After a good Scottish fry up for breakfast we packed up the Landy and headed off into the wild..  well, further North  😉 

The main reason we do these trips is the love of driving around on small roads being part of the scenery.  And wow.. what scenery!  The Cairngorms national park is gorgeous.  We drove on tiny roads with the lovely ‘Passing places’ and waved at the royals as we passed Balmoral (actually the queen had been in residence in Edinburgh so we’d already popped in for tea..  hehehe).

We were planning on driving via Corgarff and so not leaving the Cairngorms but road works hampered us with a massive diversion.  Simon did his awesome navigator thing and we headed down some awesome little roads.. one of which took us past a pub, be rude not to stop really!

They had over 200 optics with different whiskys!!   Wow!

And not only that but cases of unopened bottles..  old and expensive bottles.  Very kewl place  🙂     The Grouse Inn if anyone’s interested, they also have a tea room.

Once we got to Aviemore we found a campsite and set up our home for the night then headed out to buy some beers and Fish & Chips.   Sometimes sitting outside your tent with a beer is just whats needed..  there may have been cigars too, and a cheeky little visitor 🙂

In total we covered 212 miles this day.

No driving today but plenty to see.  Once again braving the buses (they’re great to be fair, £1.60 single fare anywhere in the city) we head into the town to see some stuff!  🙂

Edinburgh truly is an awesome place, 1 day is really not enough but it’s all we had so we mooched about for a bit, visited the Gallery, saw the Castle and did a tour of the Vaults.

The vaults was something recommended by a friend, we did a tour with ‘Mercat Tours’, really interesting view into life underneath the city.

The Castle is definitely well worth a visit, we were lucky and saw it while the sun was shining but on any day it would be impressive and interesting.  Check it our if you find yourself with a spare few hours while in Edinburgh.

Obviously we took a picture of the Defender we saw guarding the castle 😉

For our 2nd week long trip we decided to cover some of ‘The North’!!!   Neither of us had ever been to Scotland and really wanted to see as much as possible.

To give us as much time as possible up there we spent Day 01 of the trip motoring up the A1 to Edinburgh, not the best road for scenery but necessary.

  It’s amazing though..  you go past this sign into Scotland and within minutes the landscape seems to change, suddenly you have a view of an awesome shoreline, rocks and there was even some heather.  It’s definitely a route in where it feels like Scotland truly welcomes you  🙂

We had a room booked in a guest house for 2 nights in Edinburgh so we could spend time seeing the city.  After arriving and finding the place we parked up, ditched our stuff in our room and headed on into the town..  by bus!   That was an adventure in itself.

After a bit of a wander round we had some dinner and explored the local hostelries..  lovely lovely beer.

In total we covered 319 miles today.