Trip report: Scottish highlands
Friday Seemingly a rare thing, but I don’t have to be on a customer site this week. So I am working from home. In these situations I tend to start work at 05:00, effectively working middle-eastern ...
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Wednesday
Another nice morning. Caveat – just because I’ve shown pictures of sunshine in Scotland, please don’t make your vacation booking based upon this – undoubtedly normal weather service will be resumed as soon as you arrive.
South East this morning. More lovely country roads. Sally spotted one of her favourite hairy cows:
We passed a little castle. This whetted Sally’s appetite for more castle action, so when we saw the sign for one we could visit we pulled in:
Note that these are not the 1000 year old war-torn stone fortifications you get all over England, but a more gentile form of castle – generally a ‘stately home’ or ‘manor house’ built to look like it is fortified in the way of some of the later German castles. Still lovely none the less.
We were now in Whiskey territory and passed a number of distilleries:
We decided to call in on this one, and got a free tour and tasting.
I’m not a whiskey drinker generally (OK, I recall my water bottle tasted of JD for several days at Expo after DJ had ‘topped it up’ with a bottle from his camper). The tour was interesting though. In hindsight I would have preferred a smaller producer. I was saddened to see this one had now computerised their operation and everything was run by one man at a console (they had fired the people who used to operate the plant by hand). That is fine for a Toyota factory I guess, but for something like expensive Scotch Whiskey part of the allure must be in the history and tradition, and the image you are conjuring up in your head is likely to be one of artisans with decades of distilling experience using their expertise to produce this classic drink (as implied by the glossy advertisements) rather than a computerised processing plant churning out bar-coded barrels to be trucked to a coastal processing and storage plant.
We crossed another ski resort and a range of rugged hills, and of course more castles.
It was getting late so we located a campground on the GPS and headed for it. It was OK, but I was a bit annoyed at being berated by the campground host for only having one of our two club membership cards. She explained we should always carry both to prove our age in case we wanted to claim age related discounts. Sally pointed out that in our mid 40s we were not due any age-related discounts so that was hardly a relevant argument. I reckon she just saw our slightly battered camper and, being a site mostly occupied by static homes and retired couples in very clean class C RVs, assumed we weren’t club members (i.e. we weren’t their type of people). So she couldn’t quite believe we were and wanted proof (which she could have looked up if she knew how to use her club-supplied computer system).
Rather than cook tonight we decided to walk into the village and find the local pub. It turned out there was only one, a rather run-down low-rent hotel / pub with attached Chinese take-away. I had a decent pint of ale and ordered a take-out from across the corridor. Marks on the wall above my head showed the darts board used to live there. It appeared to have been moved to the back room of the pub, but from the jagged tears left in the dry-wall it appears the relocation was probably done late at night with the help of alcohol rather then during the day with a screw-driver.
The take-out arrived and we took it back to the camper to consume. Thankfully I had managed to uphold the tradition of take-away food by ordering far more than it was possible for two people to eat, so we then spent the evening reclining in the camper moaning slightly from the exertion.
Stay tuned for more…
Another nice morning. Caveat – just because I’ve shown pictures of sunshine in Scotland, please don’t make your vacation booking based upon this – undoubtedly normal weather service will be resumed as soon as you arrive.
South East this morning. More lovely country roads. Sally spotted one of her favourite hairy cows:
We passed a little castle. This whetted Sally’s appetite for more castle action, so when we saw the sign for one we could visit we pulled in:
Note that these are not the 1000 year old war-torn stone fortifications you get all over England, but a more gentile form of castle – generally a ‘stately home’ or ‘manor house’ built to look like it is fortified in the way of some of the later German castles. Still lovely none the less.
We were now in Whiskey territory and passed a number of distilleries:
We decided to call in on this one, and got a free tour and tasting.
I’m not a whiskey drinker generally (OK, I recall my water bottle tasted of JD for several days at Expo after DJ had ‘topped it up’ with a bottle from his camper). The tour was interesting though. In hindsight I would have preferred a smaller producer. I was saddened to see this one had now computerised their operation and everything was run by one man at a console (they had fired the people who used to operate the plant by hand). That is fine for a Toyota factory I guess, but for something like expensive Scotch Whiskey part of the allure must be in the history and tradition, and the image you are conjuring up in your head is likely to be one of artisans with decades of distilling experience using their expertise to produce this classic drink (as implied by the glossy advertisements) rather than a computerised processing plant churning out bar-coded barrels to be trucked to a coastal processing and storage plant.
We crossed another ski resort and a range of rugged hills, and of course more castles.
It was getting late so we located a campground on the GPS and headed for it. It was OK, but I was a bit annoyed at being berated by the campground host for only having one of our two club membership cards. She explained we should always carry both to prove our age in case we wanted to claim age related discounts. Sally pointed out that in our mid 40s we were not due any age-related discounts so that was hardly a relevant argument. I reckon she just saw our slightly battered camper and, being a site mostly occupied by static homes and retired couples in very clean class C RVs, assumed we weren’t club members (i.e. we weren’t their type of people). So she couldn’t quite believe we were and wanted proof (which she could have looked up if she knew how to use her club-supplied computer system).
Rather than cook tonight we decided to walk into the village and find the local pub. It turned out there was only one, a rather run-down low-rent hotel / pub with attached Chinese take-away. I had a decent pint of ale and ordered a take-out from across the corridor. Marks on the wall above my head showed the darts board used to live there. It appeared to have been moved to the back room of the pub, but from the jagged tears left in the dry-wall it appears the relocation was probably done late at night with the help of alcohol rather then during the day with a screw-driver.
The take-out arrived and we took it back to the camper to consume. Thankfully I had managed to uphold the tradition of take-away food by ordering far more than it was possible for two people to eat, so we then spent the evening reclining in the camper moaning slightly from the exertion.
Stay tuned for more…
