Perth

Stayed up too late watching UK PBS mystery movies so the alarm at 7:30 am was a bit harsh. Breakfast in the dining room this time, not the pub shown in the photo. The pub has a red deer head supposedly shot by Queen Victoria's Scottish personal assitant [http://www.royal-deeside.org.uk/rdhistory/johnbrown.htm,], John Brown. Peter had the local equivalent to shredded wheat with yogurt and fruit, while Diane tried the poached eggs and poached smoked haddack, which was lovely. Then we were off to Perth by way of a couple of stops.

The day started out cloudy with a peak of sunlight as we traveled through Inverness, then we hit the rain that had been hammering the West coast oernight. It was steady for us, but not a torrent. It continued throughout the afternoon and early evening.

There were really no destinations along the way until we arrived to Pitlochry where we were intending to go to Edradour distillery but first ended up at Bell's distillery, which had beautiful flowers against their grey buildings. Edradour was a great https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edradour_distillery] . Looked like it had been recently paintd clean white and red. Edradour used to be the smallest distillery in Scotland, but a couple of newstarts have come on the scene. They only do small batches, 15 barrels a week and they have a plethera of ways to age in different types of barrels. Exceedingly nice tour for only 7 pounds with 2 different whiskey tastings (now quite ful dramseach) and the tasting glass! Tour was easily an hour and very instructive.

After that, we moved a few miles down the road to Dunkeld where Peter popped into the "Naked Sheep" for a sweater and a new driving cap. Then we toured the Dunfeld Abbey [ http://www.undiscoveredscotland.co.uk/dunkeld/cathedral/] .

After that, w were ready to take our chances on traveling back into the city of Perth. The Heidl B&B is very near downtown. The hostess asked where we had been and told us that she was in fact from Orkney and after a bit more conversation, we found out that she is best friends for 25 years with Julie and Mike, our Orkney hosts!. Small world!

Dinner was at the local Indian restaurant down the street. Very good South Indian street food including haggis in an Indian chilie sauce, which was very good.

Tomorrow will be a short move to Edinburgh after a diversion to Sterling to the Sterling castle.Read more