Crerar Eight Acres Hotel Elgin

... off somewhere in the evening? Would I ever! He also gives me great advice on how to avoid the A9 and take a more scenic route to Dornoch and Tain.

I practically skip down the road to Loch Fleet, a beautiful place that the Vikings called Loch Fljotr and is now a nature reserve. There are more seals sunning themselves on the sand banks, lots of birds and more blackberries to munch on.

By lunchtime ...

... only seems to have room for three boats, I agonise over whether or not to continue to Golspie, six miles further down the coast. It would definitely help cut the mileage of the last day this week to Inverness, which could be as much as 25 miles!

I push on and stumbling around yet another bend of the busy A99, I spot an opportunity to go off-road and walk along the shore. The best decision I've made so far! The path leads through Sputtie burn and down onto the ...

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 ...

... off our path anyway. We also stopped at Urqhart Castle. So lame! Not the castle, the way it is operated. They have strategically placed visitor centers, trees, large bushes, you name it so that you can't even take a picture of it without paying the 5 pounds for the tour. So we left. Loch Ness was pretty silly, not surprisingly. We took our pictures with Nessie and off we went.
We arrived fairly early in Dufftown, so we ...

... distillery, was it because of the taste of the whiskey or just cause it was a stone's throw away from the castle......guess I'll never know but I'm leaning towards the latter. We drove around the country side for the rest of the day which was nice. Along the way we came across this wee arched bridge, it doesn't really look that steep from the side but with signs saying that trucks could get stuck on it, you get the picture. Anyway we stopped to take some ...

... into teams of two with the goal of identifying 6 mystery glasses of whiskey. Between the three teams we did not do very well. Two teams were able to get one right; the third scored a big fat zero... To ease our pain, we were each presented with a pint of whiskey as a memento. We then had a nice buffet (boofAy) dinner and then the music, singing, and dancing began. Finely Weir was the master of ceremonies as he played the bagpipes and led ...