So we have decided to pack a bit of car-camping travel into
the last few weeks before heading back to Australia for ‘Wedding Fest 2010’.
Kurt managed to track down a bargain, a 1999 Subaru Forrester, in a lovely
heritage green. Which we have decked out with a blow-up mattress, quilt and
pillows – our new home on wheels.
Before our 3 week trek, we decided to do a test run so we
headed north of Aberdeen, around the coast and over to Inverness. We popped
into Glenfiddich distillery for a tour, which was free and Kurt got to drink
free scotch too. Then we went to some wildlife reserve.....!?!....and saw this
bird of prey. Then to Loch Ness, where we found the most ludicrously overpriced
crap food in the whole of Scotland...possibly the world. Kurt also got a hot tip
from our waitress that the nearby Urquhart Castle is lacking security...so we
headed there and jumped the fence to have browse around, it was old stone ruins
overlooking the Loch, it was fun running around at dusk with no-one else
there!
Surprisingly our new carcamping riggup went quite well and once we
were all rested we had breakfast at a place called Dalwhinne....which has
nothing, but this shop that sells one quid bacon rolls!!! I added egg to mine
for an extra 45p – well worth it. Kurt had this gigantic bacon, cheese,
mushroom, omelette thing...that he didn’t even finish.
From there we went to visit my great Uncle Jimmy at Blair
Athol and stopped at the very unique ‘House of Bruar’ to grab a cake to take...Bruar
is like this weird Scottish department store thing...has lots of kilts for sale,
deer horn furniture and a great food hall....the weirdest bit is that it is
about 10 miles from anything....is just in the middle of nowhere off the
highway..but it is busier than King William road on a Saturday morning. We had
a cuppa and cake with my Uncle Jimmy and saw a Hairy Highland Coo (cow) that Kurt wanted to go pat..but I talked him out of it. Then we headed south to Perth, where we went to some highland games, rather like a country show/fair but with lots of tug-of-war, caber tossing, hammer throwing,
jig dancing, bag piping bands – the whole shebang! Was a good arvo and I even
got a Scottish tan!!
After Perth we headed for home, only to stop for some hot
chips at Britain’s best chippie for 1997 – 1999! And they were pretty bloody
good too.
So we just hope the next part of our car-camping is as
successful.
