Day two of my tour's was with 'Highland Explorers,' who run several tours ranging from one day excursions to five-day guided tours. Most of the one day tours are basically aimed at giving a 'Scotland in a day' experience, trying to incorporate various glens, lochs, and cultural aspects for people who want to experience as much of Scotland as possible on a time limit. I went for one called 'Whisky and Waterfalls' since a) I like both of those things, b), almost every tour company ran some version of it, so it must be popular, and c) it covered the southern highlands. My last two days are going to the western and northern highlands, so this seemed like a good way of getting that last quadrant in.
We met at their office on the Mile, and got introduced to our tour guides Duncan and Duffy. And no, I didn't make those names up. Duffy was as loud and Scottish as Scottish could be (he was even wearing a rugby shirt with the Scottish flag on it), and both he and Duncan were bristling with Scottish pride. Scotland recently voted against leaving the UK and you could tell the two of them were still furious about it. "700 years of oppression and submission, and it could've all been over but those bastards went and checked the wrong box! Wallace is rolling in his grave right now." Duffy was also a proud Glaswegian (i.e. from Glasgow), and when he found out I was heading there the next day got really excited. On the way to our first stop, he wrote me up a list of all the things I had to see and do and eat, which was incredibly nice of him.
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Pretty monument, though. |
Speaking of Wallace and our first stop, our first stop was the Wallace monument outside Stirling. We got an entertaining story on the way up of how a few years ago, in honor of all the extra tourism Braveheart had generated, a new statue of Wallace was commissioned to stand outside the monument. Since there aren't any surviving depictions of Wallace remaining, everyone was all atwitter over what it would look like. When the day of the great unveiling came, the assembled crowds were stunned to find that it looked like...Mel Gibson. The statue didn't last long. They dropped us off at the base of the hill the monument is on, and I hiked to the top. It wasn't hard, but it was definitely steep, so I was winded by the top. There was a lovely view of the surrounding area, but the exhibit in the monument was rather a let-down. The highlight was Wallace's sword on display (a HUGE claymore; from it the best estimate is that Wallace was at least 6'7"), and it was, however, amusing to see even in his monument, the country acknowledge that he was more a symbol than anything else. Wallace won ONE battle against the English, and was then summarily crushed in his second. The second floor nods to this by having an exhibit on the romance of his story and its effect on national pride. But hey, cool sword.
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A big-ass sword. |
I headed down and grabbed some Irn Bru (Iron-Brew, Scotland's radioactively-orange, bubblegum-
flavored national soda) from the vending machine in the monument's cafe. When I walked back to the bus, Duffy pointed at it and yelled, "Irn Bru, that's my boy!" It's the only soda in the world that outsells Coca Cola in any country, and the Scots are mighty proud of it. We hop back in the bus to go see our second stop, a couple highland cows outside Stirling. Their owner owns a roadside shop next to his fields, and sells carrots and such that you can feed the cows for a photo op. A great business model if you ask me.
We then drove through the highlands a bit to Loch Earn, a popular camping a fishing spot amongst Scots. It had some gorgeous mountains around it, which made for some excellent photo ops. There was also a set of incredibly brave ducks hanging about that came an pecked at our boots looking for snacks. Quick pit stop done, we hopped back on the bus and moved on.
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Mountains around Loch Earn. |
Next stop was the 'whisky' portion of the trip, Glenturret distillery, where Famous Grouse is based. Was much of the same as the previous days' distilleries (with a bit of cheesy Disneyfied bits thrown in the mix), but still fun to see. We also got to see the monument to Towser, the distillery's former head mouse hunting cat. She'd leave a tally of her kills in mouse tails on the front porch, and from that they estimated that in her 20 year life, she killed between 28 and 29 THOUSAND mice and rats. Obviously she took pride in her work. We took a turn through the gift shop (I got a half bottle of some unaged Highland Park, my personal favorite), then ate lunch at the distillery (they had a very tasty haggis, if I do say so myself).
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They also had the world's largest bottle of whiskey, a title they reclaimed from Jack Daniel's on the distillery's 200th birthday a few years ago. |
Moving on, we were then supposed to stop at the Perthshire Hermitage, a forested area with a view of the Black Linn Falls where local lords would take the ladies they were wooing for a romantic getaway. I say 'supposed to' because instead our actual next stop was beside a random back road, as our vans exhaust pipe had popped loose and was dragging along the road underneath us. Duncan and Duffy hopped to (Duffy changing his Scottish rugby shirt for a roadside safety vest), and got it strapped in well enough to make it the rest of the day. We made it to the Hermitage and walked through the douglas firs to the waterfall, where my camera battery lasted just long enough to get some photos of the falls before dying. Still, I grabbed enough to make do then headed back, stopping along the way at a 'wishing tree,' a fallen tree that people made wishes at by embedding coins into the wood.
The last stop of the day was the small village of Dunkeld, a tiny town with a small cathedral worth stopping at. I made a quick round of the cathedral, which I found most interesting for its tiny size. Most of the time when you think 'cathedral,' you think of the main church of a large city, not a small village. The whole thing was just one room, basically the size of the sanctuary of a medium-sized American church. Walking back, I got stopped by two Scottish ladies asking if I was the groundskeeper (apparently I just have that look about me?). As soon as I opened my mouth and said, "No ma'am, I'm just--" they went "OH! A tourist! Not many of your type around here," and went on their way. Accents work both ways I s'pose. On the way back to the bus I walked past a field of sheep and snuck some photos of one grazing nearby. He was NOT happy when he saw me, and scurried off to join the rest of the herd. Upon further inspection, the herd had a contingent of deer along with the sheep, who I'm sure were enjoying the free food laid out by the farmer.
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Hard to tell here, but that sheep on the left is giving me one hell of a side-eye. As soon as I put the camera down, he high-tailed it back to the herd. |
Back on the bus to Edinburgh, Duffy gave us some advice on where to grab some food and beer around the city, and I took his advice and grabbed dinner in a brewpub (BrewDog) before heading in for the night.
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