Sophistivacation

Today we drive home, but we are making a short happy stop at Dalwhinnie Distillery first. It's only an hour drive from Inverness, but I've passed this distillery countless times. I'm really looking forward to the tour and tasting, although I won't be drinking the tasters until I get home. The tour was really good, and it was interesting to see how different this distillery was to the others, particularly because it uses a worm tub, to cool the spirit, which very few Scottish distilleries now use. We finished the tour in the dunnage warehouse where we were allowed to take a taster directly from a cask and bottle it; I was too short, but Iain got to do it. After the tour we were taken to the tasting room which was laid out with 6 glasses, 5 of which were filled and one which was upside down. There was also a chocolate, from "The Highland Chocolatier," beside each glass. We started with the first 3 whiskies with matching chocolates; unfortunately, I had to eat th...

It's our last full day of the holiday so we decided to splash out on a 5 star hotel in Inverness; but first we needed to get there! We had a longish lie before packing our bags and heading to crofters, the little place next door, to have some breakfast. It opened at 10am and we were the first to arrive, but it filled up quickly. A latte and pancakes with bacon and maple syrup was the order of the day. It was great apart from the low flying gulls, who were definitely aiming at us!  After breakfast, we decided to walk to Fairy Glen Falls; not another fairy visit I hear you say, but this one is a short walk and we needed to walk off the breakfast! It was a nice gentle walk, and there were two waterfalls which weren't too busy. We wandered back to the village, jumped in the car and drove along to the golf club before walking along to Chanonry point to try and spot the dolphins. There was already a number of people waiting, laden down with binoculars and huge camera lenses.  Unfort...

It's absolutely beautiful today again, we couldn't really ask for better weather at this time of year! I know the Scot's talk about the weather a lot, but there is a reason for it; we are used to four seasons in one day and going from brilliant sunshine to wind and rain within seconds. In fact, it is so nice, we are going to leave the hotel early and get on our way. First stop was breakfast! I had read about the breakfast here, and given there are loads of hungry golfers, I guess it has to be good. I had Scotch Pancakes which were lovely, its just a shame the group of golfers, I'm not naming nationalities, were loud and pretty rude.  Iain - Let's just say that Todd, Chris, Brad, hey buddy, et al... loved to discuss scorecards and at one point told the waiter that the egg benedict breakfasts sent to another table were probably theirs and if they could double check, thank you so much... (they actually never said the thank you part). There was more, but it's defini...