Today was a longer driving day, as we were going from central Scotland ALLLLL the way to the northern bits by the John O'Groats area.
In order to give us some breaks along the way, we timed out some stops. The first stop was just going to Tesco, their version of a Walmart, for food and random things we needed for the trip. It's crazy how they eat compared to us. I mean, we bought smoked salmon for $4.00 and ate that for lunch. Yum. They had lots of tinned fish options and cheeses, breads, meats, etc. So I guess Tesco is a fancier version of our Walmarts, since I wouldn't buy lunch meat from Walmart unless it was the End Times.
Our next stop was at Dunrobin Castle. It was beautiful. You could tell that people actually really lived in this castle, as the rooms were more practical and less ornate. We got to tour a whole bunch of the rooms, and it was an interesting floor plan. One of the two wings had burned down at some point and they rebuilt it, so there was a lot of twisting halls and such connecting the two wings. I was very confused where we were on the inside most of the time.
The castle also had absolutely beautiful gardens, just like Blair Castle from the day earlier. It was another amazing walled garden, SIGH, I keep asking Paul to make me a walled garden and he thinks I'm joking....
This castle garden was more French in design (Blair Castle's was more practical with herbs and orchards), which was pretty, but I preferred the Blair Castle plants overall. In the gardens, there was a scheduled Falconry event, which Paul was super excited about.
I'm glad we went because it was really interesting. The falcon-guy talked about the difference between how to use hawks and falcons for hunting and did demonstrations with both. I would LOVE to hunt with birds. It sounds like fun. With falcons, humans are merely the servants (as the Falcon guy explained), and the falcon signals from the sky when it's time to release the dogs to chase out the grouse for the falcon to attack. I love the idea of training a falcon and a hunting dog to work with me in a grouse hunt. What a cool hobby. I'm going to add it to my very-long-list of future hobbies to try out in the future.
Then we were back in the car for another final hour of driving. Next up, we went to Whaligoe Steps, which was a bunch of steep stone steps from olden times that the fishing wives walked down into a cliff to pick up their fishermen/hubby's baskets of fish. I cannot imagine constantly walking up and down those steep steps, especially with heavy loads of fish.
The cliff-bay was absolutely beautiful, so we spent a good amount of time enjoying the views before starting back up the steep steps again.
After that loveliness, we found our airbnb for the next two nights...except that it was weirder/creepier than described online. Turns out the owner guy was going to be staying there, too, and in the bedroom next to us and we would be sharing a bathroom. That creeped us right out, I mean, I haven't shared one bathroom with more than just Paul since college.
Fortunately, we found another nearby airbnb that would allow us to go there right away, even though it was past 6pm. Thank goodness. It was a much nicer cabin all to ourselves, and our comfort/stress levels went back to normal. We ended with a splash of whiskey in the backyard, overlooking a beautiful pasture with sheep.
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