After our week in Edinburgh, we rented a car for a road trip and while we had a general direction in mind, we basically went where the road took us and to places people told us not to miss.
Stirling, St. Andrews, Dundee, through the Cairngorms National Park and the Grampian Mountains, Braemar, Lin of Dee, Grantown-on-Spey, Inverness, Loch Ness, and Dornoch, this is the circuit that comprised the second leg of our Scotland adventure.
Magical places, some of whose names you have heard seemingly all your life and some new and strange. No, we did not see the Loch Ness Monster, we did not visit a whiskey distillery, and I feel that I missed seeing the little fishing villages I had imagined in the northeast, but what we did see was magnificent.
We realized the grandness of it would not be totally evident in our photos — these scenes have found a home in our hearts and memories instead. (All photos @2012, Betsy and Mark Blondin)
Our first stop after leaving Edinburgh was Stirling, Stirling Castle and the Wallace Monument. Echoes of heroes, nobility, and legends whispered loudly in these places. Our first glimpse of Stirling Castle and Robert the Bruce standing guard in the rain was gray. In this castle, you can experience what life here was like; furnishings, tapestries, actors in full dress to answer questions, models of people working in the kitchens, guided tours, and tapestry looms made the 16th century come alive. Here is a cool timeline of the castle that shows how it changed hands between the English and the Scots, its reformations over the years, and who lived there including Mary Queen of Scots.
Looking across to the monument to William Wallace from Stirling Castle, yes, in the rain.
It was late when we arrived at the Wallace Monument, so the visitors center below and the information center in the monument were closed. A 20-minute uphill walk through the deep woods brought us to this. Not only is there a lot of history here but also a beautiful park with hiking and running trails.
You might think of St. Andrews as a small Scotland town that is the home of golf. It is the international home of golf, but it is also many other things. There really is a St. Andrew and the remains of St. Andrews Cathedral (1160 AD) and castle (1200 AD), and the town is also home to St. Andrews University, founded in 1413.
St. Andrews Cathedral was the largest building in Scotland for seven centuries, and here you can see the cemetery on the grounds.
Too cold and rainy for us to walk out and explore, we at least enjoyed the view of St. Andrews Castle and imagining what it might have been.
The beach at St. Andrews made famous in Chariots of Fire.
We spent our first night on the road at the Longforgan Coaching Inn. We arrived at around 10 p.m., and even though the kitchen was closed, Alistair, the owner, cooked us a great hamburger anyway. After some lively conversation we headed for bed. We enjoyed an equally delicious breakfast before heading for central Scotland with directions from Alistair in hand for the best sightseeing route to Inverness. It was a friendly and heart-warming experience in Longforgan near Dundee.
After leaving Longforgan the next morning, we started seeing breathtaking scenery, and it kept getting better. We headed north and through Cairngorms National Park and mountains.
After stopping at Braemar, we went to the Linn of Dee, a rapids where the river shoots through a rock gorge. The River Dee flows from the Cairngorms all the way to the North Sea at Aberdeen.
In the woods near the River and Linn of Dee.
We had vistas like this around every curve of the narrow winding road, it seemed.
Our second night was spent in a hostel near Loch Ness, and the next day this is one of the views as we headed back toward Inverness and on to Dornoch. Do you see Nessie in the Loch?
Urquhart Castle’s dramatic ruins overlook Loch Ness. This castle was once under the control of Robert the Bruce and has a long, violent history.
The farthest north we made it was to Dornoch, and it was beautiful. The Royal Dornoch Golf Club overlooked this beach, and it was beautiful, too. And on to the Isle of Skye…
Beautiful!!! Takes us back to the past, and fantasy thoughts of what it might have been ! Thanks