We had a good night’s sleep after our late dinner Friday night. As we had chatted about with Barry and Rich the night before, we did actually see them at breakfast…..at the next table. They were already set to go and had packed their tent and loaded their bikes. We wished them good weather and safe travels…….very fun guys to meet.
I took another run at the full Scotch breakfast and am actually enjoying the haggis and blood pudding. Andi is probably making smarter and simpler decisions at each meal. She is being smart about her food choices and I need to do the same……although it is a bit late in the trip! After breakfast we finished packing and since the sun had broken through with very beautiful and dramatic clouds, we decided to take a hike out to the end of the promontory.
Our hotel was literally at the end of the road, so the only way to get to this special rock formation (a naturally weathered arch in rugged stone cliffs) was to hike out there. It was actually where Barry and Rich had pitched their tents last night and they highly recommended the ‘short walk.’ We must look in better shape then we are! It was about a half mile out a very well maintained path (I think for emergency vehicles. The landscape was staggering, steeply sloping down to the sea, with very high rock ledges on one side and a lush embankement of wild rhododendrons on the other…….truly beautiful and wonderfully remote. We really got away from things out there!.......although we got quite a bit more ‘winded’ then we anticipated!.......and it took a little longer than we planned! Anyway, we still checked out of the hotel on time just before 11:00.
In the photo above, Andrea is returning from a 10 minute conversation with the ferry driver!
The drive today was about 2 ½ hours to get back to the outskirts of Edinburgh, so we had plenty of time. As we were chatting with the desk clerk at the hotel about our driving plan (asking for any suggestions) she said we should try to stop at Stirling Castle. She said it had been very nicely restored and had a lot of history. We looked at the map and it was right on our route of travel…….so we found an afternoon adventure!
Today was the first day of another English Bank Holiday weekend (Monday off) and it seemed like half of Scotland was headed to the west coast and islands! Thank goodness we had been there the previous few days and not on the weekend! The traffic was totally astonishing, but fortunately all heading in the other direction! It was like heading to the Cape on the Friday of July 4th weekend! The amazing thing was the number of RV’s and campers! Every 3rd or 4th vehicle had its own overnight accommodations! We noticed during our drive a large number of campgrounds that were filling up quickly……..very, very popular! And if it wasn’t a camper it was a motorcycle! Big, noisy and crazy fast drivers going what seemed to be too fast, weaving around the campers. All of this was on a two lane road. There are no highways in this part of the country! It was actually fun to watch, although a bit stressful on the driving…….as every road insists on avoiding is straight alignment or geometry……..everything flows in continuous curves!
We stopped around 1:00 for a break and something to eat/drink and actually discover a wonderful café outside a small town along a river……at bit in the middle of nowhere. It seemed to be popular so we stopped. It was fun and a welcome break.
From there we moved on to Stirling Castle. The timing of this was also good as the driving is only bearable for an hour or so at a time. The views going through Argyle and back through part of the Highlands were quite scenic (dramatic) and the vaiable clouds and sun made it even more beautiful. The Castle sits on a high promontory that required a series of hairpin switchback turns to negotiate up to the car park. The really fun thing about this place is that the location (just down from the Castle) on the river is where William Wallace achieved one of the most famous victories against the English….famously portrayed in the movie Braveheart. It was fun to put a closer sense of reality to the movie…….what a crazy world they lived in.
We did a walking tour of the Castle and also learned more about the famous tapestries that hung in this castle +/- 500 years ago……called the Unicorn Tapestries. There is a long and fascinating story about these tapestries (too long for this blog!) but the originals now hang in the Cloisters Museum in New York (Metropolitan Medieval Collections). Their history remains somewhat speculative and all the more intriguing. The installation in the Castle are beautiful reproductions. (in fact, the tapestries are French!).
Sensing it was time for a serious rest, we headed out the last 35 minutes of driving to our hotel and arrived just before 5:00. We chose this hotel after looking a numerable options including going back into the heart of the City for one more night. This choice, however, was selected as a pressure reducing mechanism for our morning flight! It turned out to be quite fun……..a kind of darth vader experience on the outside and very modern and comfortable spaces inside. It was fun shift of scenery from the renovated Ferry Porter’s outpost the night before! We got a bit of a rest and had a dinner reservation for 8:00. We went down early for a drink in the lounge and had a very nice meal in the dining room……more like a modern pub.
Boy did we crash after dinner!
