…and we took the bus.
recap of the past five days:
day one : 22 miles roundtrip to castle doune plus extra miles when we were lost.
day two : 20 wet hilly miles to loch katrine and back.
day three : 25 very hilly miles from Callander to Killin.
day four: about 25 from killin to aberfeldy, took a shortcut.
day five: 32 miles, Aberfeldy to Pitlochry, the final little town on our bike tour.
day six: we wanted to go to Blair Castle. We also wanted to go to the Edradour distillery. We decided we could walk to the distillery, but first we would take the bus to the castle.
we had no regrets about bussing instead of biking.
more like joy. the bus was privately owned and very comfortable, not like a city bus, more like a very small chartered bus. the road was narrow, heavily trafficked, and very very hilly. we would have ridden our bikes along the road. we passed a few bikes as a matter of fact and it was a little bit scary to see how close we zoomed by them.
very nice to take the bus.
blair castle:
inside it was interesting and very well-maintained, and there were no tours, we could just wander by ourselves. but we weren’t by ourselves; because this is a popular castle there were many others there, many very pushy tourists from other countries. i always thought it was just americans who were pushy. i was wrong. although there were many cool things to look at, we were perfectly happy to get back outside. next to the castle was a small forest planted with trees from all over the world. here’s kevin in front of a redwood from california.
and me, always taking the videos.
a bagpiper came out and played every couple of hours.
we took the bus back to town and walked to the distillery, the smallest legal distillery in scotland. we passed some especially pretty flowers outside a window.
partway up the forest path to the distillery was this waterfall.
we came out of the forest and walked along this delightful path with the field on one side and the forest on the other.
before the tour we got a free taste of whiskey. the operation was actually closed for cleaning, but we got to tour the buildings, even though there was nothing going on and instead of smelling like grain, it smelled like cleaning fluids.
here’s the sample room where we drank and bought gifts.
and then, the walk home…nice because it was downhill. on the way up the hill we didn’t like this little yellow sign guy because he was always pointing up.
i’m at the entrance to the path we’d take down.
we read about how to find the path in our rick steves guidebook. it said that if you get to the stone lions, you’ve gone too far. it was nice to see that they were still there.
the view along the path.
it was just so pretty that we wanted to stay right there- buy a little cottage and settle down and enjoy the view forevermore.
we got back to the b&b and i took a picture from our room. across the street in that white building is Heather Gems. this is a company where they compress the heather and do a bunch of stuff to it and then it ends up being pretty jewelry. right across the street, mind you, is where they made the stuff and they advertised factory specials, but we didn’t take the time to go see. after we left Pitlochry i saw the Heather Gems jewellry all over the place and realized i’d missed an opportunity. oh well. next time i’ll go to the heather gems factory.
this is city hall, directly across from our b&b. the Australian flag is flying in front of our place…why? i can’t remember. because the guy who owns it has a brother in Australia? because he used to live there? can’t recall.
when we first got to our b&b we sat at the window and watched the people down the street. we didn’t know that was city hall right there, but we saw this platinum-blonde-big fake boobs young woman dressed in a shiny low-cut red dress with four-inch red heels. she was with a skinny guy in a kilt and black converse sneakers. i wondered if this might be a playmate or somebody, and what were they doing there? later we found out it was city hall, and of course they were getting married.
afterwards kevin saw them get in an old little car and drive away. you’d think a blonde like that would be with a guy who drove something very fancy. she was definitely the only platinum blonde i saw in scotland.
that night we had to re-pack all our stuff. no more biking, and in the morning we were taking the train to St. Andrews, the home of golf.
ok then,
grace.