Day two with the visitors dawned overcast and rainy. We tried to compensate for the lack of Scottishness in yesterday's breakfast by providing an enormous amount of sausages, but I'm not sure it worked.
We headed out to towards the Cairngorm mountains, with the idea of making it to Grantown-on-Spey by lunchtime. The scenery was terrific as we travelled on the north shore of the Dee river. We stopped several times for pictures - the scenery was magnificent. We took a little detour to Balmoral to see if we could get a glimpse of Lizzie's house - but there was no admission allowed until April 1. Close by was the the Royal Lochnagar distillery and they had a tour coming up quickly, so we ducked in for a wee look. The tour was very interesting, with lots of detail about the whole process. Unfortunately no photography was allowed. Tasting, on the other hand, was not only allowed but recommended. I'm not one for Scotch, but I thoroughly enjoyed their single malt. You can see from the pictures that I was not alone.
After the tour we pushed on through the mountain passes to Grantown. It started to snow as we went along the road and at some point we were stopped by a friendly Scotsman who informed us the road to Grantown was blocked due to snow. It was a little hard to believe because we were sitting in brilliant sunshine, but several miles back the snow had been blowing quite hard.
We headed back into Ballater for lunch, which included all the Scotch staples: potato leek soup, toasties and sticky toffee pudding. We stopped at an old, pre-historic stone circle for pictures before rolling back to Aberdeen.
We went out to a local restaurant for dinner - haggis croquettes as appetizer made sure that we kept to the all-Scotland all the time theme. We got back in time to see the highlights of the incredibly appropriate Scotland vs Netherlands soccer match (I shouldn't have to tell you who won).
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