Handa Island

17 Wednesday Jul 2013

Posted by Ardys in nature, photography, Travel

Tags

Handa, northern highlands, photography, Scotland, Shorehouse Seafood Restaurant, Travel

What a nuisance for you, I have wireless service again so here are more of our travel tales…

Our last day of walking and eating in the Scottish Highlands was very memorable. We decided to have a look at the island of Handa, off the coast of Scourie. Handa is known for the wildlife and its pristine environment, but like much of the Highlands can be hopelessly socked in by nasty weather. Once again the travel gods were looking after us. The weather was about 10C (50F) and only a low wind for our trip on the ferry to the island, very mild compared to what it could have been.

The only complexity to this entire arrangement was when, after two glasses of water, two cups of tea and one cup of coffee my dear husband mentioned he’d read there were no toilets on the island. The walk we planned took 2.5 to 3 hours not including the additional wait and ferry time to and from the island. So potentially five hours with no toilet facilities. OMG. I’ll spare you the details but the outcome was a very nervous me until we crossed to the island and discovered there was one composting toilet on the island. I have seldom been more uncomfortable than on the last half hour of the 2.5 hour walk around the island. Are we noticing a theme appearing for this journey?? I hope not as we still have a couple of weeks to go!

The scenery, and flora were well worth any discomfort. There was potential to see wales, seals, otters, puffins and sea birds, but on this particular day we had only a brief otter siting and the sea birds. It worried us not a whit for we enjoyed the shear cliffs and stunning rock formations and flora enormously.

At the end of our five hour excursion we stopped at the ferry dock for a late lunch at the Shorehouse Seafood Restaurant. Once again we lucked into a charming and flavoursome discovery! (Apparently once the well known British chef, Rick Stein, ate there and it got his stamp of approval.) First of all, you have to love a restaurant that allows well behaved dogs to sleep under the tables while the humans dine on fresh salmon and crab salad, followed by a deadly chocolate brownie with awesome vanilla bean ice cream. Life just doesn’t get much better. Forgive me if I sound too happy, I wish all of it, and more, for you. (Sorry we ate the brownie before I remembered to take the photo…my bad.)

The Ben Loyal Hotel

15 Monday Jul 2013

Posted by Ardys in photography, Travel

≈ 3 Comments

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Food, Hotels, northern highlands, photography, Scotland, Tongue

I have learned to dry my hair without the aid of a mirror and to apply makeup with only the light from a window 10 feet away. It is an amazingly difficult thing to find a hotel or B&B room with these amenities, it seems. However we have still very much enjoyed most of the places we have stayed this trip. Perhaps our favourite, though, was the Ben Loyal Hotel in Tongue, on the west coast of the Northern Highlands in Scotland. It was not a fancy place by any means but our room was freshly painted and pleasantly decorated and had small amenities, including a dressing table with natural light only a couple of feet away.

But perhaps the thing we most appreciated was the very simple shower. It has come to our notice over our 40+ years of travel that no two showers are the same if you don’t count showers in the same hotel. Every hotel has it’s own way of expressing how the thing we call a shower is manifested. But the Ben Loyal has the simplest one we’d ever seen. You press a button to start and again to stop. That’s all. The heat temp was pre-set perfectly. It was a joy to not have to use the grey matter first thing in the morning to figure out how to run the shower.

The staff at Ben Loyal was very accommodating and friendly, the food was good, the desserts delicious, but the very best feature of all was the nearly 180 degree view from our room windows and from the dining and living room windows. It was such a good stay I really didn’t want to leave. That only occasionally happens to me, so well done Ben Loyal Hotel. Feast your eyes…

The above photos should be seen side by side but WordPress won’t let me do that. They are the full 180 degree view we could see from our window and from the dining room at Ben Loyal.

These above photos are of the hike we made to the castle ruins ‘across the way’ from our hotel. Gorgeous walk, a shame about the biting flies!!! The last photo shows the view from the top back at our hotel.
And finally I must share with you some of the delicious food… Aren’t I always looking after you?

One of the local delicacies are langoustines, a cross between prawns and crayfish or lobster. The other delight was homemade lemon drizzle cake in custard. Well done, I say again.

Aberdeen to Inverness

11 Thursday Jul 2013

Posted by Ardys in gardening, photography, Travel

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Aberdeen, ballindalloch castle, Glen Mhor hotel, Inverness, northern highlands, photography, Scotland, Travel

(Apologies to those trying to make sense of our travels. I have managed to get my goings and comings from Inverness, inverted! This post should have come before the last one. The Internet connections on this trip have been very challenging for me, can I use that excuse? I hope you enjoy it nevertheless)

Yesterday started at 4am. It finished at around 9pm. It was daylight on both ends of the day, as is the case in the United Kingdom this time of the year. We took the bus from Oxford back to London, Heathrow, and then a one hour flight to Aberdeen, where we picked up a hire car (yes, more dragging of suitcases, but thank goodness no rain). We spent most of the day driving to Inverness, by way of the Grampian Mountains.

The scenery is gorgeous in the Grampians, but there is simply no place to get off the road to take photos, so you’ll have to take my word for it. Picture fields and fields of contentedly grazing cattle and sheep, with loads of greenery as far as the eye can see, under fluffy white clouds scattered in a pale blue sky. Lining the roads were wild flowers including foxglove and patches of heather, roses and ‘gorse’ a vivid yellow blossomed bush that smells of sweet coconut.

We stopped on a whim to visit a castle and gardens, and for a cup of tea and a loo stop. Nice when you can accomplish all four things in one stop! The castle tea rooms were charming and the loos were amazing, resplendent with tartan floor coverings! (Do I really need to suggest the stark comparison to our Oxford bathroom?) The castle has been occupied and lovingly maintained by the same family for over 450 years, so it is something special. There was no photography permitted inside so, again, you’ll have to take my word. In most of the beautifully presented rooms there were discretely placed photographs of the family with the Royal family, Queen, Queen Mother, Charles and Diana, the sons, etc.

The grounds have gradually been updated and developed since the late 90’s, a relatively short period of time in a place where the summers are so short. It was a steamy day, and not just by Scottish standards, we felt the heat and humidity too. It did nothing to dampen the enthusiasm of the biting midges or the flies, however, so be warned!

The remaining drive to Inverness was painless, but having been awake since 4am, we were ready for the day to be over soon. We stayed that night at the Glen Mhor Hotel, located exactly on the river, and were fortunate to have room100 which had a view onto the river, and was thankfully on ground level, so no stairs to drag the cases up and down, save the tiny steps into the front door. Nico’s restaurant had a decent meal, but not outstanding, I’m afraid. As a friend of ours used to say, he judged a restaurant by their desserts, and this one was lacking. I’d ordered the apple crumble, but at the appointed time was told there was none. As we were among the first diners I can only presume, there never was any, not that they had simply run out. The chef said I could choose from any other dessert, however. I asked if the cheesecake was homemade and the waiter said yes, it was a baked cheesecake, and it was blueberry. It was neither. Nuf said.

The accommodation at Glen Mohr was very nice, our room recently refurbished, and the location was excellent. It was very convenient for a late afternoon walk around the city area to take a few photos and find the Travel Information office. We sat outside for a while after dinner, as the sun was still fairly high at 8pm! This morning I write, iPad in lap, from the local Inverness laundrette run by a very helpful Vietnamese lady. We begin the day with the mundane, anticipating the extraordinary that lies ahead.

Brora to Tongue

11 Thursday Jul 2013

Posted by Ardys in gardening, photography, Travel

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Brora, northern highlands, Orkneys, Scotland, Storma, Tongue

The problem with not having time to write each day as we finish the day’s activities is that I forget! Thank goodness for all the photos I take to remind me of what I’ve seen. I have a terrible memory when so much is happening every day and I think that is one reason why I have always taken a lot of photos. That, and the fact that I love to look back over beautiful things I have seen.

Our time in Brora was brief but the town was very picturesque and the Royal Marine Hotel was a bit special in a classic old Scottish way. We departed with not very far to travel that day, but much to be seen along the way.

The Castle and Gardens at Mey were saved from ruin in the 1950’s when the Queen Mother purchased them as her Scottish home in summer. She funded major refurbishments to the castle and gardens and what endures is not only a legacy for the area but a charming reflection of the Queen Mum’s humour and humility. The staff told a very poignant story that took place on her last visit there at the age of 101…

The Queen Mother was not well and she thought it was likely that it was her last visit to her Scottish home. There was a particular gaggle of geese that used to visit every August when she was there but no one had seen them yet that summer, eleven years ago now. Each day she asked if anyone had seen them and when they said ‘No mum’ she would say ‘I haven’t got long now, I wonder if they’ll come’, meaning it was nearly time for her to leave for the summer, but also hinting that her life was drawing to a close. She was rather sad that she had not seen her geese when on her final day the car arrived to take her away. Just then one of the staff called out ‘Look M’um there!’ And the geese flew into view, parting in perfect formation exactly overhead. The staff member telling the story said the Queen Mum was so delighted it was hard to describe, and it was one of the most magical things she’d ever seen. It turned out to be the Queen Mum’s last visit to Mey.

Hard act to follow, a story like that and a beautiful garden. But Mother Nature has her own stories to tell. We boarded the ferry only about 10 miles from Mey, at John o’ Groats, to visit the southernmost of the Orkney Islands. The weather here is so brutal, the Orkneys are not even accessible for much of the year. That we had a day it wasn’t raining, as well as one of the warmer days all summer was nearly miraculous! The main attraction was to see wildlife, and within minutes of approaching the island, we had already seen puffins, those funny little black and white birds with the orange clown feet and beaks. I have no photo for you as my camera is only my iPhone and one would need a huge lens and a lot of time and patience to get a photo of one. But it was exciting. We saw several bird species that nest on the sheer rock faces of the island, and quite a few grey seals as well, again at distances that didn’t permit good photos, but the scenery alone was worth the trip. If you have a good imagination you can see the seals in the photo of the caves.

The remaining drive to Tongue where we would spend the next two nights was lovely, as was our hotel, the Ben Loyal.

It is intriguing to be in a place where the sun doesn’t set until 10pm and it never quite goes completely dark then it is up again at 3.30 or so. The last two photos are the same view from our room at the Ben Loyal, one taken 9.30pm, the other about 12 hours later… The morning photo shows the fog sneaking around the mountain’s contours, and just about to cover the ruins of the castle that we hiked up to see.

I hope not to put you off reading but I am having to post a couple of times in close succession as it may be a week before I have Internet access again. One has to go with the flow of opportunity with these things!

–or so ardysez

Image

Inverness to Brora

10 Wednesday Jul 2013

Tags

Brora, Inverness, northern highlands, photography, Scotland, Travel

The travel gods have been looking after us. Okay we are somewhat experienced travellers and we are flexible, so I suppose that has helped. But we have been darned lucky as well. This morning we made a somewhat premeditated stop at the Glenmorangie distillery for a tour and some whiskey tasting. I’m not a whiskey drinker, but Don is, and it was a bit like going to a winery, and quite interesting as a one off experience. The whiskey distillery was for him, but the lunch stop was for me. In a small town by the name of Dornoch, we lunched at the Dornoch Patisserie and Cafe. I believe the following photo will show you how it was….

After lunch we made another of our exquisite castle and garden finds when we stopped at the Dunrobin Castle and Gardens. Each of these estates had their own unique character and this one was a more formal style with gardens reminiscent of those at Versailles near Paris.

Our final stop for the night was the Royal Marine Hotel in Brora. It was an old style hotel complete with billiard room and resident cat!