Karen at Creity Hall served us up a wonderful breakfast that included smoked salmon and eggs for me and an Ulster breakfast for Dan. Dan’s included fried haggis, which we found actually tasted very much like tortiere meat. Clearly many of the same spices are used.
We started the day visiting Doune Castle. Another great experience. The organizers have done a fabulous job with the audio guide. It provided valuable historical context and significance while also making references to both Monty Python and the Holy Grail and Outlander. The castle was also used as Winterfell for Game of Thrones. A lovely walk around the grounds included finding one of two geocaches.
From there we drove to Glencoe, stopping at the visitors centre. The drive took approximately two hours on narrow roads with a ridiculously high speed limit of 60 miles per hour. For the most part, there was no way in hell I was going to navigate those roads at that speed. Don’t get me wrong, the roads were beautifully paved, well-marked, and well-maintained, but they were rather narrow and twisty. There were some areas that were really not wide enough for two lanes of traffic. There were some areas that were posted with signs warning of oncoming traffic being in the middle of the road. Why? Don’t know! Maybe if the speed limit was slower traffic wouldn’t have to cross the centre line when going around a corner. Just saying…
Anyway, the scenery was lovely. There were several areas that reminded us of driving through the Rockies, in particular going towards Fernie and Kelowna.
We arrived at Treetops B&B in Fort William around 5:00 pm. Met our hosts, who are lovely people. Got the tour of the house, which is gorgeous. Then went for supper at the Ben Nevis Inn, which sits at the foot of Ben Nevis. Spectacular view of the highest peak in Great Britain. Actually, it’s a very vertical view. Supper was really good. Tried haggis again; it was a different recipe. Still similar to tourtière meat, but with more peppercorns. The texture of this one was more like a loose, meaty stuffing, not fried. I really liked it, honestly, but I preferred the spices in this morning’s haggis. A short walk around the foothills prefaced our return to Treetops, where I finally felt awake enough to complete these last two days’ blogs!
Guigon Travels 