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.
Welcome to our blog. On our blog we’ll regularly post about our adventures on the other side of the world. We moved to New Zealand in 2007 and settled in our small paradise on the Kapiti coast in 2010. A fantastic spot in Te Horo Beach. Nienke has been working as a manager for the Kapiti District Council in Paraparaumu in 4 different roles and has started her new role there in October 2019. Hans has been working as a part-time General Practitioner, first in Otaki and the last few years as a locum, mainly on the South Island.
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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'! 
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