On The Road: Peterhead to Auchterarder

After leaving our lovely lighthouse, we headed thru the beautiful mountain countryside.

This lovely church is Crathie Kirk.  We toured inside and were treated to view benevolence baskets the church member had put together for the needy as part of their harvest celebration.  

It’s one of the few 20/20 hindsight things I would have changed about our trip schedule.  We were here on Saturday.  The very next morning at the church harvest celebration service would have been Queen Elizabeth and Prince Phillip and whatever other members of the family who were staying at Balmoral Castle at the time!  Balmoral is the Scottish home of the royal family and is privately owned by them.  

OH MAN!!!!!

As it was, we had our B&B reserved and a special event booked for the morning.  There was no turning back.  

So on we went down the road. 

This is Braemar… where we stopped to have the worst cup of coffee and hot chocolate in all of Scotland.  Although it is a neat looking castle, we didn’t do the tour. 

Today was big tree day!  Here is a conifer of some sort.  Doesn’t it have the most fantastic trunk and limbs?  The whole thing looked braided.

This Sessile Oak was awesome in its size!

And the 300 year old sycamore is amazing too. 

As we left, Himself struck up a conversation with this gentleman who had been fishing for salmon.  He proudly posed with his fishing rods.  There was even a special carrier on the front of his car because they are too long to fit inside!

Another stop we made was at Bruar.  Here, I opted out of the hike to see this waterfall.  My knee was aching and I just didn’t feel like the walk over uneven ground.  So Himself and Dave took off and I entertained myself at The House of Bruar shopping area (http://www.houseofbruar.com/) .  That was some FINE shopping there!  Beautiful woolen clothing, a fine art gallery, a home shop, and a food shop with a restaurant.  I could easily spend the day there.  

The day ended with our arrival at the only real disappointment of the trip… our B&B.  I’ll not mention the name here; I have made a full report on the terrible conditions at Trip Advisor and Visit Scotland with more photos than these.  (I sure didn't chose well when I picked this one!)  

We knew we were in trouble when we asked the male owner where the guest lounge was.  He sniffed, “This isn’t one of your American B&Bs, we don’t have a lounge… you’ll have to content yourself with your room!”  Wow…  (BTW, we had stayed in 9 Scottish B&Bs to this point – and 2 after – and they ALL had a guest lounge area except this one!). 

The room and the outside hallway was a spider breeding center.  Every corner had spiders and when we called the owner down to clean the room, she only vacuumed the floor next to the bed… leaving the corners all the way to the ceiling still loaded.  All she said was “They are not poisonous!”  (Malarkey… they might not be dangerous, but they could pack a powerful bite!)  Found one of the little darlings in my bed the next morning… 

The beds both had human body hair on the sheets.  We slept in our dirty clothes that night and used a dirty T shirt to cover the pillow.  :-P

And here is my burnt breakfast.  The female owner came out and asked “who ordered the porridge?”  When we said we did, she said, “I forgot to go shopping so there isn’t any.  You’ll have to make do with cereal.”  

Oh…my…goodness…

We left as fast as we could!!!