My tour of Great Britain: one night in a Highland Hotel

On our final night in Scotland we moved from out holiday park in Nairn to The Knockendarroch - a beautiful highland hotel perched on the edge of a valley overlooking the surrounding hills in Pitlochry in the south of the CairnGorms.

We stayed in the top of the hotel in two rooms with balconies which afforded a brilliant view of the sunrise moving along the valley and gradually lighting up the green below.

In the morning I sat in the lounge, which is all highland charm, but none of the stuffiness. It features 'authentic colours and design from Farrow & Ball, Zoffany, and Yves Saint Laurent' - as The Knockendarroch website boasts and with good reason, it is beautiful. If I somehow were to meet a Laird and find myself with a castle to do up, this is how I would do it.

Added to the wonderfully coloured interior my coffee came in a cafetiere. Perfection.

My tour of Great Britain: Royal Wedding Day

I was beginning to worry that the Royal Wedding Day would come and we would be stuck in a Scottish village that wouldn't give two hoots about it. So when I received an email from N whilst in Bridgend that we could watch the wedding in the grounds of Balmoral Castle I was over the moon.

Friday morning came and we drove the winding heather flanked roads from Nairn over to the Balmoral Estate, which we expected to be absolutely rammed. When we arrived at nine thirty we were nicely surprised that it wasn't as busy and had the atmosphere of a village fête complete with Rule Britannia being played and Union flags being handed out whilst we paid our entrance.

We settled in front of some of the large screens which had been placed on the front lawn to watch the wedding and I got a coffee from one of the little stands, the other stand had a hog roast cooking ready for the lunch time rush. My coffee came in a stupidly small paper cup - I had asked for a large but this was all they had apparently - but was otherwise quite drinkable.

After the excitement of THE dress, the trees down the centre of Westminster Abbey and THE kiss, we calmed ourselves down and went for a look around the house. Well it turns out you can only go into the ballroom as the rest of the house is shut up until the Queen goes up in the summer. We did get to see some of her very sparkly ball gowns though, although they had nothing on THE dress.

My tour of Great Britain: on a boat in the middle of Loch Ness

Coffee on this holiday has been thin in the ground, due to our many early starts and the remoteness of our accommodation. I've been making do with cups of tea and taking any opportunity to sit down with any hot drink and watch the world go by.

Our trip to Loch Ness on Thursday was one such opportunity. As I feared, the aforementioned coffee in horribly designed orange paper cups reared it's ugly head and on this occasion it was a particularly horrible one.

It was windy, cold and we were on the roof of a boat; then it started to rain. I decided to go downstairs in search of warmer seating and refreshment. This is where I discovered that they were serving hot drinks. Joy I thought, I nice hot mug of coffee as I watched the world go by on the water, how lovely. I was to watch the world go by on the water, but it would not be holding a nice hot mug of coffee.

The coffee was produced from one of those machines that masquerades as an espresso machine but is really an automatic, 'the attendant pushes a button and it dribbles out of a tiny nozzle' machines. After I saw this, I dropped my expectations a couple of large steps. The orange cup was put in front of me and as I saw the foam didn't even reach two thirds of the way, my expectations dropped significantly more. I poured some more milk into the cup to make up the shortfall and the lid of the jug dropped onto my coffee cup, nearly spilling the whole thing. This was not going well.

After all that I was left with a pretty mediocrely tepid cup of coffee which was only rescued from disaster by the view I had of the Loch whilst drinking it. It was so bad that I had to go back for another, just to check that it really was that bad.

My tour of Great Britain: up a mountain in the CairnGorms

I could drink coffee anywhere, and climbing a mountain is no exception. I bought my coffee and a cozy crimson fleece (yes a fleece, it was cold, I had to make a sacrifice) at the mountain shop 637m up at the bottom of CairnGorm, (1245m high).

I later discovered CairnGorm not to be the highest mountain in the Cairngorms National Park - a fact which makes me slightly disappointed and wondering why we went to so much effort.

We walked the 10 km long, 1245m high route in five and a half hours, with lots of scenic snack and photo stops along the way.

There's not much else to say as the views are pretty breathtaking despite it not quite being the highest route in the area!

 

 

My tour of Great Britain: in the grounds of Cawdor Castle

On our first full day in Scotland, which was also N's birthday,  we decided to take in some of the history of the area and visit a Cawdor Castle which was a short drive from our caravan in Nairn.

It was beautifully bright and sunny but the wind had a cold kick to it in the morning, so we opted for looking around the house first.

It didn't look like a stuffy home that  nobody had touched for the last 50 years, each style had been piled upon the last with books stacked everywhere and personal photos of the family ranging from the sixties to the present day - the Dowager Countess of Cawdor still lives in the castle during the winter months.

We sat down for lunch by a tree with a pretty red bench next to it, although it was warmer now, there was still a cold nip in the air so the café selling hot drinks was welcome.

After lunch we walked around the castle gardens which put us even more in the mood for tea and birthday cake back at the caravan.