Fri 23 Aug - Castletown, Scotland

Far northern end of mainland Scotland...

We had our last breakfast at Uralla B&B in Forres, packed up, loaded the car and said goodbye to Don and Pat. On the road again... North...

We first drove west to Inverness before we could go north. Along the way, we stopped at a Sainsbury for gas and for "on the road" lunch supplies such as salads and prawn cocktails. Much cheaper, faster and convenient to do it that way. Weather permits of course, but today was a gorgeous day.

We has our first stop for a cuppa at Dornoch which is a very pretty town just off A9 and next to the Dornoch Firth. We had no idea what this stream was called but it ran through town. Di was checking out the bridge's swingability factor...

We reckoned that this gate with steps down to the stream would have been there for a while.

Interesting... The "Gentlemen" sign had the same look and feel as street signs. And we were wondering where the... Hmmm... End product would have finished up in the old days... Or, heaven's forbid, still does today...

Cuppa at a local coffee shop, but ordering a flat white coffee drew a blank from the young Scottish girls behind the counter. The young girl behind Hans took our order, but she had no idea what a "flat white" was and headed off to find a type of bread roll!
 
Hans quickly changed to an Americano as they called it, which is black coffee elsewhere. And yes, flat white is a British term too and could be found everywhere on coffee menus. Long black seems to be uniquely Australian. Footnote: They did understand tea for Di...

The coffee shop was really a bakery with coffee offering thrown in as a kind of afterthought and we were the only ones sitting inside and drinking hot drinks of choice. This apple pastry was really nice though.

Outside the coffee shop and across the street was a "Mercat Cross" or market cross. Weekly markets were held around the cross (and in the graveyard) from medieval times until around 200 years ago.

We had also learnt earlier that these crosses were sort of town crier's podium for yelling out news to the local community. A yesteryear's soap box.

The storyboard told us the story about the Mercat Cross and its history.

Below is a photo of the plaiden ell that is mentioned above. It was used as a fixed measurement for measuring lengths of plaids. Any merchant who skimped on the length and found out was put in the stocks to be humiliated.

Wish you could do that with shonky merchants today. Would used car dealers and insurance salesmen be overrepresented then? (Apologies for any offense to anybody in that profession, it was a joke. Or "Insurance Cars Sales Men" as Di called them once)

Hans was out trying his town crying capabilities, but unfortunately there was no audience there to listen except for Di.

Di at the adjacent cemetery in Dornoch.

Suddenly, this gorgeous view...

... And then this... But, what it is...?

Aaaa. A food truck delivering...you guessed it, fresh produce. We spoke to the driver who tolds us that a whole bunch of Japanese tourists had surrounded his truck (or lorry as he called it) one day and taken lots and lots of photos. Clearly this marketing campaign worked, or at least created interest. We thought it was very clever and it looked great.

This was a new one for us. The vehicle would probably be useful in a presumably very windy environment like the Scottish north.

We then continued to drive north, encountered great landscapes and views, and stopped in Dunbeath at a picnic spot for lunch. Unfortunately, we stopped near the road at a nearby picnic area with stock standard tables and chairs.

Why unfortunately? As after our lunch we drove across to the other side of the main road and saw this...

Wait, what is Di up to...?

She is checking out the board for what's doing in Dunbeath.

A couple of Scottish lads were doing spins on their jet ski in the harbour.

A bit of a show off, wouldn't you say? We were keen to see him fall off but it did not happen.

Di, Kenn and the Salmon. The statue was dedicated to a local lad where the salmon was almost as big as him.

Dunbeath Castle across the water was in private hands and people apparently still live there.

Great scenery around Dunbeath Harbour. The little brick building is the electricity supply to an oil field 12 miles off the coast. Well disguised.

We arrived in Castletown around 2pm and checked in at Castletown Hotel, a traditional English / Scottish pub hotel with good karma.

Our room is a traditional pub room with some decorating effort on flowery wallpaper. We liked it immediately. Di was feeling a bit run down so had a cuppa in the room then a short snooze.

After a break, Hans took a wander through Castletown City (ha!), which took him a short time only, and took a few photos along the way.

Looking back towards Main Street and our hotel.

We had previously heard sounds in our room from hens or chooks and the reason was revealed around the corner. The Castletown Hotel's neighbor kept chooks in their backyard and... Ducks, or at least the ducks were joining the chooks.

Hold on, what is going on here... Reader, just scroll down... Please...

This traffic sign was somewhat weather beaten... Or was that poor workmanship...?

Castletown, being a tiny little town, changed suddenly to countryside. Right of a sudden, "suburbia" just stops as you can see from this footpath.

These markings... Aliens...?

The green contrasts the often barren windswept landscape in the very northern parts of Scotland.

After his walk around town, Hans popped into the grocery store cum bottle shop next door to Castletown Hotel and got himself a 660ml bottle of San Miguel beer, on special for £2. Good to see that not everything is heavily inflated in price at the end of the British world.
 
We then decided on Chinese takeaway from a place a couple of minutes walk away from Castletown Hotel, for consumption in our room. The young Scottish girl behind the counter was a bright spark. She told us she was learning to speak Chinese so she could tell bible stories to new chinese immigrants, in their own language. The food was surprisingly good too.
 
Hans got himself another San Miguel on the way back to go with dinner in our room.
 
A bit of TV - "The Big Bang Theory" and "Cops" (we love the theme song) and we say good night.

 

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