Sorry guys, it’s been a while since my last post, been a busy bee recently. Got lots to share with you all though, including my amazing trip up North. I visited Elgin, Inverness, Loch Ness, Dunrobin Castle, Gen Ord Distillery and the Highland Wildlife Park.
I had a few weeks off work at the end of the year so what better way to spend it than in the Scottish Highlands. Living in Aberdeen we have so many beautiful sights on our door step, you don’t have to go far to see the mountains and amazing landscapes associated with Scotland.
We started off by visiting my partner, Euan’s, family in Elgin, we spent a few days up there and visited Brodie Country Fayre where we had a delicious lunch and a browse around the amazing shop. I may have spent a little too much money on some homemade and Scottish inspired sweets and cakes. It was nice to get away from home for a few days, visiting the in laws, especially some of the family we hadn’t seen in a while. After our visit to Elgin was over, we decided to take a trip to Inverness for a few days and experience the tourism Scotland has to offer, and of course we had to visit a castle whilst we were away. Being so far up North, there’s only one castle I knew I had to visit, Dunrobin Castle.
Further up North in Golspie, Dunrobin Castle sits on the coast with amazing gardens and a view looking out to sea. There’s so much history all in one place, you can almost feel what it would have been like living there, feeling like a princess everyday and looking out onto the spectacular gardens. We were lucky and seemed to time it perfectly as we arrived about 20 minutes before the start of a Falconry display, where we got to experience some amazing birds and how they live in their natural habitat. Besides the fear I was feeling each time a bird swooped by my head, it was an amazing experience, sitting in a beautiful garden in the grounds of an even more beautiful castle watching and listening about some amazing birds of prey.
That was nothing though as we then toured the inside of the castle, and as I said, so much history. There are different sections of the castle which were built at different times, it really is a tour of history. Visiting each room and seeing how people lived in that era and seeing how things changed over the years to how we live and socialise today. As well as being used as a navel hospital in the First World War, it was also used as a boy’s boarding school from 1965 to 1972. Imagine living and going to school here, seeing it every day, I would certainly be up for that.
If you’re ever that far North it’s a must see, you must visit it. It’s the largest castle in the Northern Highlands with 189 rooms with some of the castle dating back to the 1300’s as the home to the Earls and later, the Dukes of Sutherland. You can’t go that far North of Scotland and not visit Dunrobin Castle, get it on your bucket list guys!