The holiday

AS time has gone on & we’ve thought about our Scottish holiday, the more convinced we are that it was a poor holiday. I suppose you have to accept on a coach holiday that you do end up going places, doing things, that you wouldn’t normally do, but the sheer amount of shopping sites we visited was too great. They sapped our energy while boring us in the process. I accept a certain amount. Whenever you visit tourist attractions there is an inevitable tourist shop. We will stroll through. We may even see something & buy it. But we wouldn’t spend hours doing this as we ended up doing on this holiday. Some destinations were purely for shopping.

It was unfortunate that the weather turned bad as we went up the Cairngorms in the funicular. By the time we reached the top all was shrouded in a veil of mist & water. There is very little to do up there if the view is not forthcoming.

 

Looking down the valley when going up the Cairngorms in the funicular

The Caringorms from the funicular. The mist closing in.

We did enjoy our trip to Culloden, which turned out to be more interesting than I expected. The interpretation centre was well done. Even the field itself was available for to you to roam with an explanatory tape. We just didn’t have the time for a long enough stop, mainly because we’d spent half the day at a shopping centre already.

The Glenfiddich distillery

The Glenfiddich distillery was disappointing. We saw a short, essentially advertising, film, followed by some whisky tasting. I learnt nothing about whisky distilling & how it is made, which I would have thought should have been a minimum for such a visit. Surely there must have been one distillery that was wheelchair accessible where it would have been possible to see the process, or at least, put on a film about the process. 

Nairn beach

Nairn beach

On Thursday this week, I went down to Morecambe on my electric mobility scooter. I couldn’t help being struck by how much more exciting the prom of Morecambe is compared to that of Nairn. We’re spoilt here. Maybe it was more impressive to those living elsewhere, far from the seaside.  Nairn does have a pleasant small museum, essentially giving you the idea of life in Nairn in the past. It has more of a harbour than we have here. 

Nairn harbour

Nairn museum

After our Dutch trip, we had expected to come back exhausted. We were right on that. We’re still trying to get to our normal energy levels. We took few photos this time – we don’t see any point of taking pictures of shopping centres! We are reminded of the virtues of going on holiday & hiring a car as we usually do. It may be tiring for the Fox having to do the driving all the time, but at least we can go to places that excite us, stop if we see a good view, visit places when the weather is likely to be dry, pace the holiday to suit us with some quiet relaxing days in comfortable places, & not be herded around like a flock of sheep with one eye constantly on our watches. Suddenly it seems worth the month or so it took to organise our French holiday later this year. Hopefully that will turn out better.