Mon 19 Aug - Forres, Scotland

The good, the bad and... the odd.

Well, we liked Greenfield Hotel but our time there was up and we were moving further north in Scotland. Here is a location shot from our room. Yep, a twin room, not a double. Price and availability...

Here we are in our breakfast room at Greenfield Hotel getting our daily morning dose of fried food.

On to the first GOOD for the day. We had been served by Jane throughout our 3 nights at Greenside Hotel, a lovely lady who not only is handling breakfast orders but is also doing the room maintenance. We have chatted to her every morning and this morning we chatted even more and a lot longer.

It turned out that Jane is a member of what sounded like quite a successful band called something we were not allowed to mention here. She described their music as "New Wave", sort of Blondie influenced.

Jane and her band had played gigs all through Europe including Stockholm, Sweden and tomorrow they were going to Beijing in China to play.

Jane had essentially two parallel lives, the music and the gigs for "kicks" and hobby/interest and working in the hotel to get a regular income. Apparently, the hotel allowed her to take weeks off at the time if the touring calendar would require that.

We were not allowed to take a photo of Jane so we include an image of Debbie Harry from Blondie here for illustrative purposes. We can not reveal the reason for not including a photo of Jane either. Intriguing, hey...?

It was a very inspiring and enlightening morning and we were not on our way until 9.30am or so, which of course was fine.

We were traveling north and here we are crossing Firth of Tay with Dundee on the other side.

We stopped in Dundee only to fill up on gas before continuing to Arbroath, which is famous for smoked fish.

Before we get into the smoked fish, we wandered around Arbroath's harbour which we found very interesting. This creek runs into the harbour and these two white swans had found themselves a sweet spot down there.

Yet another "luxury apartment" development was happening, but this was unusual. An occupational health and safety board in Polish. We have heard about builders from Poland coming to the UK to work, but this is taking it to another level.

We figured that this must be a "labour of love". This old fishing boat did not look much to the world, but there were perhaps 5 or 6 people working on it concurrently. We were sure that the boat would look very different in a not too distant future.

The breakwater bar had some viewing platforms, but this very narrow set of stairs to get up there reminded us of a scene in the movie "In Bruges" where a couple of Americans were advised not to climb Bruges' famous tower as the stairs there were too narrow.

Checking out the views in Arbroath's harbour.

Given this yellow sign, the boom gate and the red sign on the boom gate, we reckon that the weather in Arbroath's harbour must be quite severe at times.

Steps down to the old slipway... We believe that none of this is used anymore.

Di gave Fresh Fish 2 thumbs up despite not having tried their goods yet. She just knows...

The smoking fish theme is everywhere in Arbroath.

We thought that this may be a cleverly named Chinese restaurant as those all seem to start with either "Golden" or "Lucky", but alas, this was a normal fish and chips joint. Two thumbs down from Di.

We had a coffee break and sat outside in the sun (until the next change 5 minutes later) and watched the world of Arbroath go by. There were some tough looking people walking past, including black dressed legal eagles from the courthouse further down this road. Even those guys had weather beaten stern faces as they smoked their cigarettes.

Note the smoke to the left from M&M Spink. We were told that Spink is one of 4 traditional fish smoking families in the area. Around it there are residential homes, but the inhabitants must just put up with it.
It seems an Arbroath Smokie is well known and used by chefs throughout Scotland - here are some waiting to cool down...

And this is where they sold Spink's smoked fish from...

It turned out that a Smokie is a smoked haddock. We tried some in the shop - Delicious. And these are the 2 still warm smoked haddocks that we bought... £5.

And finally Hans is enjoying the smoked haddock from a bench in Arbroath's harbour. OK, it's not quite lunch time yet, but who cares...

You know you are at the North Sea when you see oil platforms just off the coast. The good news is that it seems to be keeping these coastal communities thriving. Dundee, Aberdeen and even little Arbroath all seem to be doing "ok" but it's probable that the wealth is confined to a small group as you still see plenty of less than affluent people and poor housing.
We then drove further north and stopped at a little town called Huntley for a driver change and a cuppa break. The coffee shop we went to was run by some older local women who "home baked" and this is ODD. If you ordered cake, you got a selection of 3 slices and 2 ordinary pieces of pound cake, you ate what you wanted and returned the rest, only paying 60p per piece that you ate. What would the UK food control authorities think of that? Would people take a little nibble from a corner? Does the rest get recycled? We feared so... We drove on.
Banff, or MacBanff as some comedian thought that it should be called. Perhaps so as the adjacent town is called MacDuff.

Looking back at Banff.

And this is MacDuff's harbour.
MacDuff was another one of those cutesy little seaside towns that still appears to have some port functions. Its hard to guess what the benches and white steps here are for. They end at the harbour. A swimming area?
We were not sure what these steps were used for. Perhaps used during low tide to get down to the boats that now sit in the mud...?
We then did the final stretch to Forres, found our B&B called Uralla and made ourselves at home before wandering out to the town centre some 2 blocks away.
 
Now the BAD. We wandered up and down High Street in Forres looking for a place to eat on a Monday night as not many were open. We finally settled on this Indian place, Cardamon Spice, as Di had found mostly positive reviews in Tripadvisor and we needed a break from the fried stuff and Chinese food.

Bad call. Let's say that we both agreed that this was the worst Indian meal that either of us had ever had. We ordered standard Indian dishes such as Chicken Tikka Missala and Chicken Korma. The former had overcooked chicken breast pieces in a tomato paste sauce that was violently red, with no spices at all. The latter was same chicken in what tasted like a mango sauce. The rice was bland and non-descriptive and the naan bread was heated up in a standard oven.

We sent the whole meal back (which neither of of us have had to do before) ate our pappadums, drank our French house wine (read vrac) paid £10 for the experience and left extremely disappointed.

Plan B was the local fish and chip shop, also positively reviewed, but with low low prices. Nothing special but we were both fed with a cup of tea each for £7 in total.

Now to the other ODD. We then went into the adjacent Co-operative to pick up a few things for tomorrow. Di wanted a jar of pickled onions, but they were announced as 2 for £2. She only wanted one, so took one to the cash register, which was charged at £2.08. In other words, 1 jar is 8 pence more expensive than buying 2 jars... Go figure. We got ourselves a second jar and saved ourselves the 8p.

Final stop was The Carlton Hotel for an alcoholic drink (no food on Monday nights, but would be good from Tuesday onwards).

GOOD call. Sky Sport on TV showed Barclay's Premier League football, Manchester City playing Newcastle. So with a local IPA beer for Hans and a Baileys on ice for Di, we enjoyed a bit of football.

We liked the name of the pokie next to the TV screen. It was named "Quid Vicious".

We then wandered back to our Uralla B&B and finished off here with a few photos to show the space. Lots of it.

The bathroom... Big, hey? This is not a Vegas suite, this is a B&B in Forres, Scotland.

A note on the accommodation. The room and bathroom are both enormous in space, but everything is carpeted. We were not allowed to drink tea (or anything else like wine) in the room as the owner had an incident in the past with a huge spill, which led into a lengthy insurance debacle. The B&B owner was also quick to tell us that his son was a lawyer. Now, that is spooking us out and Hans in particular was less than pleased to not be able to have a drink other than water in the room. On one hand space, on the other hand...

Good night from us for now.

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