Wild and Sexy

Today is Saturday

Well.

We arrived at our bus station on time!
We didn't associate our tour with the bus that had wild and sexy written all over it. So we were the last ones on with suspicions that we may be the oldest people on the bus
But young at heart and feeling like we were on one of our scout camps we set off on the next part of our adventure.


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Whilst waiting at the bus stop we noticed this interesting architectural feature. It looks as though it was added on later, badly. Not sure, the corner of the building appears to cut into the tower.

Off we went on our wild and sexy adventure.

Our first stop was St Andrews. The birth place of golf and where all the rules are made. The British open finished here last week and the scaffolded seating was still in place, lots of it.

We went for a bit of a wee walk along the waterfront to the castle ruins. The castle dates back to the late 1100’s it has a very long and interesting history, home to a number of Kings and a prison.

 
Moving along to St Andrews Abbey, built in1272, it was rebuilt three times and survived until  when John Knox gave a sermon that was so fiery referring to the Abbey as ‘Popish’ that the congregation were so moved that they ripped it down to the state it is today.

We wound our way through the streets taking in the interesting architecture of the town.

Somehow we managed to get completely lost and after much backtracking made it back to the bus with about ten seconds to spare. (Our punishment would have been, not to sing Grace (Scouts rule)but to buy the entire bus sweets))

Second stop was lunch at Dunkeld.  A very pretty Town beside the river Tay.  We strolled along the river bank, and found a Cathedral.  This Cathedral was being used for a wedding, the original part being a ruin, and dating back to the 1200’s.  It was completed 300 years later. 


 
 










 

 















We moved on to the Tomatin Whiskey distillery, neither of us being whisky drinkers we would have passed it right by, it was interesting to see how it is all done and we were invited into the store shed to see if we could spot the barrel with the year of our birth on it, whilst the rest of the group took pictures of barrels with dates on them such as 1985, we discovered the oldest barrel was dated 1967. The whisky in that is valued at $500,000.

On to the Culloden battlefield. This is where the final battle was fought and lost by the Jacobites under Bonny Prince Charles on 16^th April 1746, he was a bit of a clown in reality. Not only did the Scotts lose the battle with the English they also caused the start of the ‘Highland Clearances’ where all of the Clans were removed from their homeland. The first recorded ‘ethnic cleansing’, probably.

The battlefield is another place we would not have visited, left to our own devices. We would have gone on down the road to visit another Castle. But it was a somber place, being a war cemetery. Most of the bodies of those that fell are still buried there. The Scottish lost at least 1500 and only about 50 English. They were all buried on the battlefield.

The entire thing is haunting and is somewhat overshadowed by the large souvenir shop that is cashing in and the pay and display carpark…..

On we went, we reached the highest point in Scotland and spied some snow still present here in the middle of summer.

 
Our final destination for the day was Inverness. It is a really beautiful city with some lovely buildings. The name is based on the Scottish language, Inver meaning ‘ Mouth of the‘ and the river being the Ness. Not far from Loch Ness ( Nine miles in fact ) We are booked into the local Youth Hostel, we are even older than the people running it. It is good we have a private room but had to make our own beds. We bought our hammer so it didn’t take too long.

 








 

We went into town and had a good wander around and eventually found a good pub for tea, The Exchange, best value meal we have found yet, two big Rump steaks and a bottle of red wine for $40.

And a pint.

We had a good night and still made it home before dark. It was 10.30pm.