We started the day with another breakfast at the Firestation, then, determined to make it to Culloden and hit some castles on the way, we got on the road. Along the way we stopped off at what looked like an ancient graveyard called Edinkillie, but upon closer inspection, contained nothing older than the mid-1800s. Our expectations for truly old stuff have been reset somewhat so this wasn't quite the venerable site we were expecting, but all the same, we walked the yard and studied some of the names, amazed by some of the stories revealed on these massive headstones.
From there it was a brief drive to Brodie Castle, which seemed far more modern from the outside since it wasn’t all stone blocks like Drum’s tower, and the inside was extravagantly furnished with complex woodwork, lavish painted ceilings and marble hearths all around. We weren’t able to take any pictures inside but the tour guide was hilariously dry and as entertaining as she was informative.
By now we had a pretty good sense of how to get around, but there were still moments of murky navigating, and rolling out to the Culloden Battlefield Memorial (the furthest from the Cottage we had been in some time) stretched our skills for sure. Getting there was fine, and the site was an intense experience...rows of red and blue flags depicted the English and Jacobite battle lines, and the field is scattered with memorial markers for all the clans who fought and fell on that brutal day.
Dad took a good long hike our to the memorial cairn and replica thatched roof house in the middle of the field, then hiked all the way back before we found they had motorized buggies he could have used. Oh well...it was good exercise, but after that, we were all pretty bushed and decided to find our way back to Tomintoul.
This proved tougher than we thought. Somehow we got ourselves turned around when heading back east and we ended up passing up and down the same street in Nairn nearly 4 times due to our confusion. Once we got ourselves on the right road back however, it was relatively smooth sailing and we pulled into the Clockhouse Restaurant, which we found to be stunning in terms of flavor AND preparation. The food was rich, the atmosphere warm and the meat and produce both local and delicious. Dad's mushrooms for instance were picked locally we found out, and the cheese and beef were all locally raised and produced. The restaurant was also the display area for the world's LARGEST bottle of whisky (as verified by Guinness in September of this year), and I of course had to have a picture taken with it, since it was nearly as tall as I.
Once completely stuffed with rich, delicious food, we rolled back and embarked on the adventure of doing laundry. The machines at the cottage (and I suspect in most of Scotland) are tiny by our standards, so it took several loads to get our clothes all clean, and even still, the weird alka seltzer-like pellets of detergent that we had picked up in Edinburgh (since that seemed to be all that was available) left odd white streaks.
Even more frustrating, the dryer seemed to turn off and on intermittently and refused to completely dry anything we put in. So we tried leaving a load in overnight and decided to deal with the results in the morning. Ah, the simple things we take for granted...
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