Greg and Deb's Travel Blog

It’s Deb driving day. ?? On the road at 9am to explore the past, up to about 5000 years past. The Orkneys seem to be a bit like Adelaide – everything seems to be about 30 mins away (make that 20 mins in Adelaide).
Fog and rain greeted our day and continued all morning. So many tourists everywhere. Bus loads of them!
The countryside here, and that is most of the Islands, reminds us of scenes from British police shows set in the countryside or small country towns.

First thing we sorted a tour on Orkney so things worked together a bit more, then we hit the road north. We called into Dunrobin Castle for a photo and kept driving. It had been raining almost from the start of our drive and not too far north of Dunrobin fog set in. In places it was very thick and it obscured the scenery which was unfortunate, that part of Scotland is said to be very picturesque. We will never know!

We decided to have a castle free day today, so a good part of our morning was the drive up into the Scottish Highlands (see my trivia note at the very end of this blog) and visit some different old stuff.

The Clava Cairns, or more correctly, “The Balnuaran of Clava” are Stone Circles combined with Stone Mounds, and are very different to the “regular” Stone Circle sites we have all heard of and/or visited. They date back to 4000BC, and were used as Bronze Age tombs. There are 4 Stone Circles in the area we visited (there is said to be many more in the area), 3 of which were large with stone burial mounds in the centre of a stone circle, and 1 small one with just a small stone circle and a burial pit at its centre. Two of the mounds had an astronomical alignment for the entrance passage into them, they aligned with the sunrise of the winter solstice. I found them intriguing but they lacked the presence/connection I get from the Neolithic Stone Circles we have visited.

We enjoyed a sleep in this morning, both of us got about 8hrs sleep which was good. We were on the road heading northeast around 9am. It is Saturday, so the roads in St Andrews were quiet.
Our day started as we crossed the Firth of Tay and drove into Dundee. Our visit to this city turned into a drive through. Like a lot of UK cities and towns parking is very difficult to find, and when you do find a spot it is very expensive. Dundee was Scotland’s first UNESCO City of Design. We drove down to the shores of the Firth of Tay and found Broughty Castle, built in 1490. It was taken by the British without a shot being fired in 1547, taken back by the Scots 2.5 yrs later, and it began changing hands over time. It more recently served as a naval fortress in WWI & WWII. An impressive structure with a drawbridge and all.

We left our hotel and picked up our hire car, a Citroen Cactus and were on the road heading north about 9am.

We drove across the Firth of Forth and after missing a turn off, got back on track and at the right locations to take a few pictures of the bridges over the Firth of Forth, both the “new” road bridge and the famous Forth Railway Bridge built in 1890 which is a UNESCO site.

We were picked up at 9:20am and were sitting in the airport by 10:30am waiting for our 12:20pm flight.  Flight got away at 13:20, it was late getting in. The crew are Scottish and I am finding them hard to understand, their words run into each other. As we get into the country side that might prove even more interesting. ? We landed at 16:20pm (2 hr flight & clocks forward one hour), bags arrived at 16:55pm and after a 30 min taxi ride were in our hotel by 17:20pm.

We surprised ourselves and got away at 8am and headed towards Sauoarkrokur to see the Icelandic horses.  They are a great looking small horse, we have enjoyed seeing them all over Iceland.  

We were all packed up and ready to go by 8.30am this morning.  Was 8C, the air had a bit of a chill to it.  We headed half an hour away to Godafoss – waterfall of the Gods. It is divided into two horseshoe falls. Was pretty and close to the car park so didn’t involve any long walks. 

We washed our underwear overnight on the coldest night, 7C, since we have been here ?it was still a long way from dry this morning so we brought it along with us. Have it laid out in the car and the heater cranked up ?won’t take long to dry. 

Left at 8am, we have a lot of driving today.  Filled up with diesel, not long after, it started raining quite heavily.  And it got heavier ?

We went through our first tunnel here, 11/2 km long.