Another Day Around Fraserburgh

After the disappointing efforts to find lodging at the Orkneys and the Isle of Skye last evening, we opted to spend the moring working out the best itenerary plans we could whille we had internet and a comfortable hotel. In the end we opted to stay another night at the Saltoun Inn, with a 50% increase in the tarrif since it was not the weekend. 

Breakfast in the pub/cafe of eggs Benedict this morning with filtered coffee! Tasted so much better than the pots of instant we had been drinking at the other places. We were able to secure lodging on the Orkneys for next Monday for 3 days. We will move off to Loch Ness tomorrow to stay at a place near Urquart Castle that has been recommended by friends to have some of the best food in Scotland. Then we will move down SW to Kilmartin Glenn with dozens of archeological sites before we head up to the Orkneys on Sunday.

After arranging the bookings, we finally started out to find more stone circles. However, when we arrived at the car in the parking lot, we found a 60 pound ticket on the windshield. Evidently, we were only allowed an hour of grace in front of the hotel and should have parked in a different location. A kindly lady walked us through the ticket and showed us that if we paid it withing 24 hours, the fee was only 20 pounds!  There goes a nice dinner or bottle of wine!  Diane tried to log into the website to pay the fee, but since the US cards require signature, she was unsuccessful. After quite a bit of effort in the early evening, we were finally able to pay the reduced rate fee. 

The first stone circle we tried to find was another "wild" one, but was on priviate property out in grain fields, which we opted not to slog out to find. Then on to Masies Cairen [ https://www.historicenvironment.scot/visit-a-pl…] , a very large pile of rocks like we had seen in Ireland. The sign post said that there had been more in this area, but that the rock had been used for other purposes. Cobbles a bit larger than softball size, all pretty uniform in size. A burial beaker and a broken sword had been found in the interior upon escavation.  

Then on to Strichen for another recumbant circle. A walk of about 900m brought us up to a knoll with a good view and a nice stone circle. Evidently, it had been distroyed and then reconstructed, but it was nice never-the-less. Nearby was a circular tower that was an old Dovecot for the local estate. There is a large house down the hill and a large farm complex. An older house was in ruins just to the Northwest of the newer house, which we at first thought was a type of factory until Diane found it on an old survey map on-line identifying that it was the original house.

By the time we were back to the car, it was time to venture back to the hotel for a drink. We walked the main street to see if there was any other place to eat, but pickings were slim and we ended back at our hotel.

Musing...Lighting in the Hotel Rooms:  Up until this hotel, we have found the rooms to be very frugally lit...actually quite dim and difficult in which to try to read or do anything in the evenings. This hotel, however, was quite well lit in addtion to being more updated. Looks like the remodeling must have been in 2014 from the certification sticker in the elevator. The rooms were also electrified such that it required the room key in a slot to turn on the lights. During the past 2 years, Diane has only seen two stateside hotels with the same features. 

More Musing....Stone Houses: Most if not all of the houses seem to be cut out of the same type of brown-grey stone. Brown-grey stone and black/grey slate roofs everywhere are a bit depressing. Diane thinks that is why there are multiple planters of begonias, petunas and nastursums planted around the city centers and homes. But must also mean that the stone masons can stay in demand. We do see some new home developments being built here and there, so that is a good sign. Like stateside, however, the newer homes are quite larger in size and are on the outskirts of town. We looked at a relator listing window and found the costs to be quite high by our standards for this little town. Read more