Norland Lossiemouth

Jane and Allen are my saviours! At breakfast (which included porridge, berries, a huge cooked breakfast, toast, tea and the papers) Allen asks if I'm "fed up with jumping in and out of the grass verge with that huge pack" and tells me that he's doing some driving work for Skibo Castle and will be going backwards and forwards through Tain, my next destination, all day. Would I like him to take my pack and drop ...

Helmsdale is an attractive town, founded to house some of those affected by The Clearances. I get a couple of photos down by the harbour and then plot my route to Brora and beyond.

Somewhere along the road Day 4 syndrome strikes! This happened on Day 4 of The Dalesway last year - I just wanted to sit down in a field and not walk another step! Brora is only 10-11 miles from Helmsdale but my going is painfully slow.

Sitting by Brora's tiny harbour ...

Today we encountered a Heiland Coo Bull and his wife and baby. We approached cautiously to take photo's and immediately the bull moved towards us letting us know he was protecting his investments. Here are a couple photo's of this family.

We went to the top of the Caringorm Mountains (the 6th highest mountain in Britain). We took a funicular to the top and it was quite something, about 50 degrees at the top and quite windy.

Grantown-on-Spey, Scotland, United Kingdom zumwalt

Today we toured all over the country side and I was just dying to see the Heiland Coo, said in American it is the Highland Cow. This thing is harry and reddish brown with big horns. Our driver promised me we would see one and sure enough here it is. The Coo looked right at me for this shot!

We went to Cradeur Castle and toured the castle, the beautiful ...

Check out this photo which I took as we were passing through the Caringorm Mountains in the Highlands of Scotland. Out of the blue on the side of a mountain were the future Zumwalts, cast in stone looking at the beauty of the area. I am not sure how the artist knew what we were going to look like in our dotage, however I felt the sculpturer was remarkable ...

Rothes is the little Scottish village where the Glen Grant Whiskey Distillery is located. It is part of the Speyside Whisky Trail, where the largest concentration of Scotch whisky distilleries is located in Scotland. This large valley is popular among distillers because this is where most of the barley is grown for the distillation process.

The distillery has a nice garden and a gift shop.

Dunno if I mentioned that the left hand front brake on our car had seivzed on the first day so Matt clamped the brake line & was using the other brakes. This was proving to be an issue as the front brakes kept locking up & we weren't stopping.

We headed to Aberdeen to find somewhere to get a new brake calliper & had no luck - Matt then bought some new brake pads but when he got the wheel off, he realised ...

... t call it Scotch in Scotland, they look at you funny. Also, its whisky NOT whiskey. Everybody up to speed? Ok good. The tour at the distillery was pretty cool. I learned more about the whisky process than I probably ever needed to. But we did get some whisky at the end of the tour. They also make a whisky liquer that even Jodi liked. It is pretty delicious! It is begging to be paired with some gooey dessert. Now back to ...

... sun was setting we drove around a corner and there standing majestically in a clearing was a Scottish tower castle built in 1460, our home for the next couple of nights. The bloke that was running the castle thought that we weren't arriving that night that we had just got lost somewhere so it took us about 30min before we could get inside. But one we were in we dumped our gear and headed for the games room for a couple rounds of pool before hitting the bed some 2 ...

... as people did hundreds of years ago, is pretty mind boggling. Duno if I've mentioned this, but some of the country roads FREAK me out. There's only room for one car. Oh yeah the hedges are pretty neat, and the bunnies on the side of the road are cute. But OMG when there's another car screaming from the other direction. That's entertainment!!! Am loving the accents and the sayings. TOFTS ...