Scotland And the Soulmates

(Under Construction)

Visions of Vikings invading and occupying the Orkneys and elsewhere; blue face Picts holding off the Romans; William Wallace and Robert “The Bruce” (1274-1329) standing up to Edward ”Long Shanks”; Prince Charles and the massacre at Culloden (16 April 1745); Jamie Frasier of Outlander fame;Connor MacLeod of the cult/fantasy highlander series (note:there are records of the MacLeods at the chapel at Loch Shiel in Glennfinnen); Mary Queen of Scots and her Sister Elizabeth the First, and all their drama, Queen Victoria and “Abdul” of recent movie fame all contribute to our motivation….

Let’s start off with a disclaimer.
We have no relationship with any of the establishments or productions mentioned in this article. They are simply places we visited or stayed or reflected on or enjoyed during our self funded trip to Scotland in September of 2018. We share them with our readers for informational/editorial purposes only.

Why did we go?
Our 2018 trip to Scotland was our first trip to the eastern part of the country. Yes we tend to think of Scotland as a country even though intellectually we know it is part of Great Britain and has been for many hundreds of years despite the efforts of those like William Wallace. It is because of his efforts, and those of Robert thebyte Bruce, Bonnie Prince Charlie, and Mary Queen of Scots, that Scotland has the colorful and often tragic history we have all come to love. Witness the series Outlander and all its followers or, “The Highlander” or the history of Rob Roy McGreggor, and of course the massacre at Culloden where many of our ancestors perished. So it is for the romance history that we visit. A desire to find a connection to the past and establish continuity with the present and possibly the future of our families helps drive us to visit as does our interest in architecture and the use of places in film and story. To an extent we visited because of our love of ancient and midevil history. And of course our basic “wanderlust” is always a factor. We don’t know if any of these envelope why you may want to visit. But if so great. If not feel free to post a comment about what draws you.

Currency
Remember that Scotland is part of the UK and, especially with Brexit looming, uses the British Pound not the Euro! As of the writing of this article (pre Brexit) the exchange rate is one Pound  Sterling (£) =$1.31 US. So if you thought something was worth $1. And you were going to pay £1.00 for it you are really going to pay $1.31 for it plus VAT.

Value Added Tax (VAT)
As you travel in Great Britain and the EU remember that you also get to pay a VAT. Some forms of the VAT are recoverable, e.g. those for goods you buy to bring home. Some forms of VAT are not recoverable, e.g. food, lodging and purchased meals. To get a VAT refund, certain “forms” will need to be completed and turned in at point of exit (airport in our case), including receipts. Be sure to ask for a VAT recovery form at point of purchase Of your products to facilitate your recovery. A regular receipt will not be enough to get your VAT tax returned to you. VAT varies from country to country. For example in Great Britain it is 20% in Iceland 24% (to pay off the elves) and in Hungary 27%! (The highest in the EU … Hungway Robbery?😎!

Getting to Scotland
There are many airlines that fly into Edinburgh, Glasgow, and other hubs e.g. Inverness. A quick search on Orbitz.com or Expedia, or kayak.com will help you find one or more that work for you. In our case, as we are also exploring what the recent changes in frequent flyer programs has done to increase difficulty of achieving high status with a major international carrier. We focused our travel on American Airlines. Our outbound routing went from Reno to PHX, 601 air miles, to JFK 2,153 air miles, then to EDI 3,256 air miles. The return went from EDI to JFK to Phoenix then home to Reno. This netted us 12,020 equivalent miles of the 100,000 needed for Executive Platinum Status and of course only a fraction, 10%, of the equivalent $ spend ($1,222) of $12,000 per person needed in combination with the miles to achieve Executive Platinum Status. Note the $ spend is a new requirement, and the loss of 4 system wide upgrades is benefit reduction with the revamped more challenging program. If cost conservation is your goal and you aren’t in it for the airline status…. well there is a cost target to beat.

In addition to flying to Edinburgh, one can fly to Heathrow, tour southern UK and drive/train/fly to Edinburgh or Glasgow or Inverness and take off from one of these Scottish venues to tour the highlands and the lowlands.

Where did we Stay?
Dalmahoy Country Club
A very Nice country club resort approximately 5 miles from the Edinburgh Airport. We Booked it through Hotels.com. We were discovering during a recent trip to Ireland and Northern Ireland, that we were able to book discounted rooms at country clubs mid-week thus providing an upscale experience during our trip. This time, we had traveled out to Scotland on a Sunday and thus arrived on a Monday. We then allowed 3 nights at the Dalmahoy to acclimate to the time zone. There’s nothing better than sleep and time to adjust through the jet-lag (particularly as we get a bit more mature…) and you might as well be comfortable while you do it. While we arrived at Dalmahoy early (our flight got in before 0800 local) the staff immediately went to work and enabled us to have an early check-in and accommodated us for breakfast. Like Ireland, the “Traditional Scottish Breakfast” was always available at the buffet. This consists of baked Beans, Black Pudding, cooked tomatoes, boiled mushrooms, scrambled eggs, and tea or coffee. Imagine this every morning for your vacation? After two weeks in Ireland, this breakfast started to get old as it is the same at every hotel. Fortunately in the case of the Dalmahoy, they also had a cook to order omelet station where you could choose among onion, peppers, chorizo, diced tomato, smoked salmon, and ham and cheese for the construction of a different omelet every day if you so chose. Just be patient, as cooking more than one at a time seemed a bit more than local staff could manage and even then there was a tendncy to overcook one side and under cook the other. Of course the buffet also had the breads, cereals, fruit and juices one might expect of a continental breakfast, and even pancakes for the visiting Americans.

Among the other features of the Dalmahoy are 2 18 hole golf courses (big surprise for Scotland…) an indoor swimming pool, a sauna and an exercise room with various equipment and free weight and of course the availability of onsite massage.

The Thainstone House

Aside from the Size of the room and small double bed, what a nice place this was!

Hillside Havens

This was a fun place. Several prefab Cabins, New, well equipped, operated by Derek and his family on his brother-in-laws farm. We sat out The recent storm in our cabin the ___ Neuk, with winds up to 80MPH! despite this, we were warm and comfortable sipping Single Malt while the wind howled and we watched TV. Solid Internet service too. I suppose we could have BBQ’d but the wind and rain made the outside a bit uncomfortable. A note… this place is near impossible to find in the dark (sign is not lit) endeavor to check in during the day, and set your GPS for the turn in or clock the distance from a landmark along B9009. We didn’t do either the first night and figured out our error three miles too far down the road on a very dark night.

The Scotsmen Hotel
Nice Hotel on North Bridge Street. We were surprised at the less than Queen sized bed in our large room. Also this was the single most expensive place of lodging at which we stayed (averaging $350/nite on the weekend) during our entire trip to Scotland… yet the cost included neither parking, nor breakfast (all other hotels/Country Clubs had) and didn’t even have a parking valet service despite their high cost. That said, the hotel was convenient for access to the Royal Mile, had a very nice restaurant, and did have a breakfast buffet that could be purchased for a + up of approximately £15 in addition to the $350/night. We opted to go to the restaurant where we could order eggs benedict (with Ham) and eggs Royal (with Salmon). So my word of caution here… watch out for weekend room rates asside from no free refills on coffee, breakfast cooked to order seemed reasonably priced.

What did we do In Scotland?
Our first day of excursions heading out from the Dalmahoy we had intended to drive up to the Royal Mile and park at Waverly Station. We got started a bit too late, however, and parking was full and access was blocked. So after a bit of frustrated replanning while stuck on side streets, we set our GPS for Roslyn Chapel and Castle in MidIothian?

Write more about Roslin here

Add a takeaway box on usefulness of self owned GPS updated with Country and City Maps

As we were working our excursion dynamically, something we tend to enjoy vs. the “organized bus tours”, we decided to set off for the heart of distilley country by the river Spey and take in a castle or 5 and another country club along the way. This decision resulted in a trip to Glamis Castle and a stay at Thainstone House, on our way to Dufftown (pronounced Duffton).

 

 

 

Glamis Castle
Glamis (pronounced Glams) Castle Dates from ____ and is of MacBeth Fame. Still privately owned it is available for corporate events and weddings No we are not on commission, although that would be nice).

Dufftown and Attractions
Among the castles that could be visited (there seemed to be one every few miles if not closer), were Balvanie Castle, and Achendoun Castle.

Balvanie Castle

Achendoun Castle

Some Distilleries Near Dufftown
Balvanie Distillery
Visiting this Distillery needs an appointment, which unfortunately we didn’t have. Arrange appointments via______ we will do so in the future if we return in the spring/summer

Glenfiddich Distillery
Right next to Balvanie Castle, this is an easy drive up, and park site with distillery tours and an extensive gift shop featuring offerings for Both Balvanie and Glenfiddich

The Macalan Distillery
What an interesting facility. Designed to both blend into natural surroundings as well as provide a large interior space for its “Jewel Box” and Brand Wall, the distiller operations are visible behind a glass wall. Again this was a late afternoon visit and so we skipped the tour (we are somewhat familiar with distillery operations at this point. However, this facility is pretty kool. We of course spent to many £’s investing in their 21 year old double wood single malt. Tempting to open just to have an excuse to go back and get some more .

The Dewers Brothers Distillery
We saw this facility while heading to The Macalan Distillery. Dewers is a bit pale four our taste so we didn’t stop in this trip

The Cardhu Distillery
This is the first “Woman Started” distillery in Scotland. We tried to get there in time to tour it but were unsuccessful. We did learn that they are a blending house blending Johnney Walker and _____. Our focus was on single malts rather than blendedds so perhaps we will visit in the future.

Dining in Duffton
Duffton is not a large town despite the distillery traffic. Breakfasts we typically took at ”The Coffee Pot” where we could get omlettes cooked to order, and they would mix 2 tablespoons of coco into Dirk’s Cafe Americano creating a mocha (he is spoiled we know).

Dinners we enjoyed at ”The Seven Stills” our first night and “The Alchemy” our last night.

Our Thanks to Derek, our host at the Hillside Havens for the suggestions, especially the Seven Stills as they would have been closed and we would have missed the chance had we not become aware of them during our first nights stay.

The Seven Stills

Seven Stills Restaurant Duffton

The chef, Patrick, is French. The Hostess/Waiter (the chef’s spouse is Scottish) Read our thoughts about the Seven Stills Here
The Soulmates on The Seven Stills Restaurant Duffton

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Alchemy Restaurant

Heading Back to Edinburough…

Never Let a drive through the countryside go to waste! and on our trip back to edinourough, we followed this sage advise to our great delight! and we visited the The Falconry Center – in Huntley

 

Some possible places to Stay:
Near Glamis Castle
Near Dufftown
Along the Royal Mile

Thoughts about Driving on the Left

What do we want to do more of?