Thursday May 24th -- Speyside

We started the day with another helping of "the full Scottish" breakfast.  Filling.  Meant we skipped lunch later in the day in favor of an apple.

First stop on our touring schedule for the morning was the Culloden battlefield.  1746.  A massacre.  The last battle fought on English soil. Finalized the joining, which had been going on in fits and starts for centuries, of Scotland to the UK.  It was a very somber site.  Empty fields and markers where people from the various clans were buried.  As Americans, we'd never heard of the battle of Culloden, but since last year Maxine and I were in Yorktown, that's what it reminded us of.  Except in this case, it was the losers battlefield and they still mourn it centuries later.  The depth and breadth of history is enormous.

After Culloden, we went to Cawdor Castle.  According to some legends it is the setting for the real life story behind Shakespeare's Macbeth.  Another family owned castle.  The husband is, we believe, dead and the wife who seemed to be in her 50's, still lived there.  We didn't see her but saw her car in the parking lot.  Again, the history of the area!

From Cawdor, we drove over to Elgin Cathedral.  We met a Scottish Park Service guy who was extremely nice to us!  You can buy multiple use passes, tied to a specific number of days of visiting, for the various national parks/monuments/cathedrals/castles.  Unfortunately we hadn't bought them a couple days earlier when they would have covered Edinburgh Castle, but here we were asked if we wanted to buy them.  Not knowing our future day plans (which park service sites we might be visiting) we weren't sure if it would save or cost us money to buy the multiple day pass.  So, the guy in an incredibly generous gesture, did 2 things.  First, he sold them to us at a discounted rate.  And second, he didn't 'date' the passes, which gave us one more day of use.  Wow.  We love Scottish people for their kindness, for being solicitous, for liking Americans...

Elgin Cathedral is a ruin, but worth seeing.

Also in Elgin is the home of Johnson Mills.  They're one of the big cashmere companies in the UK.  We'd seen their sweaters in London.  We bought scarves.  I love mine, but still do wonder what I'm going to do with the 6 or so scarves I now own!

From Elgin we headed a bit south to Speyside.  It's a river.  It's also home to roughly half of all the whisky distilleries in Scotland!  We called ahead to Cardhu to arrange a tour.  We drove back roads and enjoyed views.  At Cardu, which is the only distillery which can claim to being founded by a woman, we and another couple got a tour of their facilities and how they make their products.  We were there at the end of the day and tasted their 12 year old, their 12 year old aged in reconditioned oak casks, and 4 other whiskys.  Nice tour, nice whiskies, and a very beautiful piece of country.

A 75 minute car ride back to the hotel.  We love the GPS.  We can be in the midst of sheep, on roads only wide enough for a single car, with no one else in sight, and the GPS knows where we are and what we need to do to get back to our hotel!

Still not particularly liking the food, we stop at Tesco and buy our dinner, which we eat in our room.  We're back in time for one last half hour of the bag piper.  I absolutely love it.  It's made up in the sense that this guy wouldn't be playing in the field in front of this old country house otherwise, but sitting there and drinking one more Scotch whisky, at this classic old house, listening to him and the pipes echoing across the field, it's as close to an authentic experience as we can get in this world of chain stores and airplanes to anywhere...