Wednesday, May 22 - Edinburgh

The last B&B was the best. Plenty of power plugs, comfortable beds, affable but not intrusive host, breakfast served by a cadre of helpers (and we didn't have to decide the night before what we'd be in the mood for), within walking distance of many places to eat and services to use, and a not uncomfortable suitcase-rolling distance from the train station.

Aviemore, or at least the part that we could see, was pretty modern. There were very few oldish-looking structures. Most seemed to be "in the style of." More importantly, we had a very good dinner in a nondescript but friendly restaurant and a rollicking choice of whiskies at another, more atmospheric hotel.

We had a hilarious time trying two whiskies: Smokehead and Monkey Shoulder. Smokehead was like drinking the stuff you put on meat to make it taste smoky, only with alcohol. Kathy and I actually liked it, but it was probably made as a novelty whisky. Monkey Shoulder, which we drank with trepidation, was fairly harmless and inoffensive tasting. The bartender made faces when I ordered these drinks. (No tip for you, buddy!)

We also had Abelour 10, Craggenmore, and Balvenie. Jessica tidily arranged the five drinks in alphabetical order, so we could taste and compare. After drunkenly passing the drinks around every which way, we were totally confused about what was what, except for the Abelour and Smokehead (who could be confused about that?). We decided that Craggenmore and Balvenie tasted remarkably similar, good but similar.

Here is how Tom, Patty, and I almost wound up in train jail.

Yesterday (Tuesday), Tom and Matt thought they'd get a jump on things by buying the train tickets for five of us to leave today (Wednesday). (Jessica already had a ticket.) The clerk mistakenly punched in yesterday's date, instead of today's. I'm still not sure if he realized he had done it or whether someone brought it to his attention or if no one mentioned it to him. Nevertheless, no correction was made. We collectively figured that since the ticket was purchased after all the trains for the day had already left, there wouldn't be a problem with boarding a train one day after the ticket's date.

Wrong.

We all got on the train without a problem. Matt and Kathy exited at Perth to make a connection to Glasgow, from which they are leaving tomorrow morning. The rest of us rode uneventfully to Edingburgh. Unfortunately, to exit Edinburgh station, you had to pass the ticket through a machine to open a gate, like most subways in the U.S. None of our tickets would open the gate, except for Jessica's. It hadn't been part of the pack that Matt and Tom bought.

"This is the wrong date," the ticket guard said. Tom patiently explained what had happened. Much conferring and suspicious eyeing of Patty, Tom, and me, who all tried to look innocent in extremis. We must see the boss man in the office to the left. The boss man said, "This is the wrong date."

Fortunately, Tom had his receipt, showed the boss man that we couldn't possibly have used the ticket yesterday, because it was purchased after the last train had left. The boss man glared at us. We began to look less innocent. (You know how that goes.) Maybe we were guilty of something? Finally, the boss man called ahead to the gate to let us through. Without further incident, except getting slightly flummoxed looking for our hotel, Edinburgh welcomed us into her open arms and promptly rained, hailed, and blew great gusty drafts on us. We are determined to love this city anyway.

As to the fate of Matt and Kathy, we must wait until Portland to hear what happened when they tried to put their tickets into the machine.

Except for bad luck, Patty has had no luck at all with getting to see a castle on this trip. Ballindaloch Castle was closed for a private event the day she took off from hiking, especially to see the castle. Hollyrood Castle, where Mary Queen of Scots was sequestered, was first on our list as tourists today. Patty was so excited. The palace, of course, was closed. Some high mucky-muck is visiting and using the palace. Pretty inconsiderate, I say.

I reverently entered Cadenhead's Whisky Shop. It is a shoebox of a store with a gigantic chalkboard that has an enormous list of whiskies. I felt like Oliver Twist, "Please, sir, may I have a whisky?" I don't really have room for it, but, oh, well. Maybe I could leave behind my walking sticks, rainpants, busted rainjacket, sunscreen (ha, ha, what a joke), and Luna bars.

We wandered around trying to find the "close" that led back to our hotel. Many of the narrow alleyways dot the Royal Mile, aka High Street. They magically seem to disappear between the buildings. Eventually, after several tries, we found the right one.

After a reunion with Jessica, who is staying elsewhere, we ate at the tiny World's End Pub. We had a hilarious time, especially with sneaking looks at two older gents who sat stone-faced throughout the pounding eclectic selection of music (pop to oldies to techno to rap).

Tomorrow Edinburgh Castle better be open for Patty, or I'm afraid she may stay another week or two or three and wander the country looking for an open castle.

Oh, how I miss the abundance of power plugs at Ravenscraig Inn at my hotel tonight.

At the cute Aviemore station. Unfortunately, we weren't taking the even cuter steam engine that you can barely glimpse through the windows of the building in the background. That train only runs through two or three towns.

Taken from the train, thus the strange streaks. If they extend The Speyside Way, this could be part of the terrain future hikers will walk.

The Dalwhinnie distillery, looking like an outpost in Mongolia.

Just to give you a heady sense of speed.

Why is the salmon diving headfirst into the ground?

M&K leaving for Glasgow (or train jail).

I just like peeking into things, I guess.

Lunch

The formal highland wedding.

Cold and wet Oregonian. So what else is new?

Guard at Holyrood Castle guarding whoever upset Patty's plans.

The Scottish Parliament building looks like it's about to fall over.

No kind of music could set these guid gentlemen to tapping their wee toes.

Tuesday, May 21 -- Day 9 of The Speyside Walk

We're at the end of the road. We made it. All six of us finished about 12:30 when we triumphantly walked into Aviemore, a town ringed by dark mountains, some of which are still topped by snow. It looks like Sunriver or Bend.

It seemed fitting that the road skirted a golf course at the end. There are hundreds of whiskies and hundreds of golf courses in Scotland.

The road between Aviemore and Boat-of-Spey is about 5-1/2 miles, so we had to share the path with joggers, bicyclists, and day trippers.

It was a little anticlimactic at the end because there was no post or commemorative plaque or statue to signal the end, unlike Buckie's start/end sign. We took a picture at a signpost and toasted the end at lunch.

I missed telling a couple of stories. One had to do with a pink dog.

This had to do with yesterday's trip by Matt, Tom, Jessica, and me. Matt kept saying, "We actually passed somebody, we actually walked faster than someone!" The someone was two young mothers, two dogs, and three kids. We said hello as we passed but didn't stop to talk. About a quarter mile further on was the dark pond with dragonflies and the lone duck. Since we had paused to look at that, the mothers, etc. caught up with us. Matt had noticed the first time around that the dog was faintly pink and we had speculated on what that was about as we walked along. Color-coded for sheepherding competition? Owner a hairdresser using dog for practice? Kid accidentally got hold of spray paint?

So now we had an opportunity to satisfy our curiosity. This time we talked with them and found out that the dog was pink because its owner had run in a Race for the Cure event a few days ago. She had sprayed her dog pink and there was still some left. Very cute.

Here's the second story. In Buckie, Matt and Patty had bought gloves at the pound store. A few days later, Matt lost one of the gloves. The day after that, he found another glove in his pocket, the mate of which he had lost a while back. For the rest of the walk, he wore one blue glove and one tan. Practical, but odd.

Tomorrow we all catch the same train, but we have different destinations. Matt and Kathy will return to Glasgow, the rest of us to Edinburgh. 

Last night at dinner, waiting to eat our "beef olive," a thin Angus beef strip wrapped around haggis!

This is where we stayed in Boat-on-Garten. Pretty fancy, huh?

Jessica is showing us how to run the last five miles.

The trail goes through town.

The lichen turns the stone blue.

Yep, that's us! Posing in front of the dramatic scenery.

Matt's fashion statement.

Patty gazing off into the heather.

At the crossroads with a downed signpost. Now which way do we go?

Entering Aviemore.

We marked our own end-of-trail.

Greeted by ravens circling the house. Appropriately, the B&B is named Ravenscraig.

Monday, May 20 -- Day 8 of The Speyside Walk

Matt, Jessica, Tom, and I were thrilled to think we'd be starting out with the sun shining on the 11-mile hike between Grantown-on-Spey and Boat-of-Garten. (They love their hypens here.)

However ...

I pulled back the curtains this morning and it was misty and looked like it had rained not too long ago. Yikes!

This is what our host, Martin, had to say: If you can see the mountains, the rain is on the way. If you can't see the mountains ... it's already raining.  (Sounds like something we'd say in Oregon, yeah.)

On with the long underwear, the layers, the hat, and gloves. Put the rainpants in the backpack, just in case.

To get to the punchline, it was overcast all day long but it never rained. As a matter of fact, at about the halfway point, it was downright muggy, so I packed up my jacket and hat and gloves. I was stuck with the long underwear, however!

A lot of the walk reminded me of central Oregon: timber, dry bushes, occasional deer. The Scottish deer are tiny. In fact, we had trouble earlier figuring out if it was a big bunny or a small deer. It was an fairly easy, flat walk, with only a couple of outstanding scenic points. It was all very pleasant and before we knew it (although my feet knew it), we were in Boat-of-Garten. 

Why is it called Boat-of-Garten? Who knows. I'm here for the walk, so you'll have to Google it if you want to know. (Then let me know.  :)  )

Malt whiskey talley: Benrolach -- very pleasant without a strong aftertaste, good or bad.

Inverarity -- a Speyside whisky, clever play on words, very good, very pleasant, hard to get in England, impossible to get in U.S. As our current host says, there are lots of good whiskies, you don't need to pine after one you can't get. So right!

BTW, we learned from Martin this morning that 90% of Cardhu, a Speyside whisky that we had tried a stop or two ago, goes into Johnnie Walker whisky!

Patty and Kathy caught the bus from Grantown to Boat, so they had some extra time to explore Grantown. They walked down to the river and the Grant cemetery, the same walk Matt, Tom, and I had taken the day before. (I thought my camera was broken so there are no pictures of that walk. It turned out the camera wasn't broken.) The cemetery is home to generations of Grants, the founding family of Grantown, naturally.

After we had been walking for about an hour along the Spey, I looked across the river. There was a graveyard across the way. Hmm, I thought, that looks just like the one we went to yesterday. And that bench, that looks just like the bench near the graveyard we saw yesterday. Wait a minute! That IS the same graveyard. We had taken an hour to circle around and get across the river to a spot that is a 10-minute walk from our B&B! No fair!

As we walked along, Jessica, whose shoes have not done right by her, collected stray clumps of wool to shove in her shoes to cushion her toes. Patty also knew this secret. She said ballerinas often pad their shoes to cushion the impact on their toes.

Jessica was very excited about the bird-watching possibilities. As we entered the forest outside of Grantown, we heard an unusual birdcall, kind of a chuck-chuck-chuck-chuck. The day before, Matt had been hoping against hope that he'd hear the call of the capercaillie grouse, which ends in a kind of clop-clop sound, so the wisdom goes. We decided the chuck-chuck was close enough to a clop-clop and called it signed, sealed, and delivered that we'd heard the elusive capercaillie.

While walking 11 miles, there's a lot of time for reflection. I was mostly a blank slate or meditating on right, left, right, left, etc. But for the few minutes I tried to come up with some deep thoughts, I did think about how wonderful it is to see a different country at such a slow pace. I marveled at how people could farm such inhospitable land with such a short growing season -- especially this year. I pondered the extraordinary out-of-the-box thinking of Darwin as I saw before me evidence of how something could be familiar yet totally different.

As we approached Boat-of-Garten and our, as it turns out, very upscale B&B with its own house malt whisky, I thought how amazing that I could go from walking through an ecosystem that really didn't need me to the overstuffed, very comfortable chair in the B&B's sitting room with a glass of very fine whisky.

Here are some of the different ways we got to Boat-of-Garten.

The River Spey as seen from the footbridge above.

An hour later, that danged cemetery, about 10-15 minutes walk from our B&B!

Heather?

No one would dare run over someone with a bright green backpack!

Why should we get up? There's nothing to do.

This chimney seems to be missing something.

Our lunch, made up of rejects and leftovers from other days. And candy. Always candy.

This town had nothing really to recommend it, except for a great bathroom and a picnic table by a little stream. Heaven. It was a little past the halfway point.

Some of the trails were really, really narrow.

Wow! Heather on the hills.

Almost squashed the little feller.

A dark, still pond, with dead trees, hostile horsetail reeds poking out, no sounds, not even birds. All of a sudden ...  Okay, maybe I've been reading too many mystery books. Ya think?

The view from our new B&B in Boat-of-Garten.

Sunday, May 19 - Day Seven on The Speyside Way

It was an easy-peasy day because we didn't hike. This was our day off to spend in the medium-sized village of Grantown-on-Spey. I've been spelling it Granton, because that's how it's pronounced, but it's really Grantown. Now that we've cleared that up …

Our hosts, Pearl and Martin, are ex-lawyers who threw off that busy life and opened the bed-and-breakfast, Rosehall, two years ago. Their breakfast is good, their conversation is addictingly interesting, and the B&B is right in the heart of town. We have had the best time ever.

Martin felt so bad that almost everything, including the laundry -- yikes! -- was closed because it's Sunday. Not too long ago, everything would have been closed. So Martin offered to drive some of us to a local bird sanctuary for ospreys. Kathy, Patty, and Jessica flew off with him and had a good time wandering around the preserve.

Matt, Tom, and I -- I especially -- continued to recover from yesterday's walk. We did do a short walk to the end of town, through a nice park, and to the River Spey, the first time we've gotten close enough to dip our toes in it since the town of Speyside. We met a couple with their 14-year-old dog. The dog was arthritic and his back legs were dragging a little, but the little guy was enjoying his walk and getting to meet new people. They made a very sweet threesome.

Then I washed socks and re-arranged my suitcase for the umpteenth time.

Before dinner we got together with Martin and he told us stories about his wife and daughters. Every story was charming, eloquent, and done with a light touch, even when he strayed into political issues. He and his wife are English, so they have to step lightly in a Scotland that currently has a referendum to become independent from Great Britain.

At Martin's daughter's wedding, he put a bottle of local Speyside whisky at each table. He has challenged me to name what those whiskies might be by breakfast tomorrow morning. I am such a rank amateur and have only dabbled in tasting the Speyside liquor. I'm in deep trouble, I think.

At dinner tonight someone asked Jessica if we were on the Whisky Tour, and she said yes, without thinking. This is my bad influence on the group.

Before I forget, today's whisky talley is: Dalwhinnie -- good, but I knew that already.

Glensomething, provided by our host -- good but with a strong aftertaste

Isle of Jura, provided by our host -- excellent, but I already knew that, too!

Dinner was at an Indian restaurant right across the street. We waited a loooong time after ordering before getting our dishes. The restaurant wasn't very full, and the chef probably didn't want to pre-cook a lot of food because it's not the high tourist season. The locals eat a traditional Sunday dinner in the afternoon, rather than dinner at night, so they weren't going to be coming in.

The wait was worth it. The food was excellent. From tikkas to sags to biryanis to homemade naans, it was superior.

An easy day but great in so many ways. (If you don't count the battered hamburger that, fortunately, nobody ordered.)

The sky is clearing and things are looking sunny and warm for tomorrow's 11-mile hike.

The view from my third story window.

The unfortunately closed Red Sock Laundry.

The town hall with its clock tower, pretty much right across the street.

Rosehall. Stay here if you're ever in Grantown-on-Spey, Scotland!