Month: November 2024

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Thurso to Moray, Scotland

from the northernmost part of the mainland UK traveling down southeast toward Aberdeen you find whiskey distilleries and very interesting small towns with very friendly people to chat with.

This was brought on for the breakfast and introduced to me as “brown sauce”. I suspect this is a standard in England as well as Scotland. It has some mild “brown” dull sweet flavor, not really something I would want for breakfast.
The statue is memorializing war dead
Let me know if you see this fellow waiting on you in a restaurant
This is a nice walking street
This Thai restaurant was not open which was too bad. I would have loved to have a break from fish and chips
This fellow is forever waiting for a train at this station
This is a pretty good tasting brew, and Irish cider
This fish and chips was really excellent but I didn’t eat all of the peas since I don’t really like them. But I know they are healthy so I did what I could.
This memorializes the people who were dispossessed of their land by the Sutherlands who turned this area into huge sheep farms, forcing people into areas and jobs in the peripheries. Those who couldn’t make it in those new jobs, feed their families or find some way to survive Got on boats and went to the US, Canada, Australia and maybe one or two other places. This was the great era of emmigration which gave great people and talent to other countries.
The River Helmsdale
my hotel lobby was very comfortable.
This was my hotel which was a little difficult to understand. I couldn’t find an entrance to the breakfast area so I left for the train station to catch the train to my next stop. Normally you would expect someone to be around to help you navigate the building but there was nobody.
Here is the river Helmsdale again
Scotland is just filled with stone walls
The Helmsdale graveyard
Yes, they still have these telephone booths
A local beach looks very nice but it was too cold to take a dip
I didn’t know Shakespeare was such a great fisherman
In other Scotland breakfast and you will notice my soy sauce. That little triangle above the sausage looked so oily I decided not to eat it.
The sausage sandwich was actually pretty good
A very tasty beer
On the bus to Thurso the driver, for some reason, decided to take the side roads and we got behind some farmers taking their cows to a different field.
You’re supposed to imagine what happens if you don’t drink coffee
This is a hand written genealogy tree explaining the kings and queens of Scotland and of England up until the 1700s.
This was the best deep fried fish in a town called Huntley. You can easily find the restaurant since it is the highest rated one.
The restaurant uses real slate for the placemat
A narrow road which is very narrow and possibly slippery in the winter leads down to this little town with just a few inhabitants but it is a seemingly nice place to just relax and hang out as a Harbour venue
At the eastern end of the harbor there is a small coffee shop which you will see below. The lady who runs the place will give you some good background information and chat with you while you drink your coffee.
Many of the farms just seem to go on forever
Some old abandoned equipment on the edge of the farm
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Tirane, Albania has some very interesting treasures.

here below you will see some of the treasures indicating the history of the Albanian people mixing with the Celtic, the Hellenic, the Roman and the Turkish groups. These objects are in the national archaeological museum.

The Cyrillic alphabet is interesting to see
This reminds you of Greek art. I was corrected by the curator to say “Hellenic art”
This just shows some of the former groups of identities over 1000 years ago
Meeting People
This building displays the colors of the Albanian flag and is actually one of the large international hotels, I forget which one.
I had several questions about this. Was this a Christian opium den?
This is a small art gallery but very interesting to visit
Here is some artwork I just found very interesting and maybe typical of the area
The current map of Albania

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albania

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Chivas -Strathisla distillery in Huntley, Scotland

I stayed in a guest house owned by a local well-known professional boxer who also traveled around the world as an internationally recognized boxing referee and umpire. He showed me his trophies numbering more than 50, very impressive.

Breakfast in the morning was Scottish minimalist
an interesting house next to the distillery
The distillery where Chivas’s headquarters are but where one of the oldest distilleries in Scotland still creates their own single malt which is not made in large of quantities to sell out of the general area.
Strathisla is translated as ‘narrow river’
These buildings here represent their very famous distillery, very old and a shape which determines how the whiskey is distilled. The equipment is bent sideways to accommodate the roof structure
Very limited production
The Royal salute series was originally created to celebrate the coronation of Elizabeth II
We were just visitors so we did not need to clock in
You can see how the equipment is created to fit inside the building which is very old
The Chivas brothers bought this distillery because they needed the water and the distilling capacity
This is where we did our tasting
From the coronation of Elizabeth II to Charles
As you probably know the Chivas series are all blended whiskeys. This one will be an alternative purchase to a very small car
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Visiting Huntley Castle: Local Brews and Historic Sites

Huntley Castle has mostly been destroyed but there are some things left that are of interest. And the town has some very friendly people at the pubs so I recommend going there, getting something to eat, maybe having a drink and talking with people.

This was the breakfast which of course was in need of some soy sauce
I highly recommend this beer, Tennant
A local chocolate ice cream they sell at the castle. Very tasty
The Gordon’s were the last grand owners of the castle and their name is permanently fixed on the front, carved in stone
This cute little cottage hotel looked abandoned but maybe it was just closed for the off-season
The fish was OK but I’m not really a fan of deep fried fish, the beans were typical England beans, nothing special, and the onion rings tasted like there was no onion inside which was the case with all of the onion rings I had on my trip. Don’t eat the onion rings but there are places where you can get some good fish.
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sailing to the outer Hebrides – Scotland

the journey to the outer Hebrides is a short ferry ride depending upon where you board. You have to make sure the weather is OK, coming back the trip was canceled due to very high winds so I had to take the ship the next day. Finding accommodations can be a little tricky since they are limited and if you’re going at the peak tourist season Things could get pretty booked up.

This was a sign on the ferry
There is a display of the navigation chart in the public area so you can see exactly what’s around, all the details including the depth and how the captain is steering the vessel. Off to the right you will see a blue spot with lettering above it. It says “NATO submarine” and the purple writing above explains that it is a submarine exercise area.
Meeting People
click “continue reading” to see the rest of the discussion
It was getting into the winter type weather so the occasional rain would produce rainbows and some of them seem to be right at my feet. It was quite an experience.
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Orkneys – Skara Brae and Pict remains

the Orkneys have so many of these Pict structural remains going back as far as 6,000 years ago. It’s a great place to go around by car. Bus travel is a little bit difficult since there aren’t many buses and they are not running frequently. So plan your trip well in advance.

This is the home of the earl or Duke or Lord or marquee or whatever who discovered these Pict ruins.
Elizabeth, the queen mother, visited this home at least one time and even signed the guest book as you can see here
This is one of the ancient bird houses where the shit is used for fertilizer, the eggs and the birds themselves are food. And these birds help keep the insects away from the crops.
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Tirana Albania walking around town

Tirana seems fairly busy but more like a small German town. The infrastructure is needing a lot of investment and there are some inconveniences like needing to buy bottled water since the tap water is not recommended as drinkable. But once you get inside a restaurant or café you find it very nice and clean and people are very polite and attentive. It’s actually a very pleasant city to walk around. The buses are not quite understandable since Google maps shows them with numbers and even the city designated transport maps show the buses with numbers corresponding to the routes, none of the buses have numbers indicating the route and many don’t show exactly where they’re going. The bus stops are just small standing signs with a bus icon. But I found people very helpful and responsive so if you were to take a bus just ask where the bus is going or tell them where you are going and they will let you know if you should be on that bus.

Most of the food and beverages are served outside on the small covered area at the Brussels South Charleroi Airport (CRL) which is really not very close to Brussels. I think they ran out of space at the terminal and found this the quickest way to expand services. This was where I boarded my flight for Albania.
A red glass of wine and a cheeseburger seemed to be the right thing after my arrival in Tirana. The hamburger tasted good and was not as expensive as most of Europe. The service was also very good at this bistro, Bistro Park.
The view from my apartment which was about US$37 a day for the one bedroom complete with a living room kitchen area stocked with everything I needed to do my own cooking, a pretty nice apartment. Most of the prices for these apartments were very reasonable, Maybe a little bit more than what I paid . it seems there is not quite enough hotel space in this country so people and companies rent out apartments and you can expect a nice apartment like this to be somewhere around twenty US dollars to US$40 a night depending upon the city and location.
A very communist style road, very wide and long leading out of the city but not the main road by any means. This country overturned the communist government in the 1990s and is now very actively becoming a tourist destination for people from all over the world.
Just an apartment complex area near the huge road above.
Everywhere you go you find cafés like this where people are drinking coffee or water or some other drink and they tend to double also as bars so you can buy alcoholic drinks.
I visited this place twice because the squid (this version was really cuttlefish) was cooked perfectly and the rice was tasty as well. This lunch was US$13.
This electrical system brought back memories of Thailand or Lao. But those two countries have much more extensive and artistic wire confusion everywhere.
Walking to a small restaurant managed by the son of a college friend. This is just a typical neighborhood apartment area
Southern barbecue at the “Holly smokes” Southern barbecue restaurant open as a regular restaurant but also as a meeting place for the “Christian community “and people interested in that religion. The two fellows running this place have been in the city, from the US, for a few years and really enjoy Albania. The food was very nice. Normally people would have some bread (bun) with the pulled pork but that was too much for me so I just had the meat contents.
this is definitely double billing.
This bus had a destination indicated but no bus number. A circle around the center of the city is covered by the “green line”. Most of those buses are green but some are not but they do say “green-line” on the front of the bus. To pay for the bus you just get on and there is somebody walking up and down to collect the fee which in the city is about 40 US cents.
Not the most attractive main waterway running through the city but I expect over the years they will make great improvements here.
The old bridge in the city, very attractive.
I didn’t translate the plaque on the outside but something to do with a monument to the communist something or other
The evening view from my apartment
Bunk’art museum highlighting the history of Albania since the founding of the country.
In 1960s communication center when the party (Maoist) controlled everything. The communist party was overthrown in the 1990s and the oppression of the people is on display at this museum.
Worse than schizophrenic. I am again having a conference with myself, shades of Prague .
I think you can appreciate the symbolism here
On the map this is indicated as the cultural center but it seems to be used mostly for large crowd entertainment such as the opera. This is in the main Square.
I had to try this restaurant again. This time it was squid, 200 g so it came to US$22. It was delicious. This is the traditional meat and fish restaurant at the corner of Rruga Reshit Petrela and Rruga e Barrikadave. It is not expensive and it’s all local food.
Name brands in the local shopping mall. Conad is the nationwide supermarket.
Statue of the unknown soldier
Grilled pork ribs without hardly any bone on the plate was cooked perfectly and very delicious. I asked for some sauce and what they had was ketchup which I did not use, of course. My lunch came to about US$10
I found what I have been looking for all my life, a UFO university
The intercontinental is also here. I think by the size of the building they are trying to make up for the lack of hotel space.
Every time I walked by this statue they had police standing outside. I am not sure why because I never asked.
The history of the pride of the Albanian people.
A beer festival in the main town Square
I have seen some of the strangest architecture here, this one obviously not finished
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Inverness Scotland and Culloden, the Jacobites

Inverness is where you go to see Loch Ness and Culloden’s Moor where the Jacobites (believers that the son of James II from his second marriage should have inherited throne) led by Bonnie Prince Charlie challenged the brother of the king of England, George II, To a battle in a soggy and marshy terrain against modern Canon warfare on the English side. The story I didn’t know was that the followers of Charlie had almost marched into London and had a some chance of dethroning George. But they decided to go back to Scotland and on the way had some very successful battles. They almost won the crown but George’s brother a mass far superior weaponry.

jacobite is from the Latin form of the name James, Jacobus. It refers to the followers of the royal family from the second marriage of James II.

The first time I ever had haggis. It was actually pretty delicious even each time I tried after this
This marks where the Jacobites Gathered for the battle. On the other side there is a corresponding red flag for the English
This is the Moor. but it is filled with sunken, marshy areas where, evidently, the Scottish troops had problems advancing

what Family tree shows is that when there were no more heirs through the first marriage of James II of England (Scottish by ancestry and the king of Scotland), they decided to grab George from Hanover who didn’t speak English. What I didn’t know until I saw this tree is that he was a blood descendent of James I And was not just picked from some obscure claim. George was the beginning of the house of Hanover which continues to this day.

An important cultural site
I never tried this but I’m not really excited about doing so
The Inverness ocean Inlet which connects to Loch Ness. After seeing the map and the area itself I can imagine that when the ocean level here was very high some large fish could swim into the loch and grow and then become an extremely large fish or mammal or whatever to be viewed 400 years ago as a “monster”. So the story is not far-fetched and I believe there is some truth to it but I suspect it was just a very big fish or mammal which couldn’t get out of the loch. The other sightings were probably just large fish. In the late 1800s it’s pretty clear that everybody else’s sightings were just made up stories.

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Orkney islands the second time

the first visit to the Orkneys I didn’t have a car which made it extremely difficult to go and see what I wanted to see so I went back to the mainland, rented a car and went by ferry to the Shetlands and then back down to the Orkney before returning to the mainland.

Some old archaeological fines go back 6000 years. People lived up here at that time and this is one of the large settlements uncovered
The purpose of this was to provide a nesting place for birds. The bird poop would be used for fertilizer, the eggs and the birds themselves for food and of course the birds would eat the insects around the farm . Below you see the bird poop and droppings from the birds nests above
There is a very large house here owned by a very rich family from long ago and when the ocean came smashing on the shore from a storm it exposed parts of this pict village. So the owner of the land did the excavation and now it is quite a tourist attraction
Inside the big house there was a photo of the Duke of Windsor, the one that became Edward VIII and also this signed visitor book by the Queen Mother, the mother of Elizabeth
This ring of standing stones has been here for more than 4000 thousand years
And now it’s time to get back to the mainland on a very nice and relaxing ferry complete with Shop, bar and restaurant