From the Bonny Highlands of Scotland

Friday 27th November

From the Bonny Highlands of Scotland

It is 4.00pm here and it is totally dark outside, it won’t get light again until 9.00am – we are told that in the summer here the people can read their newspaper outside at midnight – if they so desired!

We enjoyed the rest of our time in Ireland and really enjoyed the green countryside – there is a reason why it is so green!

On our way to Belfast we had stopped in a wee place by the sea to have some lunch when a man John who had seen our New Zealand sign on the back of the camper pulled over to talk to us – John and his wife are going to New Zealand in January for a holiday, so we ended up going back to their place for a cup of tea. They live in a cottage that is 300 years old and he is 6th generation to farm his land – interesting people.

We had a great day sightseeing in Belfast and it was interesting to see some of the places we all came to know about in the 80’s with all the fighting there. Whilst of course it is now not fighting there are reminders everywhere of the turmoil endured by the people of Belfast. The peace wall is still there which is the divides Falls Road (Catholic area) and Shankill Road (Protestant area) and the gates are still locked each night at 11.00pm. There are many peace murals lining these streets which all have some lovely sayings on them. Belfast is also the place where the Titanic was built – we drove down to the port and saw the shipyards that once had 35,000 employees and now has just 250.
Last Friday we had an uneventful ferry crossing from Belfast to Cairnryan in Scotland, just a couple of hours this time.
Saturday afternoon saw us in the teeming rain dressed in our All Blacks jersey’s heading to a pub in Balloch to watch the All Blacks vs England rugby game. Of course we are in absolute football country so we had to wait for the football to finish before someone would change channels for us and then we were the only ones watching it – fair to say not quite the atmosphere we had wanted especially when it was such a good score for us.
On Sunday we travelled through to Comrie to Ken and Jan’s place for a couple of nights. We met Ken and Jan earlier in the year at White’s Bay – Blenheim and Ken was really helpful to us when we were trying to buy a camper from New Zealand. This wonderful couple, with their 9 cream dachshunds, made us feel very welcome in their

home. We had a good day sightseeing around their area which they have lived in for 40 years. We visited Rob Roy’s grave (fighting Clansman), Deil’s Cauldron – which is a big waterfall that looked like it was bubbling away after all the rain and also Falls of Dochart – lots of beautiful places to see in this area. We arrived home to a traditional evening meal that Jan had made of Haggis, mashed potato and mashed swede – we both really enjoyed it!
From Comrie we travelled up to Braemar stopping off at Blair Castle on the way. Blair Castle is a working castle that is 740 years old – amazing old place and especially beautiful as it was all done up with Christmas decorations – it was lovely standing by the fireplace sipping on a glass of mulled wine admiring all the old Victorian armory. Braemar is not far from Balmoral Castle – where the Queen and her family spend their summers, unfortunately it wasn’t open for us but we did see the beautiful gates with the royal emblem in gold on them. Braemar village very nice and a lovely wild-camping spot behind the Tourist Office in the centre saw us wander over to yet another local village inn for a wee dram or two.
From Braemar we then travelled up to Spey Bay which is on the North East coast of Scotland. We had the most amazing wind up here, very exposed to all elements – we were definitely rocked to sleep that night wild-camping behind a closed hotel overlooking the sea.
We spent last night in Inverness and had a great spot down by the loch – shame it wasn’t summer! We had a great night out on the town and listened to some Scottish Music – well it was suppose to be – sounded more American but still enjoyable. Just managed to get the last bus back to our camper so not an early night.
We have today travelled down Loch Ness – whilst we were on the lookout for Nessie she didn’t appear for us until we glanced back on our way out and managed to snatch a shot of her. Had an interesting tour around the Loch Ness Exhibition Theatre – this is where they really quashed all our dreams of seeing Nessie – lots of theories and reasons why there never was a monster!
We are now in forest car park, (wild-camping again) not far from Fort William and have had a big change of plans today and are now heading straight down to London to be there for first thing Monday morning. The camper has gone really well for us and we have had no problems with it but there are two quite major problems with this make of camper and whilst Fiat will fix them under warranty which is only valid in UK/Europe so once we take the camper back to NZ we lose the warranty. So thanks to Ken (again) he has managed to book the camper in for us in London on Monday morning. This also means that we are without accommodation and vehicle for 4 days. Rae had (still has) great plans of jumping on a plane and travelling down to the South of Spain to some sunshine – Brent thinks that a B&B around the corner from the camper is a better idea……..watch this space! So the next couple of days will be driving for us – about 9 hours.
Brent also thinks that it is good that we only have two weeks left of our trip as the camper is getting absolutely full of lots of goodies! Nay bother, Brent will just have to find some more space.
Rae is especially enjoying all the Xmas decorations in the streets and shops – so very pretty and of course the Xmas lights go on about 3.00pm – no having to wait until at least 9.30pm!

Watch this space