Highlands Archives • Folksy Travel by Bill Smale

February 15, 2025February 15, 2025

Fun Stuff Scotland

there’s not too much here but if you’re interested in fun stuff Scotland there’s plenty of it. The Scot’s have a great sense of humor, love to talk with visitors and have very interesting stories to tell. So when you’re in Scotland just go around, relax, talk with people and take lots of photos of interesting stuff.

a fun entrance — This was the entrance to my very nice bed-and-breakfast room. It seems obvious that this was a servant quarters. The people living here had enough money so they didn’t have to challenge this kind of entrance.

Standard Scottish breakfast — this is a very typical breakfast with the ham and eggs, blood sausage and mushrooms. You find this pretty much everywhere since it seems to be the standard breakfast. But I think that’s true pretty much wherever you go, the standard breakfast is served. Some of it sounds a little bit odd with the blood sausage, haggis and some other interesting names but actually they have a lot more flavor than what you get in England. I think it’s too bad that Scotland took their basic breakfast ideas from England but at least they made it much better.

A Pictish stone — I have some other photos of this monument up close but this is one of the inscribed tablets from the picts. It is well encased and very nicely displayed. The reason I like this photo is it kind of looks like an alien monolith in the Scottish countryside waiting for the invasion.

An old temple covered with bushes — This is one of the old temple mounds which they decided they didn’t want to maintain over the Covid era so I just got swallowed up by the bush

Sheep everywhere — The legacy of the Sutherlands, sheep everywhere

January 22, 2025January 22, 2025

The Sutherlands’ Dunrobin Castle in Highlands

The Sutherlands’ Dunrobin Castle is representative of the wealth, status and power of that family. It was these people who took over alot of the Highland areas for sheep farming and displaced the population to either working for them or moving outside of the sheep herding areas often to the seasides where they had no skills and where the farming was often impossible. Many of those people got on boats and left for the US, Australia and Canada and never looked back. It was a very sad time in the history for Scotland but it was a great time for the countries they went to since they brought their traditions and especially their music which became an important and integral part of what we now call “American music”. This castle is one of the nicest ones I’ve ever seen and it is extremely well-maintained. If you are in this area it’s one of the places you really must visit.

The castle Drive — The drive up to the castle

Of view from the garden — The castle from the garden

The Sutherland code of arms — This French motto means “fearless”. In fact the Sutherland family came from France and is most likely of Viking descent, as I was told by the historian in the castle

The pool table — This is about the largest pool table I have ever seen

Autograph photographs — Autographed photographs with the Duke of Windsor, Edward VIII, in the center

Castle Center, Courtyard — The center courtyard

Children's bedroom — The children’s bedroom

The outfits — The display of the various robes and outfits

Dunrobin Castle Garden — A view of the garden from the castle

The Sutherlands collection of rhubarb — Giant rhubarb plant growing

An amazing cloud — This looks like an alien ship. It was an amazing cloud

December 6, 2024December 6, 2024

Aberdeen, Scotland and surrounding area

Aberdeen I think can be an interesting town if you decide to stay there a couple days and pick out the certain places you want to visit. I was not so much interested in touring inside the city as I was going there to catch a ferry to the Shetland Islands. I find the countryside around there to be very interesting and much more stimulating than a city.

The much revered EdwardVII, son of Queen Victoria

This local church is obviously active so that it has sufficient funds to be repaired and maintained.

And this is what the church is promoting. This is Scotland!

Of course you can find Thai restaurants in most every city in Scotland. I suspect this one is run by type people but I was not able to check since it was not open when I was there.

This was a tourist oriented organic farm where people can buy ice cream and other products.

The ice cream was delicious. You will see the bubble sitting areas in the background. It was pretty cold. A bubble is good protection.

A lot of thought went into these flavors

They have different bins at this tourist farm for recycling and this shows you how to recycle the pizza box. Yes, they do serve pizza here.

This was a good Chinese break from Scotland food though the flavors should’ve been much better.

This is a Palestinian demonstration pushing Barclays bank to divest from Israel.

Do you know a better use of a coffin? I hope this doesn’t signify what happens if you drink there.

These of course are tourist related trinkets possibly for the visitors south of the Scottish border.

Here he is behind a young girl who was a very good Piper

It looks as though everyone has had their say

This was kind of a nice pub just outside of Aberdeen across the street from my hotel

Across the street from where I was dog sitting

I tried a new site called TrustedHousesitters and this was my first six day stay taking care of Trixie. She was a very easy dog to take care of and it was a beautiful area in the countryside. The arrangement with the website is you stay in someone’s house at no charge to you and they don’t pay you but it’s good for people who are traveling and need a break from the very expensive Scotland hotels and want to just relax in nice places and have some animals to take care of temporarily

The seals come here to hang out and watch the tourists. You have to pay for the parking space but it’s a nice area to take a walk and possibly go for a swim in the summertime. I can’t remember if swimming here is permitted. They definitely don’t want you going close to the seals and disturbing them

The birds also hang out here as you could see from the white coloring on the top of the rocks

The seagulls are kind of bored since they’re almost no tourists they can steal food from

This looks like a very pious, religious objective

November 30, 2024November 30, 2024

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.

Let me know if you see this fellow waiting on you in a restaurant

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.

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.

Scotland is just filled with stone walls

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

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

November 27, 2024November 27, 2024

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

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

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

November 23, 2024November 23, 2024

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

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.

November 10, 2024November 10, 2024

Alness – Dornoch Firth Scotland

this is one of the very beautiful areas in the Highlands

Carbisdale castle. You need a reservation to get through the gate and to view the castle

Late October was the perfect time in this area. The fall colors were beautiful

October 31, 2024October 31, 2024

Scotland – the amazing West

the west of Scotland, on toured the Isle of skye, it’s such a beautiful area and very rural with few towns so very different from any populated areas in Scotland. The driving is mostly typical two-way roads which are actually one way with paved bubbles what local cars to slow down, stop and then pass. Be careful driving there. On one side you wind up in a bog and the other side you wind up down the hill or in the ocean. But it’s so beautiful it’s worth the challenge.