Inverness, Scotland, United Kingdom
Our journey begins today, as everyday so far, with a quick
breakfast at the hotel, and this time boarding the bus at 8:30AM, Today, we leave the bustling metropolis that
is Edinburgh, and head north into the wilds of the Scottish Highlands. The Scottish Highlands is about the size of
Wyoming, and contains about 600,000 people, making it one of the least
populated places in Europe. Most of the
highlands are used for agriculture, with a few industries such as whiskey.
We begin the first part of out tour with a stop at St
Andrews Golf Course. Since neither Jody
or I are golfers, despite us being retired and living in Florida, the
importance of St Andrews is mostly lost on us, and in reality there isn’t much
to do in St Andrews if you don’t play.
We were only there for a short time, but it gave us enough time to at
least see parts of the 18th hole of the old course, and the
opportunity to have our picture taken on the Swilcan Bridge, evidently a bridge
of some importance to avid golfers.
The real reason for stopping in St Andrews was to let us use
the public toilets, an event not usually important enough to mention, but I
bring it up to show how much further advanced banking is in Europe compared to
the US. These public toilets are not
free, which is not particularly unusual, but none of us had the 30 pence
necessary for entrance, but when we got to the entrance, we found that even the
pay toilets take tapping with your credit card for the 30p entrance fee. Somehow I think it may take several years for
US pay toilets to become so advanced.
Our next stop was Blair Castle, located in Blair Atholl,
just outside of Perth. The castle is
meant to be home of the Duke of Atholl, but since the current Duke of Atholl
lives in South Africa, the castle and grounds is now just used as a museum. Originally built in the 13th
century, it has expanded over the years until the 19th century, and
used as a residence on and off until the 1990s when it was turned over to a
trust.
The exterior of the castle with its white painted facade is
not as impressive as some or the other castles we have seen, but the interior
is much less ominous also.
With a summer
house vibe, it is also decorated with hundreds of deer antlers mostly in the
main hallways and the great hall. The
entire castle interior is much brighter also, and probably leads to its more
welcoming vibe. While here at the
castle, we also stopped at the café for a quick lunch, a walk in the castle
gardens and then back on the bus.
The scenery on this portion the tour has been much better,
with mountains and rolling hills all along the way and very few people in
between the towns. Our final stop for
the evening is in Inverness, the cultural capital of the Scottish Highlands. The city is only about 10 square miles with a
population of about 50,000 people. There
is an Inverness Castle, but we’ve already met our castle quota for the day with
our visit to Blair Castle.
Instead, we checked into our hotel and walked down to the
River Ness (that empties out into the famous Loch Ness, of course) and walked
into town. This isn’t really much of a
tourist town, though there were a few of the obligatory wool outlets and
souvenir shops.
We wandered around town
and visited a few, and we did notice, that the further north we have come, the
further from English the language has drifted.
Most of the people were speaking English, though with an accent so
thick, that I couldn’t be sure what they were saying, especially when they were
talking among themselves.
The other thing we noticed in the shopping mall in Inverness
is the name of a clothing store chain that we have seen in several locations in
the UK and it is called FatFace. The
clothing is generally nice, but I just cant get over someone wanting to shop
there. It turns out it is originally a
French company sold to the British, and that the term FatFace is a skiing
reference to the face of a mountain.
Still sounds like a crazy name.
Tomorrow we follow the western coast of the Scottish
Highlands past Loch Ness and Loch Lomond before arriving back at a Lakes
District hotel across the border back in merry old England.
2025-05-22