know that every time I open my mouth

I don't say 'jimmy' or 'och'

But from now on in - I'm an 'appy Jock !!!

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