Travelodge Aberdeen Airport

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 ...

... around a bit. We tracked down some wooly coos and got some closeups. And we went to Glen Fiddich! I was really excited about this one. A friend had told me about Monkey Shoulder. I got the chance to try it in Edinburgh and then finally understood why he was so insane about it. Its awesome! Its smooth and tastes of honey; not your typical put hair on your chest and make you breath fire kind of scotch. Which by the way ...

... TRIFLE for dessert!), the drinks and a good catch up before it got late and we all had to head to our respective beds - old age is a terrible thing! Thursday morning had Mum, Sophie, Spencer and I off to Crathes Castle, West of Aberdeen and a beautiful walk through the castle grounds which Spencer of course loved, followed by lunch and then back to the house for more sleep (see old age comment above!) That night Sophie and I cooked ...

... 10 years, and never met JUlia and their son Jay made me decide to go along as well. Meeting up with Simon and having a guitar jam like the old days was another enticement. So after a week's nonstop travelling around South Florida and the Florida Keys with tintin and family, we catch the 5.45 pm flight for London from Miami Intl. Continental had issued the tickets, and so we wait 45 minutes in the checkin queue of just 4 people, the staff appear very relaxed this ...

... take Spencer out for even more walks... If it wasn't for the sub-zero temperatures the days would have been perfect - almost cloudless skies and not much of a breeze... Before I knew it, it was Hogmanay (31st December for the uninitiated!) Mum and Dad had already arranged for a meal with friends so I had some of the boys and girls round to the house for munchies and beers before heading into town ...

... We hiked up to the top and I got some awesome pics of a wonderful panoramic view of Edinburgh. We then hiked back down and went to the play, which was really a musical. It's called "I love you, you're perfect, now change" and it was about relationships and how silly we all can be. It was very well done and quite humorous. We were laughing through the whole thing. After the show we made our way back to the B&B and called it a night. We got up early the next morning to try to ...