Day tripping in Scotland is such a rich experience, and although at times the driving on single lane (with passing places) can be really hairy, there is so much worth exploring.
The countryside is ancient, with evidence of habitation going back to Neolithic times, we visited Culloden battlefields, learned of historic battles between Scottish nationals and the English. This seems to be a recurring theme in Scottish history, independence seems to continue to be relevant. Although I do not have any photos of the Culloden centre, we spent much longer there than we originally planned because it was so interesting. The visitor centre tells the history using personal stories – we loved that approach at the Irish Immigrant centre in Dublin and were swept up in it here also.
After Culloden we had a “Scottish Picnic” as we have begun to call them -we plan picnic food but when we get to the spot it is either raining, blowy or freezing – at Clava Cairns it was all three, so we ate in the car as the windows fogged over (our Scottish Picnic). Clava Cairns are a Neolithic burial and ceremonial site with fascinating piles of stones, standing stones and an atmosphere that was accentuated by a local lady who was in one of the stone circles playing a whistle “for the spirits”she said, nice.
Throughly cold, we then travelled to Glenfarcas whiskey distillery. Now to be fair, neither Jo or myself are actually whisky drinkers, but when in Scotland it seemed like we should at least try it. When on Mull I had tried 6 different whiskies and learned that with a little water or ice allows you to taste the different characters. As I understand it, the whiskey making process starts with a strong beer, then they distil the spirit alcohol from the beer, purify it and then blend it to ensure it is not lethally alcoholic then flavour it by storing it in second-hand wooden barrels that have had other booze in them before (like sherry or port) – this seems a little cheaty to me as the whisky takes on the flavour of the barrel, the longer in the more drinkable it becomes and more it costs. Wine seems to me a little more honest in this respect as the grape juice merely takes on the wood character.
We toured the Whisky factory, saw the process, saw the storage and rather nicely a vintage system that saw a 1960 barrel (our birth year) but sadly put a bottle of that slightly outside our price range (at £3650 per bottle, this seems an expensive tipple in anyone’s language – strangely Jo said no when I suggested we take home a bottle). Read more
