Tue, 01 Oct 2002

author Tim	location Aviemore, Inverness-shire, Scotland
posted 21:36 BST	section Europe2002/Europe/UK/Scotland/Scotland 1 ( all photos )

A Hard Day on the Whisky Trail ( No photos )
Let's hear it for Meaghan after her first update! And I only had to correct about fifty spelling and grammatical errors before it was suitable for public consumption! Not that my spelling or grammar is all that good...
This morning saw another massive B&B breakfast - a nice change after all the Youth Hostels. I even tried some porridge. Still don't like it, however. Liz struggled to get through a massive serving of scrambled eggs.
Up here we are on the so-called "Whisky Trail", in the heart of Scotch Whisky country. So, when in Rome, try their porridge. And whisky.
First stop was the Strathisla distillery, famous for its Chivas Regal. We toured the sites, tried the "nosing", then the tasting (which the girls didn't appreciate much!), then on to the shop. I've started a collection of miniature bottles - the big ones are too expensive and need to be carried home somehow.
Then, we moved on to the Glenfiddich distillery. This was much more popular (probably something to do with the entry/tour being free, and you still got a free sample at the end), different, yet still mostly the same. A nice late picnic lunch was had there, as we decided our fate for the evening.
This ended up with us deciding on another youth hostel in Aviemore. It's another nice place, yet is run by the first non-nice person we've found so far. Guess it had to happen.
We did some shopping and cooked our own dinners, before retiring to a quite evening in with website updates and reading.

author Meaghan	location Aviemore, Inverness-shire, Scotland
posted 21:09 BST	section Europe2002/Europe/UK/Scotland/Scotland 1 ( all photos )

Meaghan speaks! ( No photos )
Ok, so yesterday we decided to treat ourselves to breakfast in the town of Braemar after looking through all the crappy touristy shops much to Tim's delight! we then headed north or east depending on whether you ask Liz or Tim we found this small stone circle which was kinda cool and then continued our journey and found this quaint seaside village with a great beach that even had sand as opposed to the standard pebble beach I have encountered since being over here.
We decided to go for a nice stroll along this beach and were having a pleasant time when this massive golden retriever decided it wanted to play with us and came bounding down the beach headed straight for us and rather than stopping or slowing down like we thought he would he knocked Liz's legs straight out from underneath, which was absolutely hilarious, although I don't know if Liz would agree.
So after our beach shenanegans we headed off again on a quest for a B&B and found this fantastic farm that was harvesting tatties (potatoes) and was run by this lovely lady who was probably the fist really Scottish person we have met. She use lots of Scottish words like "aye", and "its wee bonnie", it was really hard to keep a straight face! They had two really cute dogs except one of their names was Meaghan which was a bit off putting.
Finally we hopped in the car again to find some dinner and drove through this great coastal village with load of really steep winding streets and Liz got plenty of driving practice i think she could be a rally driver now! I would have just stalled a million times. We finally got dinner in The Highland Haven, in Macduff before retireing back to our farm B&B.

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