Scotland #10: Back to the Start

The first stop on our way back to the ship in Newcastle was at a really nice and almost completely empty beach.\ After a beautiful but fairly windy walk along the cost we headed towards Inverness.

Inverness has some nice places one could visit but the highlight was definitely a small tea shop. Frieder had his first Pina Colada tea there with many more to come in the future. Writing this we realized that we drank some tea here and there but definitely not the amount we had expected.

On the road to Cairngorms National Park we admired the apparent love for small traffic cones.

Once we left the main road towards our next accommodation the vista changed drastically. The smooth hills and neat little rivers in the valley feel super calming and are just a joy to look at.

The day ended at a small place that looked like it used to be a farm before and now switched to being a hotel where every room is a tiny hut.\ We’ve never been to one and were really excited once we arrived. The place felt super cozy and especially with the small heater was really cool!

Coming from Germany requires you to try out the local beers. One brand that made it into our feed was VaultCity and their sourbeers. They have around 100 different flavors and the small store we passed by had a small selection of it. We tried orange creamsicle and it was extremely close to the ice cream it tries to imitate. That’s quite an impressive achievement.

The next day we went to Loch Muick. The weather made the place look a bit mysterious at times and with the possibility of rain we decided to shorten the long hike into the rainy clouds to a smaller tour along the lake. Overall the time there was well spent but with better weather it’s most likely even more beautiful.

On the way to Lock Muick we drove through a small but really well kept village that caught our attention. When we went back the sun came out so we had to do a quick stop to admire the houses along the main road in Bridge of Gairn. For Cooper it was even better because he got his own cup of ice cream at a local ice cream shop. It’s amazing to see that a lot of people enjoy dogs so much that they have some treats or offer something special on offer for them.

The next day we continued our journey towards the south and did a stop at Braemer Castle. We didn’t enter it because we already visited some other castles and the entry fee felt a bit too high for our desired quick look inside.\ Nonetheless it might be worth a visit since even from the outside it looks quite stunning.

We did our lunch break in Pitlochry which is situated at the boundary of the national park. It’s a good looking and well kept village with the downside of having a bit too many tourist buses as visitors. Having been to fairly remote plates it was quite a difference seeing so many people on the streets again.

The final stop on the way back was Edinburgh. We had a whole 8 people room for ourselves - this really was the cheapest option…\ Besides the price for our one night stay, Edinburgh made a good first impression: a cool Rock club/bar right next to our hotel, really delicious food with a lot of variety to choose from and even a nice park next to the university. It’s a city that you can definitely visit more than once since every area we visited impressed us and asked to be explored even more.

Unfortunately we didn’t have a lot of time anymore so the next day we headed immediately south in order to catch the ferry. We did have a bit of extra time in the end so we did a small detour to check out the surfers before we headed back to mainland europe.