Day 14, June 27, 2024 Aberdeen Scotland to exploring North East Scotland

 

We were thrilled when we woke up that it was a partly sunny day rather than raining as it rained hard throughout the night.

We were excited because this is a day for us to go on a nine hour sprinter tour to northeastern Scotland. We would be heading down the coast through fishing villages, and beautiful stops. Our tour was booked through a very fine company called Rabbies, and we had a lovely group of people primarily from the US, but also from Australia and Estonia, who would be in and out of the bus all day long as we soaked in the beauty of the coast.

Our first stop was to see an ancient stone that was known to have Celtic carvings on it. it was difficult to make out exactly what the carvings were, but it was cool to think that for thousands of years people were in this beautiful land.

Both are driver, Chris, and additional tour guide, Alan were natives of the northeastern Scottish area and had so many wonderful things to tell us. We learned about the shift in Scotland from being so focused on oil to renewable resources, including lots of wind and water producing power. We also learned about the shifting of the fishing industry from focusing on small fishing boats to larger more corporate-owned vessels.

Each time we were stopped in an area, there were so many beautiful things to see. We again were so grateful we were seeing it in the sunshine rather than in, the drizzly wind rains.

We stopped for lunch in a beautiful town where a traditional fish dish called Cullen skink (basically a potato haddock soup) was born. We had to try a bowl and it was a very hearty soup. We ate lunch with a lovely couple from Chicago who were in Scotland for a family wedding. Nice to chat and hear about their travels.

One of the stops we made was very, very windy, but it was a beautiful traditional fishing area that the puffins had settled into. So the area was filled with birds flying: puffins, gillemots, and seagulls. Puffins are always wonderful to see, even from far away.

The last stop that we made of the day was a castle, Slains Castle, that had been the inspiration of the Dracula story. The author was in this area and could imagine a vampire count living there. It’s history was a little more tame. There had been a castle there which had been destroyed as part of the Scottish wars of independence. A family built a nice manner in this beautiful spot, but it has a deteriorated over the years. We enjoyed the views and scrambled around looking at this amazing castle.

In all we drove around 150 miles, but covered a couple thousand years of history and saw some really beautiful things. In the afternoon our guide put on a soundtrack of various music of Scotland concluding, of course Scotland the Brave on the bagpipes. It was a wonderful small group tour and we really enjoyed ourselves.

Back to our Airbnb to do a little grocery store cooking dinner, and then off for a good night’s sleep. Although we had mostly driven, we still ended up walking quite a few miles today and we were very tired but satisfying.