Scotland Day 23: Final Fun Day...boo!

We slept in late for a last final time before our lives get crazy with: airports and long drives and such. Then we headed out to East Aquhorthies Stone Circle. It was hard to find at first but we found it eventually. I wasn't going to let another stone circle slip through my fingers on this trip!

This Stone Circle was wonderful and unique (like all of them have been so far). It was much more perfectly-circular than some of the others we have seen. It is one of the best-preserved examples of a recumbent stone circle, which is a stone circle with an altar-type area alone the circle.

The guys allowed me to have a few moments of reverence and silent respect with my stone circle, which I appreciated. I love the feelings that stone circles continue to give me. 

Then we ate lunch and I casually and excitedly lectured them about Druidism, Romans, early Catholic missionaries, and lots more info that they totally found very interesting....

Then we headed for Slains Castle Ruins. They were huge! I've never been to such huge castle ruins before. It was a maze of ruins to walk through. In fact, at one point, we split up and lost track of Kevlar for a while (we found him eventually after some back-and-forth 'marco polo' type shouting).

At the beginning of our Scotland adventures, I read a really good historical fiction book on Slains Castle (The Winter Sea, by Susanna Kearsley), so it was really neat to visualize the book while walking through the ruins.

After dinner, we decided to end our trip with Kevlar the same way we started it: walking the Newburgh Seal Beach (we had to end near his airport, so it was in the same location as it was at the start). 

This time, there were even more seals than before and we got to see them all sprawled on the beach, and then at some point they all jumped into the water in their flopping awkward way to start hunting for food. There were so many of them! It was a pretty magical way to end a wonderful and magical trip.

*And then, in the next 24-ish hours, we all had to deal with various airport chaos, which kinda made the trip end with frustration and stress. Boo!

One final view of the majestic Scottish seaside...what a beautiful place!

Scotland Day 22: Whisky and Castles

After our day of walking yesterday, we decided to sleep in and be a bit lazy. We walked along the ocean in the morning and took our time getting out the door.

At 11:30am, we booked a Glen Moray distillery tour. It was a lovely tour. The tour guide lady was really funny and I laughed a lot, which she liked. We ended by getting to taste a few whiskies. Paul and I ended up loving one of them, so we bought it to bring home with us a souvenir. 

Then we drove to Elgin Cathedral ruins. We were bummed to learn that they wanted $9.50 per person (!!) to see the ruins. Yikes. Too expensive for us, so we just walked around the exterior which was nice to look at, but kinda frustrating that it would so expensive to see it up close.

After that, we headed out to a castle Paul found called Duffus Castle Ruins (he is also the one who found Bolluch's Castle a few days ago, too....he certainly has a particular type of humor 😉). After we joked about the name, we checked out the ruins. 

This castle was interesting because they built it on top of wooden ruins on top of an artificial hill, so yeah...the foundation shifted and part of the castle fell off. It was pretty cool to walk the ruins (for free, thank goodness) and imagine where all of the rooms were and such. 

Then we went to Cawdor Castle and Gardens. This was another interesting castle because someone still lives in it. This castle has been in the same family since medieval times, which is very rare. This was also the first castle we have visited that is still lived in. So we got to see both old and new artifacts owned by the family, as well as kinda-modern couches and tv cabinets. 

This castle also built over a tree (part of their lore/history), so it was interesting to see that tree stump in the basement of their main old tower. They also found a secret hidden prison cell with a trap door in their basement recently (the family had forgotten it existed for many years). So it was pretty cool to see ancient kitchens and modern kitchens and all the other stuff.

Then we toured their gardens. They have multiple gardens and they were beautiful! Once again, I told Paul that I wanted to live in their gardens. Kevlar was very polite (along with Paul) as I drooled over tons of different plants.

After that, we ate dinner and then went back to our oceanfront airbnb to have a bonfire and play card games. Another lovely day!

Scotland Day 21: Reindeer and Dufftown (oh yeah!)

The first thing we did today was go feed reindeer! Yeah, you read that right. Apparently, reindeer used to live in Scotland and went extinct (because humans suck). In the 1950s, they reintroduced reindeer back to the Cairngorm mountains of Scotland (which has a sub-artic climate). The Scotland-version of Park Rangers take care of the herd with breeding and other managing and you can do a walk to visit them and give them feed from your hands.

It was pretty neat to both walk with the reindeer and also feed them but it was also amazing to see people passionately trying to help animals in the world. 

After a delightful morning walking with a herd of reindeer and having them eat from our hands, it was off for another wonderful adventure.

*Note: The reindeer look bit grungy because it's shedding season right now...

We then headed to Dufftown (oh yeah!) to do a really awesome Distillery Walk. Dufftown used to be a whisky-making hub (it kinda still is today but it's more complicated now). Paul did his internet-magic and learned about a cool lady who does informal whisky-chocolate tours and knows a TON about the real whisky distillery history. 

So we did her Distillery Walk, which was 3 miles of walking round trip. There were about 10 of us on the tour, and we would walk to a distillery, and she would then tell us a bunch of cool history facts about the distillery and then we would taste one of their whiskies and she would pair it with a different type of high-quality chocolate. We walked to about 7 distilleries to learn, drink, and devour chocolate.

It was the best distillery tour we have ever done. The info she gave us was WAY more interesting than the cookie-cutter info you get on normal distillery tours. She had paired the chocolate specifically with the whisky and it was really interesting to: (1) sip the whisky; (2) taste the chocolate; (3) sip the whisky again. The tastes of the whisky changed after the chocolate AND they just paired nicely together (she worked with a professional chocolatier to pair them). 

It was a long walk but it was so incredible. If you are ever in Dufftown and you love whisky, look her up (or ask us for more details). 100% recommend that Distillery Walk!

After that, we made our way to our next airbnb, which was right on the ocean. It was really cute, though the guys weren't fans of the low ceilings.

Scotland Day 20: Golf...and Rain!

We woke up on the Isle of Islay and (sadly) we needed to leave on a ferry and it was like déjà vu because it was super windy and rainy just like when we travelled to the Isle. We were nervous about the ferry being cancelled and how that would mess up all of our future plans. We got to the ferry terminal and...no one was there. The parking lot was empty. 

Naturally, we panicked a bit. Paul went into the office and learned that they decided to move things to the other ferry terminal on Islay which was on the opposite side of the island. Eep. They assured us that we would still make it on time because the ferry was also delayed (due to moving to the opposite side of the island). In the future, when we come back to Islay (and we WILL!), we need to remember that both the weather and the ferry schedule are a bit chaotic and that we'll have to have some wiggle room in our schedule for these things.

This ferry ride was the worst one yet. I can't believe they take out in a ferry in this type of weather! I felt like I was on a roller coaster, but fortunately, we were only on the open ocean for about 15-20 minutes, and then it is a bay again, which was less awful. 

After getting off the ferry, we were off to a golf course. Another thing (besides whisky) that Kevlar wanted to do in Scotland was play golf. So Paul and Kevlar went off to play golf in the pouring rain (the true traditional Scottish experience!) at Woodlands Golf Course in Glencoe. I sat in the golf course's cozy (and dry!) cafe and read a book. It was a beautiful place to play golf!

We stopped at our next airbnb to let Paul and Kevlar get dried clothes and warm up. This time, we were staying in "The Butler's Flat" which was really cute (and private and huge!) and it was over top their gin distillery. They also had Pict ruins up in the mountains, but we didn't have enough time to see them. We HAVE to stay here again someday. The place was beautiful and I really wanted to try their gin (and see the Pict ruins).

We then played trivia at a local pub and did pretty well on all of the categories except round 2 which was weird-to-us music (we got zero right on that round!). Overall, it was a lovely day full of great experiences again (and more rain!).

Scotland Day 19: Adult Disney World!!! (AKA Lagavulin and Laphroaig)

The main reason Kevlar joined up with us in Scotland was to enjoy whisky from the Isle of Islay. We have already decided to come back for Kevlar's 50th birthday, and then we'll do ALL the Islay distilleries.

This time, sadly, we only had time for two whisky distilleries, so we made sure it was our two favorites: Lagavulin and Laphroaig. This, my friends, is the Adult Version of Disney World. It's a place where dreams come true for whisky-lovers. This is paradise. 

We all dressed in our best Scottish attire for the day so that we could make it even more special. We looked dashing.

We started at 10:30am with Lagavulin. We got to join a few other folks that love whisky in a special room full of barrels and sampled large tastings of a bunch of their Lagavulin whisky. It was, obviously, super tasty. The guy in charge was really funny and gave us a few humorous stories as we sipped whisky.

Kevlar charmed the tour guide and got extra bonuses: (1) He got to use a large straw thing to draw up whisky to add to the bottle that we were going to drink from (and obviously slurp up extra at the same time); AND (2) He got some extra whisky added to his glass. The lucky jerk! 

After that, we ate lunch by the castle ruins that looked down at Lagavulin. Then we did a mile-ish long walk to Laphroaig Distillery.

The lady doing this tour had a lovely Scottish accent and we wanted to steal her (and the whisky barrels) and take them home with us. It was another amazing experience and I'm so glad it all worked out. The tastings were delicious, and we got to pour our own whisky out of the barrel into glass bottles to bring home with us. 

After that tour, we were in a happy place, and decided to walk back to the castle ruins overlooking Lagavulin and just relax for a few hours. We looked out over the cliffs, ocean, ruins, and Lagavulin distillery and decided that we never wanted to leave. We WILL be back!

Scotland Day 17 & 18: Kastles and Kevlar!

These two days weren't the most interesting as far as Scotland Adventures go, since they involved mainly driving and picking up our best buddy Kevin (aka Kevlar) from the airport. But I shall briefly mention the things we did so that our travel journal doesn't get out of order.

Day 17: Castles and Driving

The first castle we went to see was Stirling Castle. This was on our 'maybe' list, because, while it's super cool and very important to Scottish history, it's also very touristy and in the heart of town. But we saw it towering over the town on our way to our airbnb last night, and it looked so cool that we added it to our list for the morning.

We did a tour and it was an awesome history lesson of the castle and her importance for Scotland throughout history. The castle was gorgeous (and the gardens were incredible, too!), so I'm glad we stopped by. 

I wasn't a big fan of having to do the tour with a group of tourists and I'm glad we have limited our time around crowds so far in Scotland. The Universal Must-Have Rules for tourist-crowds appear to include: (1) must have at least one old person with a phone camera that makes loud camera noises; (2) at least one person with a phone constantly making loud obnoxious ringtone noises; (3) a loud sneezer who sneezes constantly; (4) at least 3 people who loudly say 'bless you!' to the loud sneezer, even though it is interrupting our tour guide; (5) a person who sidles up to you and then coughs in your direction, while not bothering to cough in their elbow; (6) at least 2 people who talk loudly and introduce themselves to everyone around them, and, even though the tour guide is telling us fascinating information, they must go up to everyone and loudly say "I'm from New Jersey. Where are you from?" Etc.

Sigh...I can't stand people/tourists/crowds. So while it was a lovely castle and the tour guide was full of awesome info, I'm glad that it was our only crowd-filled activity.

After that, we started our drive towards Aberdeen, which somehow is big enough for an international airport, so that we could pick up our friend Kevlar. We stopped just outside the city to check out the ruins of Dunnotar Castle. However, when we got there, we learned that it was going to cost us $9.50 (in their money) to see them up close. That's kinda steep to see some castle ruins, so we just enjoyed looking at them from afar and then left.

As is always the case, picking up people from the airport involves a lot of "where are you?" and "I can't find that. Can you find this___?" and doing a texting scavenger hunt to find the right place to meet. Fortunately, Aberdeen airport is pretty small, so our hunt for Kevlar was shorter than normal.

We had to help jet-lagged Kevlar stay up until a normal time, so we headed straight to Newburgh Seal Beach to find seals. It was cool to see seals in the wild. They were bigger than I thought they would be.

Then it was off for food and groceries and then to our hotel to pass out for the night. 

Day 18: Driving and Ferry Ride to Isle of Islay!

This was another day of driving (yay). We had to drive all the way across Scotland to get on our ferry at Kennacraig to get to our Dream Location: the Isle of Islay. 

We stopped at a good halfway point to check out Balloch Castle, with plenty of jokes made at the expense of the castle's name. 😉 The castle itself was closed so we couldn't check it out. Boo! It was also pouring rain, but we were determined to find their walled gardens. When we finally found the walled gardens, they were...nice. Maybe not worth soaking our clothes, but it was good to stretch our legs before driving some more.

It was pretty rainy and windy when we got to the port, and they delayed our ferry ride, so we were pretty nervous that it might be cancelled. That would have ruined all our plans and reservations. 

Fortunately, the ferry still crossed to Islay. It was a less comfortable ferry ride than both the ones going to and from the Isle of Lewis, but I managed just fine (maybe I'm getting to be a pro at this whole ocean thing...laugh).

After some good dinner and whisky, we headed to our cozy airbnb pod with wonderful views (picture below) to pass out. We needed lots of energy for the next few days of amazingness!

Scotland Day 15 & 16: Hodgepodge Activities

Day 15

The whole goal of staying at "the hot tub place" was to rest and relax before our trip gets crazy again (our friend Kevin is joining us soon and we've jam-packed those days with as much as possible). However, since the hot tub part was misleading (see last post for details on that), we alternated our plans a bit.

We started by sleeping in, which was pure bliss for us. We've been waking up early most days, so it was nice to turn the alarm clock off and just wake up naturally. After multiple cups of coffee and general chilling out, we left around 11:30am to check out some local standing stones.

Apparently, the Lochgilphead area was quite the religious center 5,000 years ago, and they have tons and TONS of standing stones, cairns, and other such amazingness just lying around in farmer's fields. There was a mile long loop that looked at a bunch of various temples, stones, and burial chambers, so we did that walk and Paul was very patient with me as I reverently touched each one and stood quietly by them all to give them the respect and awe that they all deserve. 

After that, we headed into the cutest town ever (something I have said about nearly every Scottish town we've gone through) to pick up some smoked fish for lunch. And what do you know, Paul just so happened to know where a fishing tackle shop was in town as well. We got smoked trout and pickled herring (YUM) for lunch and Paul chatted with the fishing shop owner to learn where to fish and get a local license.

We headed to a loch that the fishing shop guy promised was simply teeming with fish. I sat and read a book and Paul caught....zero fish. Oh well, it was another lovely spot to hang out, so all was not lost. 

Then we headed into another cute seaside town for dinner. I got haggis nachos (YUM) and Paul got another helping of Cullen Skink, his current favorite soup.

Day 16

Today was partly another driving day (Paul isn't getting sick of driving yet...really) and partly a hiking day. Loch Lomond & The Trossachs National Park is an incredibly beautiful area and it's loaded with hikes to do on these breathtaking mountains.

Note to self: if we come here again, do more hikes in this area! We chose to do Ben A'an hike, which, despite being only 2.5 miles round trip, was one of the hardest hikes we've done so far in Scotland. It went straight up the mountain, and it was exhausting climbing all of the roughly cut stone steps to the top. 

But it was totally worth it! The views at the top were incredible. We hung out at the top for a good amount of time because we just had to soak up those views. The way down was easier, but about half way down, our knees started to feel like jello from the steep descent, so we were pretty exhausted when we got to the car.

Paul convinced me to try one more walk in the area, so off we went to the Brenachoile Trail, which is along the water. This was *supposed* to be this mystical experience where you walk in the footsteps of authors and poets from the past who were inspired to write things while walking this path. There was supposed to be signs and pieces of their poetry to read aloud and even kinda-dorky footsteps to stand in to look at the same views as so-and-so poet. 

Maybe we took the wrong path, but we went over 1 mile down it without seeing anything at all about poets, not even a sign or arrow pointing the way. We DID find a random box that you had to wind up and then it played 'Ave Maria' but there were no descriptions about why this box was playing that song. 

Since we were exhausted already, we just turned around and headed out. So if you're in the area, I'd avoid the "poet trail" until they fix things (perhaps they took everything down for covid reasons or something). However, if you aren't expecting a poet trail, it is actually a lovely walk along the water and has beautiful views.

Then it was off to Falkirk/Stirling area to eat and sleep. Our airbnb was above someone's garage and we had to climb a not-very-safe wobbly steel spiral staircase to get to it. Fun times.

Scotland Day 14: Ewww Tourists

 We always joke semi-hypocritically that tourists are the absolute worst. Any time there's someone driving slow or being loud in a public setting we blame the "stupid tourists" and shake our fist at them. *note: today I accidentally cut a guy off in a roundabout because they roundabout in the wrong direction and I was in the wrong lane. I'm very aware I'm the tourist we yell at*

Which elegantly leads us to Eileen Donan Castle. It's the castle on all the postcards and everybody's Insta. We parked, took a pic and left because it was a zoo of "stupid tourists"

I don't recommend going there, there are plenty of prettier places here. Speaking of which, on the way to our next Airbnb we found a cool church called St. Mary and St. Finnan. I didn't get any great pics of the surroundings but this church very much had the best view in the area.

Weirdly, the parking in front of the church was closed for an event so we ended up parking down the hill in a big carpark with a visitor center. Turns out our little trip to a pretty church is next to a huge Potter-head (as in Harry) attraction. 

It's the Harry Potter train! Since we randomly came upon this place we missed the train by 10 minutes but that was probably good because a couple hundred stupid tourists were leaving as we arrived. It was still really pretty and an impressive bit of engineering.

We stopped in Oban (seafood capitol of Scotland) for dinner. There's a few places right by the harbor, we got there as they were unloading some boats:

For a reasonable price we got the seafood platter for two which included huge crab claws, a whole lobster, more mussels than we could eat, cubed crab, langoustines, various shrimp, a fillet of smoked fish, pickled herring, calamari, and a few things to dip it all in. It was amazing and way too much to eat!

We ended the day at our Airbnb with a soak in a hot tub. The listing said it was 'available for a small fee' which I figured meant we could just pay a few pounds and use it for our whole stay. It turns out it was an hourly rental thing and you had to message the host every time to set it up, and it was also just a cheap inflatable tub with not jets. Big disappointment, but still relaxing for an hour.

Scotland Day 13: Skye Hard with a Vengeance

 After having a pretty lazy day yesterday we were ready to live and let Skye (I would also allow 'Skye Another Day' but I don't know if anyone remembers that movie). We woke up early and totally non-grumpily headed to the Fairy Glen.

It was a pretty short walk to an alien landscape where everything is green, bumpy, and they seem to have no rules about terraforming. There was a wedding just starting as we got there so we got to listen to some Scottish screeching pipes of wind while meandering around the peaceful fairy metropolis. Once we had our fill of pixie-stomping we headed to the Quirang for a hike. *side note: on Skye they label every thing as fairy-bridge, fairy-pools, fairy-glen, fairy-carpark, fairy-ferry, fairy-WC, etc.*

The Quirang is probably the prettiest place ever in all of history forever. Surprise...it rained! It was a pretty sloppy hike right along a steep drop-off but it was well worth it.

We were very glad we got there early because the carpark was overflowing by the time we got back. We couldn't do the entire loop due to a huge cloud parked on the ridge of the mountain that the second half of the hike follows, so we just made it to the halfway point and turned around. I'm just going to drop a few pics here that show a small fraction of the awesome (I'm a mathematician and conclusively found that this is exactly 113/355 of the awesome, which incidentally is the reciprocal of a good approximation for pi).

It was a pretty intense hike along some scary paths (if you're afraid of heights) so we got back pretty exhausted. However, this is the sequel to yesterday which meant it was a Good Day to Skye Hard so we weren't done yet (there's surprisingly few movies with 'die' in the title). 

Cris had to work so I dropped her off at home which means it's fishing time. It has been difficult to find anybody online that does guided fishing anywhere on the ocean in Scotland, but I finally found a random guy on a seafishing forum that kinda guides as a hobby. He has a 14 foot aluminum boat with a 20 hp motor on the back that he takes out onto the ocean. The trolling motor is mounted on a sheet of plywood which is then attached to the bow by a complex set of knotted ropes. It's awesome and would be a bit scary if I didn't pick the perfect time to go. The weather just cleared up as I pulled into the harbor and we quickly got into some pollack and coalies.

It was also cool because yesterday we were planning to go to kilt rock and falls and didn't, but now I was fishing right next to them.

(kilt rock because it looks like a kilt, waterfall towards the left of the pic)

Lastly, Cris doesn't care much about dinosaurs but I got to go see the dinosaur footprints cuz they were right next to the harbor. They're not marked or anything, you just wander the beach and hope you get there at the right tide to see the footprints. 

*last sidenote: this footprint doesn't quite look like the picture they had at the carpark, so if it's actually just a hole in the ground and you know better than me just don't tell me. It took like 20 minutes to find.*