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.

Scotland Fall 2018 #1

It may be trite to call this "a Scottish traffic jam," but that what it is.

The AMS Toilet Adventure

In the men’s toilet at Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam I was at one urinal and there was a lady cleaning the urinal next to me. We both agreed it was no big deal.

Anne, Dave, Charleen, and the docent at St Serf's Church in Dunning. The cross is  a Pictish carved cross from the 9th century, the Dupplin Cross.

Being Tour Guides

The group heads in to tour Duone Castle, an Outlander site.

We didn't get to tour Tullibardine Distillery, but we still had a taste.

We did tour Edradour Distillery, the smallest commercial distillery in Scotland.

We’ve been talking to Anne’s younger sister Charleen and her husband Dave for years about coming to Scotland with us—both have Scottish heritage. After both finally retired, we got the opportunity to be tour guides to family travelers. Charleen and Dave joined us for nine days of our month long fall Scotland trip.

Anne, Charleen, and Dave ready to visit Drummond Gardens, one of the best formal gardens in Britain.

The drive into Drummond Castle and Gardens is stunning.

Dave examines Earthquake House in Comrie village, home to the most seismic activity in the UK.

The trip actually started long before any of us got to Scotland. Charleen and Dave had research to do to determine what kind of things they wanted to see—distilleries, gardens, ruined castles, lived-in castles, ancient sites, big cities, small villages, etc. Anne and I had major and sometimes lively discussions about what they must see or ought to see or need to avoid considering where we were going to stay (self catering in central Scotland and timeshare in the Highlands). A couple of dinner meetings and numerous emails confirmed our itinerary, always with flexibility.

After nine successful days as tour guide here are some of my observations:

Our group (minus the photographer) assembled outside one of the reconstructed early dwellings in the Highland Folk Village in Newtonmore.

First, much of the success of the trip owes to the fact that Charleen and Dave did their homework both before the trip and nightly while in Scotland. They had good ideas of what they were seeing and thus could really enjoy the experience. Even when we threw in some last minute site, they were knowledgeable enough to understand what they were seeing or to ask the right questions. 

Charleen and Dave's first dinner in Scotland at the Tower Hotel Gastro Pub just across the road from our self-catering Thistle Cottage in Crieff. Notice, I managed to get in the picture, too.

Visiting a Crannog, a family dwelling build out into a loch, on Loch Tay.

Second, for me, the pressure was intense. I much better appreciate those tour guides who take on the responsibility for someone else’s good holiday. I think I checked too much on whether Charleen and Dave were enjoying what we were doing, but they were always positive.

Dave hand feeding a member of the Cairngorm Reindeer herd.

Impressive!

Third, I felt like I was controlling too much of the time and needed to let go more. We did separate as couples in St Andrews and met up later and we did tour Urquhart Castle independently. I probably should have planned in more of that kind of experience (Or is planning free time an oxymoron?).

We gather in front of Anderson's in Boat of Garden before going in for Pie Night--meat or fish pies.

The Packhorse Bridge at Carr-bridge not far from Boat of Garden.

Fourth, for Anne and I it was the most intense touring we’ve done for quite a while, but it was great fun. We wore them out each day which is what they wanted, but it wore us out too. In nine days we put more than 1100 miles on our rental car with me doing all the driving. As tiring as it was, the driving was never too much for me, and for Charleen and Dave it was sort of break time. Anne was stuck with her same old job, Grand Wizard of Navigation, which she did admirably.

Dave discovers the Scot's love of sweets as he tries a butterscotch sunday at the Cairngorm Hotel in Aviemore.

Lastly, Charleen and Dave’s enthusiasm and excitement energized us as we saw things through their eyes. For instance, Anne and I have toured almost forty distilleries (many more than once), but Dave’s interest in learning about the process and tasting infected us all. And though we’d been to Innerpeffray Library (the oldest lending library in Scotland) four times before, we got a new appreciation for the facility through Charleen’s experience as a school librarian. 

We got a personal tour of the Innerpeffray Library from the curator.

The massive ruins of Elgin Cathedral.

For Anne and me it is always a joy to share our Scotland with our friends, especially those who visit Scotland with us. This was even more special. And even if we still need work to be accomplished tour guides, at least we can say we had a perfect time.

At the largest commercial distillery in Scotland, Glenfiddich, we got to watch part of the bottling process.

NEXT: Part 2 -- Photos Allowed plus more