Day 27 How the views change!

Saturday 14/04/2018 Peterhead The Lost Guest House Room 7

A huge day again, and a late start thanks to me.... Finding too much to do each day before we leave, down loading pics, blog, and making Sure I have my alone time with The Lord... need to sort things a bit better I think....

So today we head to Peterhead, leaving behind the mountain ranges and as it turned out into a lot of good pasture land... seems a lot of crops are grown North East Coast of Scotland...
we went through village after village each one slightly different than the last, each having its own identity.... Some of the fishing villages had the bricks of the sides of the houses painted each house a different colour I wouldn’t like it myself but did look affective... We stopped at Fort George near Inverness shame we didn’t have time to see it, as it is a working Army Base huge and looked intriguing.... very different as it was mostly surrounded by huge mounds of grassed banks to conceal what it really looked like with cannon ports all around it.... very defensive set up.... What we did notice as we drove up this side of the country was the sheer number of really beautiful golf courses unreal that a huge town had one, one after the other some only a few miles apar but each one unreal in itself.... you could go from village to village for days playing golf...l and not be disappointed with the views on any..l also up this way is a huge amount of caravan parks especially on the coastline .... all with those horrible green cabins that look like you could set sail in them.... some cream but mostly green and a yukky green it is....

So back to the trip next stop was Brodie Castle at Forres privately owned but set up for visitors with a cafe etc.... we only had again a quick look then into the next....

Stopped at Burghead to see an old Fort but turns out they are still escalating the site from the 1700’s still the ute little harbour and the visitor centre lookout was interesting to look at plus they had a huge big old boat called Macduff that had character about it...

A stop at a little seaside village for lunch at a hotel by the sea, had a lovely lunch of Chicken strips, Joh had Nachos again and payed for it well and truly... but a good choice to stop....

Next stop near Elgin was to see Spynie Palace Spynie Palace, also known as Spynie Castle, was the fortified seat of the Bishops of Moray for about 500 years. The founding of the palace dates back to the late 12th Century. It is situated at Grid Ref NJ 230658, about 500m from the location of the first officially settled Cathedral Church of the Diocese of Moray, in present-day Spynie Churchyard. For most of its occupied history, the castle was not described as a palace — this term first appeared in the Registry of Moray in a writ of 1524. Now of course a ruin but in the most peaceful setting and today the SUN is OUT so the birds are cheeping merrily and the place just looked and felt so peaceful to be at.... could have spent ages just sitting here and taking it in...
But no onto the next as we made our way north east... this Stop took us to Elgin Cathedral... Elgin Cathedral is a historic ruin in Elgin, Moray, north-east Scotland. The cathedral—dedicated to the Holy Trinity—was established in 1224 on land granted by King Alexander II outside the burgh of Elgin and close to the River Lossie. It replaced the cathedral at Spynie, 3 kilometres (1.9 mi) to the north, that was served by a small chapter of eight clerics. The new and bigger cathedral was staffed with 18 canons in 1226 and then increased to 23 by 1242. After a damaging fire in 1270, a rebuilding programme greatly enlarged the building. It was unaffected by the Wars of Scottish Independence but again suffered extensive fire damage in 1390 following an attack by Robert III's brother Alexander Stewart, Earl of Buchan, also known as the Wolf of Badenoch. In 1402 the cathedral precinct again suffered an incendiary attack by the followers of the Lord of the Isles. The number of clerics required to staff the cathedral continued to grow, as did the number of craftsmen needed to maintain the buildings and surrounds. The number of canons had increased to 25 by the time of the Scottish Reformation in 1560, when the cathedral was abandoned and its services transferred to Elgin's parish church of St Giles. After the removal of the lead that waterproofed the roof in 1567, the cathedral steadily fell into decay. Its deterioration was arrested in the 19th century, by which time the building was in a substantially ruinous...

Today we encountered our first bus load of tourist all French and all extremely elderly with no manners about them at all... seeing a bus tour from the other side is interesting they all feel they have the run if things especially their tour leaders.... guess that’s why you pay the bucks to be on one... it does have advantages like accessing sites quicker...

We had a really good look around, climbing I heard one women say 85 little spiral stairs to the top of a tower then I climbed down looking for John only he was in another tower that was joined to the one I had been in so guess what I had to do climb back up over half the steps again then more in the next tower had my cardio work out today as I had climbed heaps at Spynie Palace as well....

Anyway worth the effort to see the views over Elgin and the Cathedral....
Our time was moving on it was now 3pm...
So up the coastal route we went as much as we could until we realised it was getting very late and had a way to go..lol Accidentally we found this Amazing 17th century old harbour unreal to see how protective it was from the elements.....

So msn villages so much to take in and see and we jus couldn’t do it all.....

We finally arrived at our guest house not far from the main harbour you can smell the fish.... it seems to be in a bit of a rough area of Peterhead... our room is big very big.... but is very, very cold and no they agent put the heating on in here and it’s freezing really freezing... we finally had our Chinese dinner but after such a long wait we were both disappointed you either get great Chinese or not great Chinese ours was the later,.... flavourless to say the least.... such a shame... had a walk around the streets near us seems we are very close to the towns centre I would guess we are in a suburb as I think Peterhead is very big....

We had to pinch a quilt off the spare bed yep 2 beds in this room wow, fortunately it had a spare bed to get the quilt or we would be ice blocks in the AM.... under the blankets we went and was as warm as toast thank goodness for small mercies....

Tomorrow we head to Cruden Bay where Johns relatives originate from.....Read more