Day 7, Pitlochry and the surrounding area.

Travel blog about our trip to Scotland in May/June of 2005
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Pieter
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Day 7, Pitlochry and the surrounding area.

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Kinloch Rannoch, Scotland.

2 June 2005

Partially dry and rain, 11 – 15 degrees, the best of both worlds, 79 km.

Today will be a short trip for real, but nonetheless we have seen lots of nice things. Because we aren’t going anywhere far we started late, 10 o’clock was just passed when we set off for the day. It’s still a bit chilly and it rains. Via Dalchallach and Calvine (the tourist route) we first head to Bruar, in particular to the House of Bruar. This is a shopping centre from a worldwide mail order company. It’s a beautiful centre with a coffee shop, a gallery with antique furniture, paintings and other art objects.
At the coffee shop we had a cheese/mayo sandwich and an apple/cinnamon cake with clotted cream, very tasty, but the cappuccino was like dishwater with foamed milk, yuk!
The planned visit to the falls at the back of the centre had to be abandoned, the railway tunnel was flooded and because there was no ferry and we didn’t have wellies, there was no way across without getting wet feet.
At noon we went to Pitlochry, because we decided we wanted to visit the smallest distillery in Scotland, which is located nearby. The free tour begins with a wee dram, a wonderful tasting whisky, smooth in taste, beautiful golden in color and a lovely aftertaste in the mouth. Next is the tour through the distillery which is indeed very small, they produce only 12 barrels per week. Even the taking of pictures is allowed in the distillery, were this is not allowed in other distilleries. Where there are alcohol vapours is the use of flashlight not allowed, but that’s no problem. The name of this distillery?? “Edradour, nestled in a pocket Glen”.
After the tour we bought a bottle of this divine liquid and headed back to Pitlochry, where we want to visit the dam in Loch Faskall, including the large fish ladder they have built here.
In the dam is a hydro-electric power station built. The dam is 145 wide and 16 meters high, delivering 15 megawatts with the aid of two turbines. They’ve made generating power by water an art in Scotland which they show with relief maps and video’s at the exhibit at the dam.
With some luck you’ll be able to see salmon in the fish ladder and we are lucky today. Every step of the ladder takes the salmon 45 cm higher in order to climb 15 meters eventually. Three bigger basins are used as a resting place for the salmon, here the water isn’t flowing so fast and in the top one we saw a salmon resting against the side of the basin.
We’ve seen enough, a hot cup of tea awaits and we go to The Armoury, a picturesque restaurant near the dam.
We have still some shopping to do on this last day here, tomorrow we are heading back to the ferry that will bring us home again. There are some nice things to be found here in Pitlochry, but also a lot of junk. Still we’ve found something for our purposes and we’re heading back to the apartment.
On the way back we made another stop at Queen’s View to take some pictures with an whole other type of weather than the first time. We heard the sound of falling water, but couldn’t find where it came from. We shopped some more in the visitor centre and left for our home for this week.
A few cold drinks and some fish and fries topped this day, after which we had to pre-pack our stuff for the trip home. Unbelievable how big a mess two people can make in one week.

The last day also useless spent.
Don't put your mouth into motion, before your brain is in gear.
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