The Highlands

Went on my little bus trip today.  Was just a little 16 seat bus with only 4 other people and a very good driver/guide, so it was a nice relaxed sort of day.  We had a look at a few different sights, stopped in a little Victorian tourist town called Pitlochry on the way to the Dewars distillery at Aberfeldy.  The distillery tour was quite interesting.  The whisky itself was lovely.  Would have loved to buy a couple of bottles but it's just too hard to try to bring back.  Bought some little sample bottles instead.  Hopefully it's something that will be available at home, at a less than criminal price...

Some of the scenery was quite lovely.  Much of it, even with a dusting of snow, reminded me a lot of various places around Dorrigo and along the tableland.  Pitlochry itself, although bigger and really quite different to Dorrigo somehow reminded me of it.  Particularly the road into Dorrigo from the coast - there is the section just near the rainforest centre with the little stream which is quite similar to the kind of landscape I was seeing today.  There's also something about the style of buildings or something that reminded me of certain parts of town.  Might be my imagination, but I'm not in a huge rush to visit Dorrigo again to check it out...

On the way out of Edinburgh we stopped to have a look at the rail and road bridges over the Forth.

The road bridge was based on the Golden Gate in San Francisco, so I finally had a chance to take photos without fog... sort of.

A couple of images there from various stops along the way.  The bird was by a stream in Pitlochry.  I seem to have forgotten for the moment where the river was, though I know it was early in the day and I'm sure it will come back to me.

The following were taken at Loch Tay, a few minutes after we left the distillery at Aberfeldy.  This was just on sunset at about 4pm.

We weren't there long, but it was a really lovely, peaceful place.  We drove along the shore at the foot of the mountains for quite a while then on  towards Stirling Castle on the way home.  It was already quite dark by the time we reached the castle, so we just had a quick on the way.

By the time we arrived back in Edinburgh it had begun to snow.  There's still something between sleet and snow coming down fairly steadily now.  All the rooftops seem to have a good coating of white, although the ground outside is just wet and slippery.  Will be interesting to see what tomorrow brings.  I had planned to walk up the hill, but if it's covered in snow and mud, I might just have a museum day instead.