Day 8 - Heading North

After a second night in Melville Castle, it was time to head north. Personally, I had been looking forward to this day perhaps more than any. We were going to visit two places that I remembered very well from my youth and despite another day of somewhat grey, dreary weather we were up early and (after filling ourselves with traditional Scottish breakfast - no haggis today, though) were on the road heading north.

Our first stop was Loch Leven, a beautiful loch just a little north of the Edinburgh. In the middle of the loch is a small island with (you guessed it) a castle. This is where Mary, Queen of Scots was imprisoned for a time (before escaping to England only to be imprisoned there as well). Now, it is simply beautiful.

It was a short ferry ride over on a rather small ferry and then about an hour of exploring the grounds before the next ferry headed back.

From there, it was further north and east to the Scottish coast where we visited a favorite of the Frazier family from 33 years ago, Dunnottar Castle. 

This amazing castle is built on a column of rock on the coast of the North Sea and is famous as a hiding place of the Scottish Crown Jewels and infamous as a place where 167 people were imprisoned in the late 1600s in a very small room for 2 months because they would not swear allegiance to the king. With over 1300 years of history, it might be tough to find one thing worth noting, but...in the mid-14th century, the castle came into the possession of William Keith (and would remain in his family for 400 years) who was married to the niece of Robert the Bruce, one Margaret Fraser. While I expect the castle was in somewhat better shape when her namesake was living here, our Margaret Frazier certainly enjoyed visiting this castle and keeping a keen out for any puffins. They supposedly inhabit the cliffs below the castle, but we didn't see any. We did however see quite a few seagulls and also quite a few flowers growing straight out of the rock walls.

After exploring and hiking our way back to the car, we were back on the road going even further north. Into the granite city of Aberdeen we went to see the Scottish Premier League match between Aberdeen and Partick Thistle. Photos of actual game action are not allowed, but I did want a photo of the entry to Pittodrie stadium. The game itself was exciting, especially the first half when Aberdeen nearly scored a few times at our end, but resulted in a 0-0 tie.

After the game, we just headed back to our new hotel in Glenrothes, but along the way enjoyed the view to the west of the Cairngorms. Once in Glenrothes, we had dinner at the Fettykil Fox, which is a small inn pretty much next door to our. We enjoyed it so much that we would return there for dinner the next night! Here is the view that we saw as we drove from Aberdeen to Glenrothes (yes, that is snow on the distant mountains).