I woke up today feeling a bit slow after being poisoned by the rocket fuel ciders from last night.
We all showered and checked out, and headed to one of the local outdoor stores that had a café on the second level. Yep, that’s right.
We all ordered a large coffee and Shakira and I, after having order envy from Sparkles’ pancakes yesterday, ordered the fruit stack pancakes. Sooooo good!
I noticed a couple of very cool looking jumpers in the store which I wanted to have a think about before purchasing.
We hopped back in the car and headed out to the Cairngorm national park, where the Highland Lass had told us we could climb up to the top of one of Scotland’s tallest mountains, which had a great view. When it wasn’t cloudy.
Today, it was cloudy.
We still caught the mountain train – the funicular – up the mountain after parking the car.
We had organized our tickets for the hike the previous night, which was a walk across the top of the mountain led by one of the staff who worked there.
The previous night I had been a bit ‘meh’ about the walk, but afterwards I was glad that I chose to do it.
Our tour guide was a young fellow called Duncan, who made sure that we were properly attired with wet weather gear (allowing us to borrow some wet weather pants, and Sparkles also borrowed a cool beanie). Once our funicular reached the top of the mountain, Duncan led us on a very informative tour of the mountain.
It was cloudy so we couldn’t see anything, and while it didn’t rain we certainly picked up enough of the precipitation that was hanging around in the air.
The top of the mountain had a very primeval aspect to it; it was cloaked in mist, there were no trees, only lichens, grasses and rocks.
It was originally the caldera of a volcano, so there were three types of rock there: feldspar, malachite and quartz. While we were walking around, I kept my eyes out for cool pieces of quartz, picking them up and putting them in my pocket. By the end, I had a rather large collection, for which I have a few ideas for different uses.
After our walk, we went through the visitor’s centre, did a little bit of shopping, and caught the funicular back down the mountain.
We hopped back in the car and drove on to Aberdeen, arriving mid afternoon.
We had a short stop in the supermarket to pick up some alcohol. I picked up a slab of Becks for under $20 Aus. I have included a photo below to prove that we are being gouged on alcohol prices in Australia.
We then headed a couple of blocks to the Highland Lass’s family house, where we unloaded the car and met her younger sister, Caroline.
The Highland Lass’s family are also the custodians of a guide dog in training, Lexie, a very cute 6 month old puppy.
We all had showers, and freshened ourselves up after our crash course in Scotland.
By this stage, the Highland Lass’s parents were home. Colin and Doris had been out at Balmoral Castle, rubbing elbows with the Queen. With another 3500 people.
Colin was wearing his Campbell kilt and jacket, so Shakira and Sparkles wanted to get plenty of photos of this.
Now that Colin and Doris were home, it was dinner time. A large cottage pie had been prepared for us by Doris, and the Highland Lass had put it in the oven before our showers.
One of the Highland Lass’s other sisters, Lisa, also came over and joined us for dinner.
There were many drinks consumed that night, and we called it an evening about 11pm, with most of us looking like Lexie below.
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