Friday, 4th of July                   Inverness!

Robyn writes: As I write this, I'm sitting at the kitchen table in our lovely 2 bedroom apartment, watching the Ness flow by our window. Not bad!

The view from our unit kitchen window at 9pm - we can see a bit of the Ness River!

We slept in this morning and woke at 8.30, wondering if we'd missed breakfast...no worries, it went until 9, so we dashed down and had a last lovely Castle Campbell Hotel breakfast. Then it was back upstairs to finish packing and move on out, bidding our host a sad farewell. The weather was cool and overcast and as we left it started raining and kept it up for most of the trip (nothing too heavy, just light or drizzly).

Inverness is less than 100 miles north of Dollar, so it wasn't a long drive, and some of it was on the motorway where you can go 70 miles an hour. The other bits weren't nearly as quick, as there was so much traffic on some parts. We especially couldn't believe the amount of traffic heading south - we felt sure that no-one would be left in Inverness! The countryside was lovely - we came up onto the highlands over the Cairngorns and through the Cairngorn National Park, then down again to where Loch Ness starts in the valley (Inverness is on the Ness River). The temperature there was around 13 or 14 degrees, but in several places we could still see ice or snow up on the mountains. We stopped in Abiemore for a cuppa (the cafe we stopped at also offered lots of outdoor pursuits, like rock and mountain climbing, skiing etc, none of which we took up!) We got into Inverness around 1.30 to find that it's a much bigger city than we'd imagined.

 Lots of pine trees, and heather blooming

Firstly, we had to find our unit, which proved a bit difficult - several of Inverness's streets beside the river are currently closed as they're putting in flood levee walls (sandstone; they look very nice and will suit the city), so that sent us off course, then our satnav wanted to take us into our units via a road which is now closed off. We could see them, but it took a bit of exploring and careful re-reading of our landlord's letter to find the road into them. They are actually behind an old hospital and nurses' quarters dating back to the 1800s, and you have to drive into the hospital driveway on the street by the river to access them! Anyway, we located them, so then set out to get some groceries before we could book in at 3.

We found our way back to the Aldi store, and had fun selecting meals for the week. It's a great relief to be able to feed ourselves again; staying in hotels is so expensive having to eat out all day. We turned down some of the delicacies on offer, such as tinned haggis, beef olives stuffed with haggis, and battered haggis sticks. (I know, we're boring!)

By then it was nearly 3, so we came back and happily took over our home for the next week. It's a 2 bedroom apartment on the first floor of a set of units, probably built in the 1990s. It's by far the biggest place we've stayed so far, which is good, as Cait and Mikeal will be here on Wednesday. We unpacked the groceries and started on the washing, then Lex had a nap and I put my feet up and read after I'd sorted hanging out the washing and figured out the dryer. By the time he woke up, it was 6, much to our amazement. It had stopped raining so we went out to explore the district, and it's just lovely - right near our apartment is a little Victorian footbridge, so we went across that and up into the CBD (only a few blocks), past the castle on our right. We looked around the town (our favourite shop was an amazing kilt and tartan store) then walked past the traffic bridge to a second footbridge at the other end of the CBD, and walked home along our side of the river. Lots of lovely granite and sandstone buildings and beautiful front gardens. We seem to be right in the restaurant precinct too, so lots of yummy smells wafting out! (Not to mention purveyors of whiskey and other alcoholic beverages...) I must say that so far, Inverness has made a very favourable impression.

 The two Victorian footbridges which span the Ness at either end of the CBD

Inverness Castle just up the river from us. The original castle was destroyed by Robert the Bruce, then the rebuilt castle was blown up by Jacobites. This is a Victorian rebuild! Still very impressive though.

We've since had tea - a yummy quick stirfry of haggis, I mean pork, and vegetables with Scottish strawberries and yoghurt for dessert. Delicious! Lex has been happily watching Wimbledon and now the World Cup so I nobly volunteered to do the blog. It's 9.23 and the sun is still shining brightly outside. Our bedroom only has a wooden blind and I'm not convinced it will block the sunrise around 3am....think I will be hanging a blanket over the bloody thing shortly! As we are now a good deal further north, I think the night will be even shorter than we're used to.