A Vacation in Scotland

For his first R and R, Baboo arranged a 17-day trip to Scotland for late April/early May.  I knew none of the details except the dates and general locations.  He outdid himself; he is the best tour manager you could imagine.  I will be hard pressed to describe all that we saw and did.  I can tell you it was magical.  We visited 29 castles and stayed in 6.  We visited a couple prehistoric sites (standing stones and cairns).  We visited lots of abbeys and churches, mostly ruins.  We tasted lots of scotch and I found myself starting to enjoy it by the end of our trip.  We went to a show (Chicago), visited the National Gallery in Edinburgh, attended a concert in St. Giles Cathedral, and had tea on the royal yacht Britannia.

Our main itinerary was from Edinburgh to Spittal of Glenshee to Fort William to Tarbert to Sterling to Culzean near Maybole to Bonnyrigg near Edinburgh.  One giant circle mostly through the central highlands. We drove over 1200 miles through the Scottish countryside.  It took us both a couple of days to get used to the right-hand driving in the UK.  I did none of the driving and kept feeling like we were slipping off my side of the road.  Amazingly, as soon as we were outside the city, the roads were mostly single-track.  This does not mean one lane in each direction; it means only one car can fit on the road, and the roads are bi-directional!  So if another car should be coming along in the opposite direction, both must stop and back up to the closest “passing place” (these are basically mini shoulders the size of one car randomly placed along the roads) and then passing can occur.  These roads went up and down, round and round the hills and glens so we had to drive very slowly, which gave us plenty of time to enjoy the gorgeous countryside.  Fortunately for us, no one in Scotland ever seemed to be in a rush, so this system worked fine.  Anyway, Baboo did a fabulous job getting us around these tiny roads.  He remarked that the system seemed to keep the driving and drivers calm, everyone smiled and waved.

We considered ourselves very fortunately regarding the weather in Scotland.  Of our 17 days, we had only 2 rainy ones and mostly sunny ones.  We had a few sprinkles at times, but those only lasted a few minutes.  But it was cold.  I never left our room without four layers -- a long-sleeved t-shirt, a turtle neck, a blouse, a sweater -- before I put on my vest, wool blazer, wool jacket (sometimes I could get by with either the blazer or the jacket), and rain slicker.  And of course a scarf and gloves.  It was cold!

So how do I begin to describe this magical journey of castles and scotch?  The history, the geography, the people, the castles, the food and drink, and the climbing and climbing and climbing.  

 

View from Our Room at Culzean

Castles and History

As I said, we stayed in six castles.  One of them was so magnificent that I lost my breadth as we drove up.  Since “spending the night in a real castle” was my last major bucket-list item (the A list anyway), I was overcome that Baboo had done this for me in such a big way.  Each of these castles was so different too.  Some had big, magnificent bedrooms, some small cozy ones.  One had a very challenging 6-hole golf course on site.  (No carts here since you have to climb up and down ravines from hole to hole.)  One had archery and falconry available for guests.  A couple had spas and fabulous gardens.  With the exception of walking the 6-hole course and a couple of the gardens, we did not take advantage of any of the on-side activities (except, of course, the bars and restaurants) since we were out and about every day. 

Most of the castles we stayed in dated to the 18^th century, during the heyday of European opulence.  Castles were no longer built for fortification by then but for the pleasure of the lord and mostly to impress his peers.  One castle, Culzean, had a bit of modern history to it since the apartments on the top floor of the central tower were reserved for Dwight Eisenhower and his family during his lifetime.  We stayed in those apartments.

We visited so many different castles, and every one seemed to have some claim on Scottish history.  Some of the ruins made it hard to visualize the great feasts and events that had occurred there and some of those were especially hard to reach, but we managed to climb up and into all of them.  The restoration work at Sterling Castle was particularly spectacular.  It looked like it had been built yesterday.  Several of the castles were still occupied by the owning lairds (earls, dukes, and even the Queen (Balmoral)) and could only be visited when the laird was not in residence.

Below is a list of the castles we visited:

Edinburgh Castle

Holyrood Castle

Scone Palace

Dalmunzie Castle (stayed in the MacKintosh suite in the turret)

Balmoral Castle

Glamis Castle

Dunnottar Castle

Fyvie Castle

Kildrummy Castle

Blair Castle

Inverlochy Castle (stayed in the Princess suite)

Doirlinn/Tioran  (not sure about the correct name of this one)

Stonefield Castle (stayed here; our room had no name L)

Castle Stalker

Barcaldine Castle

Dunstaffnage Castle

Carnassairie Castle

Inverary Castle

Kilchurn Castle

Tarbert Castle

Balloch Castle

Culcreuch Castle (stayed in the Baron’s suite)

Sterling Castle

Doune Castle

Newark Castle

Dundonald Castle

Culzean Castle (stayed in the Eisenhower Apartment; we could see Ireland)

Craignethan Castle

Dalhousie Castle (stayed in the Laird’s room)

And for ancient history, we found a few prehistoric sites of standing stones and cairns (burial mounds) in Kilmartin Glen.

We also visited many abbeys, a priory (we had to take a shuttle boat to reach it), some cathedrals, and the famous Rosslyn Chapel, which I found to be even more mysterious and intriguing than it was in Dan Brown’s book.  (This site had an impressive, brand-new, high-tech visitor center … I’m sure thanks to Mr. Brown.)

Eating and Drinking

Baboo was on a scotch quest.  And he was successful.  We started off at the Scotch Whiskey Experience near the Edinburgh Castle.  This seemed at first very touristy, but it was a very well-done instructional tasting.   They had a good multimedia presentation and a very nice special collection museum and tasting room.  I knew nothing at all about Scotch, except that it was made in Scotland and burned my mouth, so I highly recommend this as a starting point.  I learned how to pick out some of the scents and what the properties of the different Scotch-making areas were.  By the end of our trip, I was ordering my own wee dram. 

We visited a couple distilleries and an especially great little shop near Loch Fyne.  The proprietor was so passionate and he shared some of his special advice and favorites with Baboo.  He even shared a taste of a very special limited release, which of course we bought.  This tiny little shop had more Scotch than I had ever seen in one place, even filling rafters in the ceiling.  And they ship to the US!  Check out their site at http://www.lfw.co.uk/.

As for the food, all the castles we stayed in had superb service and outstanding food.  We were surprised to find such excellent chefs out in the countryside.  We ate and drank like royalty.  In a couple of the castles, we were the only guests and so we really were treated like royalty.   Each night we would convene in one of the drawing rooms for cocktails and canapés.  We’d discuss the evening’s menu with the staff, place our order, and a bit later be escorted to our table.  Every single night was an event.  We often dressed up for dinner or occasionally we just caught a hearty pub meal on the run.  I had a lot of seafood, especially local salmon.  Baboo was especially excited about the opportunity to eat pork products, so bacon for breakfast every day!   And the most surprising thing … when we finally got up the nerve to try some haggis, we were delighted.  Delicious!

It’s hard to select a few photos to include here from the hundreds we took. So I invite you go to Baboo’s Facebook pages to see those that he posted along the way.  We arrived back home to a bright sunny day in Algiers with our driver waiting and bags heavy with liquid souveniers.  A wonderful, dreamy vacation and I thank Baboo for taking care of every little detail (one of the things I love about him) and making it so so special.

My Prince