Barbara and Tom: Thursday, May 16, 2013 - Day 4 of The Speyside Walk

Today maybe it should have been called The Speyside Stroll for some of us. Tom and Matt set off for Aberlour (pronounced abay-lour, rhymes with hour) on foot, about a 4(?) mile trek. Patty, Jessica, Kathy and I walked one mile into Dufftown to catch the bus to Aberlour. We were standing by a sign that said "bus stop," but Jessica asked someone passing by where to catch the bus. Up the hill, she said. Sure enough, there were people at THAT bus stop. Small town ways -- you just have to know what to do.

We had taken about two hours to walk to Dufftown from Craigellichie the other day. The bus took us back to Craigellichie in seven minutes. Demoralizing. But we were going on to Aberlour for the day, so we stayed put on the bus. It's about a two-and-half-mile walk from there back to Craigellichie, and that was our plan. Bus to Aberlour, find the guys, all walk to Craigellichie together. We were going to be in Craigellichie for a second night.

Now bear with me, because it becomes a little complicated. The next official stretch of The Speyside Walk goes south from Craigellichie through Aberlour and on to Ballendaloch, about 12 miles in all. But today we were walking from Aberlour north back to Craigellichie. (We had taken a side trip to Dufftown over the past couple of days and were now striving to be back on track.) BUT we didn't want to walk the same stretch we had already walked from Aberlour (south to north), so the plan is to bus back to Aberlour (north to south) and continue the walk from there, thus officially logging all points on the walk, just not in a forward-proceeding sequence. Got it? No? Doesn't matter.

Anyhow.

In Aberlour, my group peeked in the windows of houses and looked in the yarn shop at locally grown, spun, and dyed yarn. We found a great food store with all kinds of cheeses, whisky, crackers, whisky, fruitcakes, whisky, and whisky. (We returned to it after lunch and Matt chose a Strathsisla whisky.) We decided our dinner would be what we picked up there, so we would have enough time to attend a play in Craigellichie. We had seen a poster advertising "In Praise of Elephants," a musical, to be performed in the town hall tonight. Seriously, who could resist.

While we were waiting for Matt and Tom to show up, we scoped out the town. We decided to have lunch at a "little old lady" cafe, then head down to the Mash-Tun, a bar renowned for their whisky selection, or so a local had told us yesterday. We would go there for sticky toffee pudding for dessert.

That was the plan.

When we arrived at the cafe, it was packed, and not just with little old ladies. About a half hour wait, the young woman told us. Wander, wander, wander. A half an hour later, the restaurant was still packed. We were smarter this time and just hung around and were seated within a few minutes.

Matt has noticed that there are a lot of young women working in food service in Scotland. They are all nice, chipper, and helpful. But the service is mostly slow, sometimes erratic, and diners have to be patient and expect confusion. Today's lunch was no exception. But the people working there were very nice, and I really liked my curried banana toastie. (That's just the way it sounds, a banana with curry, mashed up and spread on toast.)

We had just gotten our lunch and were predicting that the guys would end up at (the more manly) Mash-Tun for lunch, when in they came. Although they arrived about the time they had been expected, they told us they had gotten lost. Matt wryly observed that the "discrete" trail (an actual kind of trail) signs were so discreet that they were invisible. They finally had to "bushwack" through some gorse (prickly plants ALL over Scotland -- and Oregon). Of little solace were the signs that other hikers had had to do the same.

The sticky toffee pudding at the Mash-Tun was so fine. We had it three ways, with (clotted) cream, custard and ice cream. All good. A fine complement to the dessert was the 16-year-old Aberlour I ordered. It tasted of honey. That's not a bad thing to taste like.

On the walk back to Craigellichie, I spotted a fisherman on the riverbank. I went over to grill him. He was fishing for the salmon that were heading upriver to spawn. Unlike in the Pacific Northwest, there is only one kind of salmon here. If the smoked salmon we've had here so far is any indication, it's a great salmon to have! The fish take about five hours to travel to where we were (15 miles from the sea?) on the high tide.

He had more stringent rules about which fish he would keep than required by his fishing license. He was allowed to keep his second and fourth catches. He added that if one of the keep catches had been a "hen," a brooding fish, he would have thrown her back and taken the loss. It's a rule he learned while fishing in Canada, and he appreciated the ecological sensibility of it. Although he wasn't Scottish, he looked like the very embodiment of a Scottish fly fisherman, and I took his picture.

The rest of the walk was scenic and uneventful. We were greeted by many, many dogs. The Highlander Hotel had all our same rooms available. We met in the lounge to eat our dinner of cheese, pate, bread squashed in the backpack, fruitcake, crackers, wine, and whisky. Then on to the play.

The play wasn't the local affair I thought it would be. It was a professional touring group that specifically worked plays for presentation in small village town halls. Clever. The people who attended were very excited because professional productions don't come around much. Although people we had talked to hadn't expected much of an audience, the place was packed!

The ticketseller was late because her son had spilled the change in their car and they had to scramble to get it back. She was also the refreshment seller. Hope she was happy with the crowd because she worked very, very hard.

The play was sweet, poignant, funny, and fit perfectly in the town hall. We, the audience, sat around the edges of the play. Some audience members, including Tom and Patty participated in the play by drinking tea or accepting an orange. Because one of the actors actually made biscuits (cookies) during the play, that was the bonus we ate after the play was done.

I certainly received nine pounds worth of entertainment.

A quick stop in the hotel's bar for a taste of Isle of Jura, the number one whisky picked by some kind of experts in some article I read in some magazine in the hotel's lounge. It was okay but not in Aberlour's class, in my humble opinion.

The day is now officially done.

P.S. The breakfast at Fernbank House in Dufftown, Scotland was great. The hostess was funny and great. Her dog (who had to pee for the vet and had the hostess chasing him around for a sample) was great. The rooms were spotless. Plus she did our laundry. Times are tough. We said we'd say how good her establishment was. So now you know. Spread the word. She said: Tell your friends, tell your enemies, I'll take care of them all!

Great.