June 3rd 2025 Last days in Scotland. Belfast and Dublin

In the background one of the weirdest castles we've seen in Scotland, Braemar castle. It was white, ugly and run by the community. Hence it was closed, but first they'd let us pay for the parking. Philip Farquharson, the Laird of Invercauld, who last lived there, would probably say; 'You can't leave anything to the commoners'. Some nice art instead with the turd in the background.

Braemar is quite a nice little town. The town is divided in two halves by a river. Both, the catholic side and the protestant side, 'needed' everything for themselves. So the town has two big churches, two big hotels, two schools, two butchers, etc. Complete religious madness. As it looked like they had buried the hatchets by now, we tried to find a car park to explore Breamar a bit further. We found a nice spot next to the stadium where the Highland games were held. Because of my crocs, Nienke did not allow me to have lunch in the very fancy hotel. I admit that the grey-green of the 'great coat' of the two doormen did indeed contrast a bit with the orange of my crocs. Missed opportunity my darling.

We saw endless fields of rapeseed in bloom everywhere. It's used for a variety of purposes, from margarines to biofuel. And for nice photoshoots of course.

We had some time to kill before we would meet up with friends we met in New Zealand. So we accepted an invitation from some strangers to come over for a cup of tea. I think they were trying to impress us. OK, their driveway was slightly longer than ours. This is Glamis castle, pretty nice, great pinetum with pines of over 200 years old. The Strathmores live here and queen Elizabeth grew up here. The tour was really good. They did not have replica's of the torture instruments in the giftshop, disappointing.

OK, nice house, but an awful lot of windows to wash.

And my hair stands on end when I think of maintaining these gardens. You'd need an army of woofers... For whom you then have to cook..... You can't win. Downsizing it is. Indeed, a lot of these castles have been abandoned by the families because of maintenance cost. And that is not just rebuilding because some neighbouring king decided it was time for a nice bonfire in  your backyard, but just plain maintenance and having to throw parties and dinners for all your 'sudden friends and acquaintance's'.

We visited Stu and Sandra, two lovely people we met in New Zealand through the people who bought our house. Before you start laughing about my remark before, we were actually invited!

Stu advised us to visit Dunkeld. From experience we know the locals always know best. So we did. And we were not disappointed. Lovely little town and surrounding forests.

We did a lovely walk through the bordering woods.

Had some time at the camping to do a few repairs. This table becomes a part of the bed. Unfortunately it was just to wide, hence the damage. Making the bed was quite an exercise, but Nienke and I have now got such a routine that we have almost beaten the Scottish Motorhome Association record for motorhomes under 7m lenght.

A nice riverside pint of beer was followed by a great evening with some really nice music at a local pub.

I am not even going to tell you where this was, to prevent it from becoming a tictoc pilgrimage. In the UK and Ireland they have an tendency to chose the weirdest colours for their houses. 'Have I got a deal for you, 30 liters of pink or turquoise paint for practically nothing!' The result is that streets look like a colour pallete at your local paint store. The owner of this house topped up the bright blue of his house with the contents of the local paediatric department he inherited when  that went bust.

Nienke had found the 'Three Lochs forest drive' which was very promising. It turned out to be an old forestry area where they had created some camping spots amidst fallen trees. No views, but kilograms of dust to compensate that. We ignored the 10 km speed limit and got the hell out of there. Not our type of holiday. Luckily we found Loch Katrine near by.

'Let's do that short walk now' said Nienke. I think this is how the south pole was discovered. Although Roald Amundsen never married, he had a relation with Kristine Elisabeth "Kiss" Bennet, who at one time said 'let's walk into town and get an ice cream, I know the way'. We walked quite a few k's more than anticipated. 

The good thing about a motorhome is that you've got everything with you.  Refreshments and food. and we were in no hurry, so we stayed another night.

In the morning we rented electric bikes (on advise of the manager who thought we were too old to do the whole trip the old fashioned way) and put them on the ferry,  which brought us to the other side of the loch.

Difficult to see on this picture, but the house you see there was especially build for a royal visit. Queen Victoria visited Loch Katrina in 1859 to celebrate the completion of the waterworks (the lake supplies most of the water for Glasgow). The local councils spend a bit of money to build a suitable accommodation for Vicky. When she arrive the was greeted by 21-gun salute tribute. What could possibly go wrong. Well, the gun salute shattered all the windows in the brand new cottage. Obviously Vicky did not sleep there that night.

Of course, us Dutchies could easily have done without the electric power, heck, we could have circled the whole loch twice before darkness. Nice trip though. Wouldn't you be buried here? So quiet.

Nienke after a small pitstop (lakeside picnic lunch).

We had one more night in our mobile home, which we spend on Loch Lomond. Big mistake! Not only had half Glasgow flocked to the same camping on the lake, the notorious midgets suddenly arrived like Poetin's armies. With total disregard for their lives they attacked me. Must have killed a few thousand, but got bitten several times as well, resulting in bright red, bloody itching lumps. 

Our last day in Scotland was in Glasgow. Fortunately less midgets, but the damage was already done. I did not bring steroid creams for nothing.

It appears the students in Glasgow do not respect the old heroes. Or they hate traffic cones as much as Kiwi's do. Anyway, the decoration of the statues was amusing.

The visit of the Kelvin Grove Art Gallery museum in Glasgow was a party. Not only were we welcomed by the choir of the Salvation army, but we really enjoyed all the art in this amazing building.

Again, wow. A brief visit to the Pot Still pub, with the finest collection of malt whiskies in Scotland. I could almost understand the feeling of women in a shoe store......

We had been warned that Celtic played the last game of the season at home that day. The year before, festivities had gone out of hand a bit with fights between Celtic and Glasgow Rangers fans (the old clash between the catholics and protestants again). We were advised to be on guard and maybe avoid certain area's. But we encountered no problems at all and had a great time celebrating with Celtic fans. Some consolation for me as I almost forgot how my Ajax managed to give the title in Holland to 040 on the last day. Because you can, we took the ferry to Belfast. The bus drive from Glasgow to the Stena ferry was OK, but for the people watching the internet on their phones. Of course the earbuds and headphones they normally wear in the streets were suddenly gone,. 'Everybody needs to enjoy this'. And loud phone calls in which half the used vocabulary is 'Wah?'. The Babylonic crowd on the ferry is one loud bunch of chewing people. It is basically a floating MacDonalds. There were actually Germans using bags instead of towels to reserve chairs for people of their bus who might want to sit there. The old lady that had slept next to me left and was replaced with two new ones who started to declare to each other how nice their tea was for 5 minutes. Then one asked me if I was reading a book, 'no, I am trying to stare a hole in my screen'. Oh, and I forgot the groups of Chinese tourists. The Chinese language apparently requires a lot of shouting and coughing loudly and productively every 10 seconds. Why don't they have a silent room on board of these ships? Nice hotel down centre in Belfast, close to the impressive council building. The town is not very big, but it is loaded with pubs where they have live music.

The real Irish music we found in Kelly's cellar. But we were so lucky to find quite a few other places as well. Not that difficult, there must be about 4 pubs in every street. In Ireland you go to business school to learn about economics, you try to find a niche in the market, a real business opportunity. So you do a bit of market research and then ..... you open a pub next to the other three. And darn, it works!

On advise of some people at home we did the 'Belfast taxi tour', a tour through the quarters where 'the Troubles' were situated between 1969 and 1998. It was actually quite disappointing. All the murals looked like they were hung there yesterday and the driver admitted that it was all for the tourists. Even adding the Israel-Palestine conflict to it to 'modernise' the tour. As we lived in the Netherlands during 'the Troubles' we were well aware of what happened. A really good museum would have been better.

The driver was quite surprised we did not want to sign the mural that was purposely painted over every two weeks, especially for tourists.

Nienke was very happy with all the street art in Belfast.

Can't remember exactly what this was, but we did not agree.....

The Titanic experience was something we thought would be less interesting, but boy, were we wrong. It was not so much about the disaster, but more about how the thing was build (it was build right there in Belfast). The building is the actual size of the ship. We really enjoyed it.

And another night of live music. Coincidentally again in Kelly's cellars this one. That is because the two in the middle play the Uilleann pipes. The Irish bagpipes something you do not see often. Inflation is not done by mouth like their Scottish counterparts, but with the elbow. Seemed more comfortable.

When you meet an Irishman he'll ask you "how are you', not expecting an answer. Occasionally they do not ask 'how are you' but just sit down next to you and start telling about their trip to Africa. And you get to see the 500 accompanying pictures on his cell phone. We had some fun with Sean though.

Some more street art.

One of the many churches/cathedrals in Belfast (allmost as many as pubs). In the adjourning art museum we asked the girl at the reception what the spire on the church was for. She had no idea, never wondered about that. In comes dr. Google. And thus the nice Argentinian girl (practically all staff is foreign) was educated on the fact that the cathedral was so heavy that it started to sink. The archbishop could forget about his big bell tower. Many years later the church settled for the spire.

More street art.

Ain't that true. I've never done one of those ancestry tests, but I may have some Irish blood in me.

This beautiful woodwork called 'Magnus modus', by Joseph Walsh, we found in the beautiful National gallery in Dublin. Just before that we went to the Little museum. I can fully recommend that to any visitor to Dublin. In about an hour they tell you about the history of Dublin, using the different items standing and hanging in the room you are in. The story is full of humour and it is difficult to wipe the grin of your face when it briefly becomes serious. A very funny experience. A few americans came in late and Moira immediately invited them to sit down , telling them that we had just been discussing how everybody lost their virginity, and it was their turn straight away. The look on their face.......Very entertaining start of our visit to Dublin.

Can we sleep here?

Visit to Trinity College. Wow, I studied in Utrecht and that was a great experience, but to study in Dublin.... Very impressive buildings and than the town full of culture, history and entertainment...... If I had had the choice.....

The Pomedoro sphere (sfera con sfera) by Arnaldo Pomedoro, on the square of Trinity College. We did not joint the queue for a brief look at the book of Kells, an ancient book in Latin,. It was  probably written by monks on the island of Iona, that we have visited before. We had already seen and heard  about it at the Little museum. All right, it was a copy, but nevertheless.

A visit to the whiskey museum then. In 1834 the English government put a tax on making whiskey and they actively searched the countries for illegal stills. In the first decade they found 314 in England, 692 in Scotland and 9198 in Ireland. That does not just mean that the Irish were not very good at hiding things..... Making whiskey in Ireland is something sacred.

Irish whiskey is very smooth. I do have to say I prefer the peated Scottish whiskeys, so does Nienke, who is rapidly becoming an expert.

I think she looks happier than in a clothes store. Maybe we can finally enjoy shopping together.

Some beautiful paintings by Peter de Gree, a Belgian artist, in Dublin castle. Beautiful drawings in black and white giving the impression it was a relief. We've seen quite a lot works of Flemish and Dutch artists in Ireland by the way.

The Council building in Dublin. I think Nienke wanted this picture to propose and upgrade of the Kapiti Council building.

Christchurch cathedral. Very impressive buildings. The first cathedral I visited where they asked an entry fee. The second was St. Johns, also in Dublin.

The church still had some spare money after building the cathedral. Not really knowing what to do with that money they just continued building on the other side of the road. With 'they' I mean the really poor people who dutiful donated money to the church on Sundays, thinking that money was going to be used for the sick and poor in the world. Wrong, it's for a new pool room for the bishops. Nice lamp posts Dublin council has. We visited the much more interesting St. Audoen's church close to the cathedral. Full of history and far less tourists. Recommended. Unfortunately we missed the organ concerto by an Ukrainian lady.

Had to take this picture of the taps at one of the pubs where we listened to music. Nienke did not want one......

Funny card in the gift shop of the Irish museum of modern art. We had a good time there (even though some art was downright bizarre) but unfortunately we had to leave in a hurry as we had tickets with a timeslot for the next event.

A visit to the Guinness museum. Awfully touristy but we can now say that you just have to do this. It is not just a tribute to the beer, but also to the Guinness family and what they and the factory meant for Dublin. Guinness is Dublin and the other way around. Nienke learned that 95% of Guinness is water. She does not tell me to drink more water that often anymore.

They even put on a show for us, some great Irish music

and Irish dancing of course.

Throughout the years they had several advertisement campaigns. The cycling fish above was one of them, the toucan was another one. Nienke always wanted me to buy one of those flower shirts, just to be able to mingle in with the 'more modern men'. I now am the proud owner of a Guinness toucan jungle shirt. Ready for the next beach party!

I just ordered one size up from a pint when this thing turned up. Coincidence? I think not.

We again tried the Brazen head for live music TripAdvisor talked about so much. No music, just food and tourists. One of the musicians in another pub told us that the owners actually asked them to play more popular songs instead of what is called 'trad. music', because that is what tourists want. Not us though. Luckily we heard a flute from the pub on the other side of the road. Checked it out and yes, at 'the Merchant' they had original Irish live music.

A great night amidst mostly locals. Some of them clearly not completely sober. The lady in red wanted Nienke to dance. I just played dead! It was a great last night in Dublin. The next day we would pick up a motorhome to discover the southwest coast of Ireland.

May 13th 2025: Mecca is in Tomintoul!

We found this cute little fellow on our way from Skye to the Westcoast of Scotland. What a lovely piece of art. Just sad that Nienke did not want to get rid of some stuff to make room in her suite case. Would have looked nice in Te Horo beach. 

We briefly stopped in Shieldaig for lunch. Decided to not go for the standard fried menu they usually present customers of restaurants in Scotland. If you can't find a chef, you just fry everything and people love it. We found this nice guy who cold and hot smoked salmon and trout in his back yard. Fantastic lunch in our 'own' motorhome.

Water everywhere. Well, not everywhere, as we would  later discover on the other side.

Nienke had read an article about Scotland in the Guardian. Their advice was to visit a remote little restaurant in Badachro. Famous for the menu and the local whisky, which was made by a man in his own home. Limited, numbered editions of course. We started with just a coffee on the deck of this funky restaurant.

Parked the van for the night on the parking near the wharf. Hardly anybody there. But by dinner time people emersed from everywhere. The menu was unbelievable (well, it is if you've been driving past 'tourist feeding shacks of all sorts' for a while. The tuna was truly delicious.

Of course we had to try the local whisky. Sad we could not visit the famous home distillery the next day. 

After we interrogated the barman it was time for some darts. For the people who won't believe I won the first game with a double 4; there is photographic evidence somewhere. Van Gerwen, your time is over!

Next day we climbed Beinn Eighe. Absolutely beautiful, 

but bloody freezing. This little ridge was the only structure protecting us a little bit from the polar winds. A sandwich with frozen cheese.

The van comes with all the luxury you can imagine. Well, we did have to bring our own entertainment. Even bought a little speaker so we could play some music every now and then. Amazing quality for such a cheap thing. Has dropped from all possible heights in the van and it is still working. Nice sound too.

We free camped on the overload carpark of the Medical centre in Badcaul. They must be pretty healthy around here as we did not see a single client during our 10 hour stay.

Maybe they just call the ambulance. If they can pronounce it without entangling your tongue.

Nice sunset on our camping in Ullapool. Weird situation, we saw about 50 people walking around with instruments. But we could not find a single pub with live music. Briefly heard a bagpipe in the evening, but when we chased the sound it vanished.

Started the day with the climb of Stac Pollaidh. We reached the carpark intact, which was a small wonder after having driven over a small windy road with potholes the size of small garden pools. In New Zealand holes that deep would require a permanent position of a life saving guard. 

Impressive rocks. When Nienke saw people on the tops, she assured me she was not going to climb those. Little did she know that the track actually passed the top. She did it!

This must indeed be one of the most beautiful tracks in Scotland, if not the best.

The same day we did the Knockan Crag walk, too easy for us. But very interesting. Who knew that the north west of Scotland was part of the american continent in the past. Bet you Trump would want to reverse the current situation if he could. Nice piece of art, made from schist stone.

We even did a third walk that day. Apparently someone in the past had found the courage to walk miles into a remote valley and found some caves full of animal and man bones. 

Really nice walk towards those Bone caves.

To our surprise the caves were empty. Bit disappointing.

The caves were clearly the result of old underground rivers. A proof of that we found halfway down the track, were a stream just came out of the ground.

Found a nice spot for the night on a stream. Time to rest the tired legs. Woke up early the next morning because of the a cuckoo that had quite clearly missed some classes. Did not stop at 12 at all. Must have fallen asleep again around 5.27 or so..... By that time I was ready to throw grandfathers clock down the waterfall.

Ardvreck castle. Just a reminder to not postpone maintenance of your house.

We did not see many more very interesting sites further north, and there were too many cars on the road doing the NC500. Time to change scenery. We crossed the country past Loch Shin towards Inverness. We camped in Dornoch where we did a 'whisky flight' of local whiskies. It may not be a surprise which whisky won;

Glenmorangie. Another distillery tour would be a bit overdone, but we had to walk into the the visitors centre. They played the adds they made with Harrison Ford. Quite funny.

Worth looking up some more of them on YouTube.

Had to do the touristy thing and visit Loch Ness. Mingling with hordes of  Giftshop junkies in busses is not high on our list, so we chose to drive along the other side of Loch ness and have a picnic opposite Urquhart castle. Great choice. By the way, did not even see something like a fish swim there!

Visited Gawdor castle and it's stunning gardens. Actually, we just visited the gardens and did not waste time on the medieval selfies inside.

Some funny carvings in the woods full of enormous sequoia and red wood trees.

Lovely stream underneath the castle, basically the old sewerage system. If you look really well at the picture you can see where the toilet used to be. 'Henry, remember to only fish for trout upstream of the house'.

Nienke was really happy with all the flowers, bushes and shrubberies with all their colours. A bit of a difference with the grey of the mountains. 

Brodie castle. Arrived too late for a visit. We'll look it up in the real estate magazine we picked up.

Instead of driving straight away to the mountains of the Cairngorms we decided to look at some old fishing towns. Names like Buckie, Findochty, Portknockie, Cullen and Portsoy. All nice little villages with well maintained houses. A delight to drive around, although the roads were really, really small.

We stayed in Portsoy for the night. Why? Just because I though it might be nice. Ended up in the local pub,' the Shore Inn'. The lady behind the bar said, before we could say anything, 'if you are here for food, you're in the wrong place'. After this warming welcome we had some really nice conversations with her and a female friend sitting on the other side of the bar, who worked at the local bakery. We had quite some laughs, had to (reluctantly) try the local whisky (Glenglassaugh), and got quite some unsolicited advice. One of them was about the famous local pie from the bakery where she worked, the mac'n'cheese pie. Even if you are not Italian, it's a big 'no thanks'! 

Got the wifi password and the code to the showers from Ian, the campsite manager, we had to call, as he did not think it was worth to come over to the campsite himself. 'I'll see ya in the morning'. Next day we drove to the Glenglassaugh distillery, we must have finished the very last bottle the day before. They were closed till further notice. So we followed a road sign saying 'heritage village'.

What a charming little town, Fordyce. A very small town, build around the small Fordyce castle. The town has less than a hundred inhabitants. But a thriving primary school and a really nice house for sale next to it. If only we could find the real estate agent. We did not....

All the houses were immaculate. The town of course almost deserted. We spend a bit of time walking around and visiting the small cemetery and church. Like walking in a Hitchcock movie.

Grave stones, leaning over at dangerous angles, and crows, making a hell of a noise.

We decided to spend another night on the coast, this time in Cullen. We walked into the Heritage museum where the proprietor, Nora MacCay told us a lot of stories about the village. About the Earl of the castle who wiped the old village around the drive to his castle of the map. They did not have any sewerage, and the Ear; could not stand the smell anymore. As you do. He did build a new village for them on the seaside. He also had shares in a railway building company and when the railway came the authorities gave the job to the competitor. The Earl got revenge by prohibiting the railway company to go over his land, so they had to build a few very impressive bridges. In hindsight doing the town a big favour. The photo next to this story is of the women of the town who used to carry the men on their backs from the ships to prevent their leather boots from getting wet. Ah, the good old times..... 

panorama shot from the railway bridge, nowadays a pedestrian and cycle path.

Sign above the public toilets next to the golf course. Scottish slang for a young women. Nienke thought she was young enough....

A well deserved rest after a stroll through town.

But we did another stroll in the evening. The ruins of Findlater castle were indeed found quite a bit later than anticipated. In the end we walked 15 km along the coast with a few tough climbs. When we were there a pod of about 10 dolphins passed behind the castle. 

Time to drive to the hills. On advise of another guest at the Shore Inn we went to the Mash Tun whisky bar in Charlestown of Aberlour, where we had a coffee (really!!!). The display of Spey side whiskies was unbelievable there. This display shows Glenfarclas family cask whiskies from 1952 onwards. A dram (basically a sip) from my birthyear would set you back 350 pounds. Nienke said it wasn't my birthday....

This is Loch an Eiland castle. We did a nice afternoon walk and met quite a few families and older couples doing the same. Usually the men dressed in checkered shirts and Shetland flat cap hats, walking stick in one hand, pipe in the other. A bit too easy for us and we were quite underdressed. . 

Did meet our first snake. A bit out of proportion worm basically. They do have adders though.

I saw a picture on a tourist magazine of a castle that got little attention from local tourist information. So, time to visit it. These were the Ruthven barracks, a stronghold of the Highlanders, then the Jacobites, then the red Jacks, etc. A lot of fighting in other words. Pretty impressive.

Did another walk to An Loch Uaine, to complete our 15 km for the day. This one was again advised by a nice guy in the museum. We arrived 10 minutes after the sun disappeared behind a ridge, making the small loch even less attractive than it was. It was still very hot, so we thought is was a good idea to take a dip in Loch Morlich. Apparently so uncommon that the whole escapade was filmed by an Indian lady and is now for sale at the Apple iStore. 

Waking up next to the same Loch in the morning was pretty spectacular,. 

Had a bit of a depressed mood because we could not get into contact with the company we rented the motorhome in Ireland with. Multiple calls and mails remained unanswered. Nienke cheered me up by leading me into the Whisky shop in Tomintoul. Wow. No whisky from New Zealand, but for the rest almost every bottle available. And after that we got a call from the rental company, all good!

The old store house of an iron and manganese mine. They only lasted about 10 years, but the still.......

A few family pictures from the female toilets at Balmoral castle. Something you have to do. I mean visiting the castle, not the toilets.

Pretty impressive, but a shame they had parts of it in scaffolding. Have to say, I did a brief inspection and there is definitely some delayed maintenance.

They invited us for a cup of tea, but as it was after 5 we thought a G&T was more appropriate. So we just went home.

Next day we walked the Spittel of Glen Muick Lochnagar walk. A 19 km, 900 m ascent day trip. Camped in the car park. Apparently not allowed, but with about 20 others it was unlikely someone would bother, especially as you'd have to drive a long, small and windy road to get there.

An early start. The deer were still grazing near the campsite.

Saw and heard some grouse. 

Nienke at the first hurdle. Proud to be standing at snow level.

It was nice and warm when we started, but at the top, the wind was fierce and chilly. The views were amazing though.

Yeah, made to it the top of the walk, one of the highest points in the Cairngorms.

Walking back down through a nice valley,

with an impressive waterfall.,

Met a few Belgians who were climbing up and were already quite proud to reach this little rock. Exchanged camera's for some pictures. By now they'll realise I just made some selfies on their camera.

Ate our lunch at the little villa of the Royal family, Glas-allt-Shiel, at Loch Muick. Built by queen Victoria. Not bad for a place to change into togs ay?

That's it for today. We'll keep you posted on our next adventures.