Saturday: Kinguisse to Contin

Breakfast cooked to order in the dining room. Bernie's mother, 92 yrs, comes every morning to help with the cooking, cleaning, making of the homemade jams, etc. Climbs up the steep ill daily to reach the house She was only 4ft 8" tall at best, but spry as they come.

It is a crackingly great day! Weather at 18 deg C. We even had to turn on the car accident but afternoon.

We left about 10am for the Lynchat or Raitts sourterrain site down the road Diane had located in her searches [ http://www.megalithic.co.uk/article.php?sid=155…] . Not in the books or on the big map, so a bit of a wild site just a few miles down the road. Walked by it the first time and then located it within a fence to protect it from the sheep and cows...duh!Very interesting site. Over 2 meters in height once inside and 2m across. The intact roof made it quite different from the ones we saw a week ago down the East coast. Well worth the adventure in finding it.

Then we started to move North towards Forres to find the Ardclach Church Bell tower [ http://www.undiscoveredscotland.co.uk/nairn/ard…] . On the way, we travled up above 320m elevation over pretty barren country side. When we started down towards lower elevations, we saw more trees and vegetation re-appar. The church tower was tucked well off of the road up on a hill above the church that was down in the valey next to the river. Build in 1655 it was a small 2-stored building with good views. Peter talked to a couple of ly fishermen who had come up from England, but were not having any luck. They said they had to pay the landowner 90 pounds a day to fish and that they thought was pretty inexpensive.

After touring the church yard and the bell tower, we moved on to Forres to see Suenos Stone, a 6m tall pictish stone that was now protected in a large plexiglass box [ http://www.undiscoveredscotland.co.uk/forres/su…] . Very impressive with deep carvings. Depicted loss in battle on one side and had nice cross on the other side.

Then we traveled West towards Inverness for the last site of the day, the clava cairns [ http://www.undiscoveredscotland.co.uk/inverness…]. The 3 large cairns are peacefully located within a glade of trees. Near the Culloden battlefield [ http://www.undiscoveredscotland.co.uk/inverness…] , but not as seemingly full of tourist, although we did have a few waves of small tours come through,, all staying about 10m. Too little time to soak in all of the area. Two of the cairins are passage cairns with openings facing the SW. The center cairin does not have a passage, but is equal in size to the other two cairns with a central curbbed chamber. Cows at the farm next door were making all kinds of racket. Must have been the mothers and calfs were separated. From the cairn area, we also had a good view of the Culloden viaduct, which was beautiful as it spanned the valley [ https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culloden_Viaduct].

Finally it was on to the lodgings for the evening, a moderate sized older roadside hotel. We are on the 2nd floor (3rd to those in the US), but don't ask me where the fire sprinklers are or the fire escapes. The fire alarm did sound for a very short time after we returned from dinner, but did not continue.

Dinner was at the Red Poppy restaurant about 5 miles away. Very nice dinner and about the same cost as the pub food last evening. Diane had salmon on linguinie and Peter had the homemade gnoche. Only drank 1/2 the bottle of wine due to the strick drink-driving laws. First time Peter drove after dark!

The one not so good thing about the trip is that Diane's feet seem to be hurting a lot on the top of the in-step and sometimes in the arch achey or with stabbing pain They started on a hike just before we left and the pain has continued. Probaly old arthritus, but a pain. Somehwat limits some of the daily hiking we are trying to do. Could also be a combination of th higher humidity and the exta salt in the meals.Read more