T̶w̶o̶ One p̶e̶r̶p̶e̶t̶u̶a̶l̶ ̶e̶x̶p̶a̶t̶s̶ immigrant settling into home country number five.
After following the northern coast of eastern Scotland, our route turned inland towards Loch Kinord, where we stayed for a night. This area is known as Royal Deeside, due to its proximity to the River Dee and to Balmoral Castle, the queen’s famed vacation home.
One of my favorite parts of driving around the Scottish Highlands is hairy coo spotting. As you drive along, you’ll catch sight of a couple cows grazing in a pasture far up the road.
We hadn’t specifically set out to visit any distilleries on this last trip to the Highlands, but somehow we managed to find ourselves driving the Malt Whisky Trail through Speyside one afternoon. Clearly we were meant to tour a distillery right then. We were spoiled for choice with such a large cluster of distilleries at our feet; not knowing which to choose, we trusted our guidebook’s recommendation of Glenfiddich.
On our last morning in Nairn, we couldn’t resist taking one more stroll along the beach.
Read moreEastern Scotland: from Nairn to Speyside (or beaches to casks)
To start out our recent trip to the Highlands, we based ourselves in the seaside town of Nairn for two nights (and we would have happily stayed another night or two). We spent our second day exploring the Moray Firth (a firth is basically the Scottish equivalent of a fjord) on both sides of Inverness.
We’re finally getting the chance to get out and see some of the wonderful other parts of Scotland that we’ve been hearing so much about. Not knowing where to start, we chose a direction and hopped in the car. We ended up covering a good bit of northeast Scotland on our first five-day excursion, getting just enough of a taste of its rolling hills, castles, beaches, distilleries, and hairy coos to know we definitely want to go back for more.