Inverness

A beautiful day as we are leaving Portree.  The sun is shining, the country side is lovely.  I am driving.  The roads are typical two lane country roads around here, no problem.  As we pass through Broadford we see nice light on the water and pull over for a picture.  The road here is getting a bit chunked up.  I carefully pull back out onto the roadway.  I haven't been driving more than a few minutes when a large lorrie passes on the other side of the road and I pull the car over to the left side of the lane...a bit too much. There is no shoulder here and the verge is chunky....I have a flat tire!

There is no lug wrench in the boot.  We are fiddling with the jack, and desperately searching for something that will loosen the nuts so we can remove the tire when a truck pulls up.  A man and his wife (and a wee border terrier) hop out and efficiently take over.  He has a wrench at home and promises to return in 20 minutes.  He does with a wrench and a proper lift.  He has the tire changed in no time and then leads us to a shop in Broadford where they put a new tire on for us straight away.  It was expensive and time consuming but we lost only two hours thanks to this lovely man named Angus.  The young man changing our tire said he knew Angus' son and that Angus did nice things like this all the time.  What a lovely man!

We tried to find a map of Inverness in Portree and could not, but we had a small map showing the B&B and surrounding area from Google maps and thought we'd be okay.  We couldn't have been more wrong.  Inverness is a nightmare to drive in.  The streets don't have signs and even if they did the names change.  The streets are very narrow.  We called our hostess for directions which didn't help because we couldn't find any street names.  We FINALLY got there with the help of the google map but it was very stressful!  Things did not improve for us driving in Inverness!

Street where our B&B is located

 We visited the Culloden Museum (pronounce Kul LODE in).  It is very well done with loads of personal stories, an automated map that showed the placement and movement of the soldiers before and during the battle and even an area with costumes and replica weapons for kids to dress and play.  The battle at Culloden took place on April 16 1746 between the Jacobite troops of Charles Stuart "Bonnie Prince Charles",consisting largely of highland clansmen, and the British Loyalists.  The battle lasted less than an hour.  The Jacobite troops lost between 1500 and 2000 men while the loyalists lost between 50 and 300.  The retribution against the highlanders was brutal afterward; it was the end of the clan system and a blow to the Scottish Gaelic culture.

Monuments to the fallen were built in 1881 by Duncan Forbes who's family owned the property both at that time and at the time of the battle.  After the battle the highland people in the area were forced to dig mass graves for the dead.  Along with the monument pictured below, markers were placed in the areas where the different clans lined up for battle.  The second picture is the marker for the mixed clans.  Someone had placed the flower on top which led me to take the photo.  The interesting thing about it was that when I looked closer there was a label attached to the flower bearing the name Morrison, which just happens to be the clan name of one branch of my family!

Label attached to the flower says "Morrison"

The next stop of the day was at Cawdor Castle a 14th century fortress.  The castle has been continuously inhabited by the Cawdor family.  The Dowager Countess Cawdor still spends part of her time there today.  It's really fun to tour because there are family photos and furnished with the families furniture and art work that has been collected and accumulated over the centuries.  There were many fabulous pieces in the house but one that grabbed my attention was a vase, about 12" tall and maybe twice as wide carved from the most beautiful Labradorite!  It was spectacular!   The old kitchen was really interesting and the tower of the castle was built around a  Holly Tree that has been carbon dated to around 1382.  The gardens of the home were just as marvelous at the castle 

The last stop of the day was at Clava Cairns, a remarkably well preserved Bronze Age burial site dating back about 4000 years ago.  The site has three cairns with the standing stones still encircling them.  The monument is aligned with the midwinter solstice.  It's very awe inspiring to walk among these ancient monuments.

We had reservations at Hootenany for dinner so we would have a seat when the music started at 9:30pm.  We had been wanting to hear some live traditional Scottish music since arriving in Scotland and this was our last chance.  The food was pretty good, I had the Cullen Skink which was very tastey.  It's a soup made with smoked mackerel and potatoes.  Desert was Cranachan; made with whipped cream (it's ice cream like),  not very sweet and its layered with an oatmeal mixture and raspberries. We sat next to some nice folks from Italy, one of whom spoke English.  We enjoyed the music and were glad we went.

Our Italian neighbors!

We headed back to our B&B about 10:30 as we had to get up early to return the car and catch the train into Edinburgh.