Shopping.

Quite an expensive day. I bought some summer clothes, 2 pairs of sandals and the Shrek 2 DVD. On the not so expensive side, I called into JB's and picked up Duran Duran's latest single and some very cheap blank video tapes. I thought they were $2.25 for a single tape, so I got two. Turns out it was a three pack for $2.25. Bargain.

More Scotland:

Pitlochry is a lovely town about 13 miles north of Birnam that we drove through on the way to Blair Castle. We took the looooong way round due to being thrown off track by a diversion of the A9 - turns out it was the old A9, not the new A9, and it had been washed away in the recent floods. We saw lots of sheep on the road and amusing hand written signs such as "Sheep do not understand the Green Cross Code". It's true, they don't, the buggers were all over the place. We didn't stop at Pitlochry on this occasion, we'd decided to give the town a good going over the following day.

Blair Castle doesn't look like your average pile of bricks. It was sold by the current Earl of Athol in the late 70's, so, unlike a lot of working castles, the family doesn't live there.

We wandered around the Castle and grounds and watched in amusement as a duck tried scrumping plums from a tree in the Hercules Garden.

Dinner that night was at the Atholl Arms in Dunkeld. We ate in the sitting room as the restaurant was full. It was very olde Englishman's club - deep leather chairs, open fire, that sort of thing.


Blair Castle 

Pitlochry, second visit. Although very touristy, Pitlochry has a nice air. We visited the Rennie MacIntosh shop where I could have gone mad buying stuff that would get broken on the way home.

We had lunch at the Old Armoury restaurant; Ash had read some very good reviews and they were justified. Lovely food, well priced. Our waiter was Australian (no getting away from us!).


The Old Armoury 


Old Armoury 

On the way back to Birnam we called into the Old Mill Tea Shop, a cafe in a working water mill. The flour milled is used in the cakes and other goodies sold in the cafe. We had carrot cake with ginger and it was delish.

Loch Ness. The following day we drove up to Inverness, turned left and down to the Loch Ness visitor centre. After seeing the price of admission we decided to have lunch and a mooch around the very tacky tourist shop. Loch Ness is part of a series of lochs that run north east from Inverness to south west at Fort William. One of the lochs is Loch Lochy.


Loch Ness 


Loch Ness 2 


Loch Ness Visitor Centre 

We drove back via the north shore of the lochs, with water on one side of us and mountains on the other. It was lovely watching the mist rolling down the mountains, not so lovely when it rolled down onto us.


Brooklet 

A pretty picture; can't for the life of me remember where I took it.