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.

Fall Travels to Scotland, Part One

      We are more than a week into our fall trip to Scotland.  We've spent a few days in our home base of Crieff at Merlindale B&B before moving to the Highlands and played a bit of golf (some new courses, some on our home course in Scotland, some with our friends John and Jacky Clifford, and we even finished in the middle of the pack in a pairs competition at Boat of Garten Golf and Tennis Club).  We also managed to meet up in a tearoom near the Highlands with a couple we'd helped plan their trip to Scotland.  Tonight we are having dinner at Anderson's in Boat of Garten (one of our favorite restaurants) on Pie Night--looking forward to homemade specialty meat pies.

      In this post are two travel stories not completely related to this trip (well, the first one is... sort of... oh, you'll see) and photos that are from this trip.  Hope you enjoy both...please, let me know if you do (or don't).

Breakfast at PDX

King James Square in Crieff.

Meeting with friends, LaDonna and Hal, at the Watermill in Blair Atholl.

On the Hilton Park Allendar Course near Glasgow.

The Bag that Went to Africa

When we arrive at Crieff, Scotland, and our home B&B, Merlindale, the bags that we leave at the B&B were waiting for us in our room and our golf clubs were in the garage.  Beside keeping our clubs, the B&B also keeps a couple of equipment/travel bags which contain fleece blankets, golf clothes, extra sweaters, and all manner of trip “essentials.”  As we were visiting in the evening I remembered to ask who brought down our clubs and bags from the garage attic so I could pay them.  I found out it was Ailsa (the daughter, our adopted niece) and Angeles (the Spanish helper).  Since Ailsa was off to college, I paid Angeles who said, “It was no trouble even bringing down the bag that went ot Africa.”

“What?!” I said.  With the cat out of the bag we now got the whole story.

It seems that after our spring trip, before the bags got put into the attic, Jacky (our Scottish sister, B&B owner) helped get Netzi and Shay (schoolmates of Ailsa and children of Colin and Joanne, UK ambassador to Gambia) headed home for the summer.  They loaded all the kid's luggage into the car, drove to the Edinburgh airport, and saw the kids off to Western Africa.  When Netzi and Shay arrived at the British Embassy in Banjul, Gambia, Joanne took charge of the luggage.  As she started the unpacking she discovered that one bag was not theirs.  Going through the contents of the bag she found a sweater she recognized was Anne’s and knew it was our bag the kids had brought from Scotland.  When Joanne brought the children back to Crieff for school, she brought our back back.  The bag’s trip to Gambia and back would have been expensive (luggage fees) except that it traveled for free as diplomatic luggage.

Joanne and the kids were sworn to secrecy by Jacky, but Angeles let it slip.  So now we are the proud owners of the Bag that Went to Africa.

The Jam Room at House of Bruar (before they told me no photos).

Boat of Garten GC

At the Boat Open competition we played with Fiona and Mark from Aberdeen.

Amur (Siberian) Tiger at Highland Wildlife Park near Kingussie.

Polar Bear at the park which is part of the Edinburgh Zoological Society.

Portland’s Expensive Parking

On this trip to Scotland (and most of our longer trips) we try to arrange a ride to and from PDX with friends rather than pay to leave our car at even the economy parking at Portland’s airport.  In fact, on shorter trips we stay at an airport motel which provides Park-n-Fly — we stay the night before our flight in the motel and leave our car for up to ten days free.  We do this now because on one eight-day trip to Phoenix and Tucson we found out how expensive airport parking was.

From a trip to Phoenix to see Anne’s sister, Bev, and her husband, Noel, and to Tucson to visit the astronomical observatories there, we arrived back at PDX late in the evening.  Luggage in hand we took the shuttle bus to the economy parking lot and started for home.  We stopped at the exit kiosk to pay the expected $80 parking fee.  I put my credit card in the machine, but the card wouldn’t cover the bill, which when I looked closely was $60,500 for eight days—almost $8000 a day!  The machine wouldn’t give me my card back, either.  Totally frustrated I started pushing every button on the machine that I could reach through the car window.  Finally, a supervisor came out to see what the trouble was.  I breathlessly explained.  She looked at the machine and said, “That is a little high even for Portland.”

It took about twenty minutes to clear the machine and get our card back.  I paid the real $80 bill in cash—no way was I going to stick my card back in that machine.  Friends or Park-n-Fly are preferable to PDX’s high parking fees any day. 

Rumbling Bridge (falls) near Birnam.

Hilton Park GC

Duff House Royal GC on the Morayshire coast.

Loch Morlich in the Cairngorm National Park.

River Lineage in the Cairngorms

Ancient Scottish Pine on the Rothiemurches Estate in the Highlands.

Next: We spend another week and a half in the Highlands, touring and golfing.