Spring in Scotland #2: The Best, Part 2

One of Scotland's unheralded North Sea beaches near Fraserburgh.

In this post I continue categorizing the Best of Scotland from our recent trip. It took a little time to get to this post because as soon as we got home from our trip we had only four days to get ready for the McMinnville Highland Games where we set up a vendor’s booth. For three days we sold books, photos, and extolled the virtues of traveling to Scotland. Now that all the games equipment is put away (or at least stored in the garage) I can finish this blog.

Our booth at the McMinnville Highland Games four days after returning from Scotland.

      The first grouping of photos is related to golf in the Home of Golf. We played 17 rounds of golf on ten different courses. Five of the rounds were in competitions and the rest were just for fun—although we always have fun in the competitions as well. The golf courses ranged from hilly parkland courses to highland heathland tracks to hundred year old links and dunes courses. Most fun was playing in informal competitions at St Fillans in Perthshire where we are the club’s only international members.

Anne tees off at St Fillans GC 3rd hole.

The 4th green at St Fillans GC, partially bordered by Scottish bluebells.

View of the 14th green at Crail Balcomie Links on Fife (seven miles from St Andrews).

Boat of Garden GC is a fine heathland course in the Scottish highlands.

Very different from golfing is the touring we do at ancient sites in Scotland. The country is filled with ancient standing stones and stone circles as well as burial cairns. We made an effort to visit Celtic crosses and stones carved with Pictish symbols. It seems that any place not filled with ancient stones is occupied by castles, also of great age. These and other ancient sites took up much of our touring time.

The Dupplin Cross in St Serf's Church is a Pictish cross from the 10th C.

Ruthven Barracks just outside Kingussie was built after the 1715 Jacobite rebellion to house English troops trying to keep control of the wild Scottish Highlanders. 

Anne in the gardens at Crathes Castle west of Aberdeen.

Donnottar Castle south of Aberdeen has been used in many movies.

A mason's mark cut into one of the stones of Elcho Castle. The marks help identify who cut the stone, thus who gets paid for it.

Always one of our prime interests in Scotland is the gardens and flowers. I love making pretty pictures and in Scotland in any season I find plenty of subjects to photograph. This year was particularly colorful because they had a nice spell of warm weather around Easter which brought out the blooms. Everywhere we went we kept hearing, “You should have been here on Easter.” On this trip we managed to visit three formal gardens, but found plenty of other opportunities for flower and tree photos.

A Perthshire forest trail near St Fillans and Lochearn.

Two flowers from the St Andrews Botanical Garden.

An example of a Scots Pine in the Cairngorm National Park.

Fitting in neatly with the flower and garden photos is a category of general scenery. The whole of Scotland should be designated a Special Area of Natural Beauty. We visited spots we knew for the great scenic vistas and found new ones to enjoy as well—many of them in the highlands.

The single-track road through Glen Lyon, the longest glen in Scotland.

Sma'Glen at the southern edge of the highlands.

Loch Morlich and the Cairngorm Mountains

Clouds over the Cairngorms

Sunset at 9:30PM in Elie on the northern coast of Fife.

And finally, also very scenic are the photos of special wet places—rivers, burns, waterfalls. With some wet days the waterways were full and flowing fast. It was a fun challenge to try to convey these waters in the best way.

River in the Cairngorm Mountains

Falls on the River Braan

The Falls of Feugh near Banchory west of Aberdeen.

The Packhorse Bridge in Carrbridge--the reason the water is brown is because of dissolved peat.

In conclusion, this entire two part blog has been a farce. It’s not possible to categorize or compartmentalize an area as complex as Scotland—too much has been left out. I hope rather you will bunch together these images—stones, harbours, flora, fauna, villages, et al—and get some sense of the beauty that is Scotland.

NEXT: Who knows where the wind, or maybe the MiniMax trailer, will take us.