Scotland

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June 17th. The city we didn’t see.

Upon leaving our previous nights dwelling (THE CASTLE!!!) we proceeded in our grandious spectacular car towards Edinburgh.

The whisky tour next to Edinburgh castle is a definate not to be missed tourist attraction. Not only did we get a highly educational lecture, and a behind the scene barrel-ride tour of the history of whisky making, but we also got a free glass and a wee dram to keep us going through-out the tour.

A quick look in at the weaving mill, and a couple of souvenir shops, then it was ONWARDS!! (to Aviemore).

Now, a little bit of background information on Aviemore. It's situatied in the middle of Cairngorm National Park, which in Winter is crowded with keen holiday goers as it has some of the best snow around. However during Summer, when the sun is out from 5 O'clock in the morning til 10 O'clock at night they come in their 000's (also their cars, buses, bikes, etc) to play golf, water-ski, and any and all of the possible mountain-eering type sports that you'd usually associate with the extreme sports channel on tv.

so, we used this as our base for the following four days.

-and no Peter, we did not play golf, even though our lodge was right smack-bang in the middle of the golf course.

June 18th Sunday = market day.

While this may be true elsewhere in the world, much to our disgust this is not so in Inverness. A bit of a let down, but nonetheless we quite happily searched through the car boot stall that we did find for books for me (of course) I had by this time run out (of course). 3 books to the better and we were out of there.

Where else to go on a rainy Sunday afternoon in Scotland? Culloden of course. So we went to the visitors centre and set ourselves up with a true blue, dinky-die Scotsman tour guide complete with kilt, sword, dirk and targe. He then, during a mile walk around the sight of the 1746 battlefield sight, proceeded to tell us the ins and outs and all the gory details of that monumental day in the history of Scotland. It was wet, it was rainy and it was bloody cold. We were all just glad we weren't wearing kilts though, as the wind would have been blowing up our .... (whistle here).

An investigative drive through the surrounding areas led us to several seemingly shocking discoveries.
1. Pigs have their own homes in Scotland, every single one. Little corugated iron huts.
2. Cows which were on the wrong side of the road for photographing on the way somewhere (cute, fuzzy, wee things) can magically dissappear while you're visiting a castle.
3. The more it rains, the colder it gets. Even in summer (10 degrees)

June 19th A trail of two miles.

The malt whisky trail. Doesn't that sound delicious (eww)
With no further information than the sign that said 'Malt whisky trail' we decided to follow it's path and see where it led us. Of course we couldn't just do whisky, we decided to stop at anything (and everything) that caught our interest.

First stop, an art and craft gallery. Well, lucky we stopped there, cause although the products were a dissapointment the gentleman (also chef) gave us a map and the specific instruction of how to get there. Next we went and looked at some absolutely gorgeous pottery which was so overpriced, we left before we could break anything.

Back on the whisky trail. Man's advice 'don't take the first sign to Glenlivvet, take the second it's quicker'. So what did we do? took the first one of course!!

Well, I gotta tell you, it took us quite some time to find the glenlivet distillery (like 4 hrs, lots of stopping for photos, coffee, castles, lunch etc). Finally we got there, last tour of the day. We know it all now!! I'm not too sure about Mum, but I can see a very successful career in the moon-shine business for myself.

Right, so we finished at Glenlivet and it was about 5 O'clock, so knowing how long it had taken us to get there we decided to head for home.

...Oh yes, and the reason that man said to take the 2nd exit to Glenlivet?? Well, would you believe it only took us about 10 minutes, not four hours?? oh well, more time at the pub.

June 20th. The monster!!!

Our last day at Aviemore...boo hoo, sob, sob !!! What haven't we done? the one must see tourist spectacle, that nobody actually see's.. the Loch Ness monster of course.

so, it was on to a boat and away down the loch we went. Unlike others not only had we thought to bring warm jackets, but I just happened to have an available and easy to hand supply of chocolate and bobby pins to eat, and to keep our hair out of our eyes accordingly.

Urqhart Castle, which sits on the banks of the loch is gorgeous, but even nicer than that was the sexy seaman with the scottish accent....sorry I mean the lilting music which accompanied us.

A stroll through Inverness and some more shopping, although still unable to find a kilt for Daniel, and it was back to the pub for tea. Of course we had to choose a night when England was playing, so we were accompanied by every man and his dog as well. By the by, did you know in some pubs i.e the one in Windemere you're allowed to take dogs in to the pub as long as they're on a lead? How peculiar!!

Now getting back to the pub, the girl next to us much to my disgust and horror had ordered Haggis. I swear the smell of it when it arrived was enough to make me think of spending the night hanging around the ribald and extremely loud English supporters all of whom were drunk and most were smoking. Just between you and me, I think I can live without tasting such a famous dish.

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