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Dear Friends, we’ve just finished watching
Port easily account for Collingwood in a most intense, exciting game of footy.
The atmosphere was amazing, and although we lost, I am very proud of our team
as we tried our hearts out, just weren’t good enough. Last night we watched
play fairly insipidly against the Swans in driving rain at the SCG…Wes was
disgusted, but found a couple of whiskies helped ease the pain.
One of the lovely things about our hotel is
its dog-friendly policy – we watch large and small dogs walk sedately up the
stairs with their owners and in the morning they bound down, ready for a run on
the grass and perhaps some time in the car while their owners eat breakfast.
They are allowed everywhere except in the restaurant and on the furniture. We
haven’t heard any barking or seen any bad behaviour; I guess they are just
delighted to be with their owners and not in kennels!
Plumbing in the UK is something that
constantly has us bamboozled. We suspect there are lots and lots of very clever
men, each trying to outdo the other in designing wacky shower stalls and
set-ups, to say nothing of taps in public toilets. I did approve of the toilet
taps at Fort George, a very cold spot, where your only choice was hot; however,
I used the loos at one castle, only to find I couldn’t turn the taps on (there
were even diagrams of how to turn them on, but their logic eluded me). At home
we have a fairly simple shower, square-shaped, one door, and one control, which
gives you the temperature and the pressure. Here the showers are circular or
semi-circular with at least two controls and we can’t always work out which is
which. Yesterday Wes managed to fix the showerhead so it sprayed water evenly
instead of in large plops, but getting in and out is quite tricky as you have
to get around the toilet seat, mount two stairs and somehow propel yourself
into the shower-bath without losing your balance.
What I do love are all the wonderful
expressions – we just had to find the Fish Ladder in Pitlochry, the Hercules
Garden at Blair Castle (yes, it has a giant statue of Hercules as well
as duck and swan houses), Fish Tea, which I pictured as a sort
of clear soup with goldfish or some other small fish swimming around, (it turned
out to be fish & chips with white bread & butter and a cup of tea), to
say nothing of my favourite village sign which is shown below.
On Wednesday we spent a very anxious time
waiting for the result of the Gillard/Rudd ballot and were very disappointed to
finally hear from Barbara that Julia had been ousted after all her hard work. Once
Bill Shorten threw his support behind Kevin it was all over. We walked to the Pitlochry
Festival Theatre, which is built on the side of the river, amidst some
lovely gardens, to participate in a backstage tour that I had booked from
Australia. The tour was a real eye-opener and we learnt that the 18 actors comprising
the troupe are chosen each year from about 4,000 entrants. It is a repertoire
company, which puts on up to 6 different plays per week. This puts enormous
strain on the workshop and stage managers, as each set has to be changed after
each performance.
We had tickets to see A Chorus of Disapproval
by Alan Ayckbourn, and enjoyed it thoroughly. The theatre was built 30 years
ago and is very comfy with enough leg room for patrons to pass each other
without knocking knees! Afterwards I begged Wes to buy us a drink in the bar in
the hope of seeing the actors…and we did. We had a good conversation with the
main actor, Carl Patrick, who had been to Melbourne last year, and he told us that
a season at Pitlochry was a wonderful thing to have on your CV.
On our way home we had an early dinner at
the Auld
Smiddy Inn, which is staffed and run totally by women. Our meals were
good without being memorable, but the cheese platter was a mistake as
everything tasted as if it had just come out of the fridge!
We had planned a walking, exploring day on
Thursday, but it was raining solidly all morning, so after another forgettable
breakfast, we found that the shops that looked so cute and inviting, were all
selling the same tourist stuff, so headed to the Railway Station, where there
is an excellent second-hand book store, with most paperbacks costing £1 each. I
found 6 books I couldn’t live without and we squelched back here, got ourselves
dry and went for a drive instead. The scenery is so beautiful, we keep pinching
ourselves and the drive to Glen Lyon and the Bridge
of Balgie was no exception. We came back through Aberfeldy & Dunkeld,
and followed the road to Edradour Distillery, the smallest
whisky distillery in Scotland. We were too tired to do the tour, so bought a
small bottle of one of their many whiskies, and Wes enjoyed it tasting it last
night.
We had another early dinner, this time at a
funny little place called Drummonds Inn, where we tried their
breaded haddock, which came with chips and peas and buttered bread. I don’t
think wine is a specialty of the house as there were exactly three reds, two of
which could be purchased by the glass, so we did that, and on our way home,
stopped by the wine store to get a good bottle of tempranillo.
Yesterday was the big drive to St
Andrews, which I expected would just be a golf course – in my ignorance
not realising it was a University town and there were graduation ceremonies
going on while we were there. We eventually found a parking spot and spent
about an hour in the wonderful golf museum, before walking around the town for
another hour or so and having a look at the ruined Cathedral and Castle. The old
golf course was quite a surprise to me – somehow I hadn’t pictured a links
course and we watched the players in awe as they battled the undulations, wind,
surprising hole placement, unwanted audience etc and all for the price of £130
per round.
I was thrilled to see the West Sands, which
was the site of the opening scene of one of our favourite films Chariots
of Fire, but we were very pleased not to have been staying in St
Andrews, as it was too big and bustling. Later we drove to the
picturesque fishing villages of Crail and Anstruther. The latter
town has the best fish and chips in the UK, so we tried their salmon & dill
fishcakes, which were superb and washed them down with some Scottish ice-cream,
the best we’ve tasted so far.
On the way home we diverted to visit Scotland’s
Secret Bunker, where we spent a chilling 90 minutes contemplating the
awfulness of a nuclear war – this bunker was built during the cold war and only
decommissioned in the 90s. We arrived back here very tired and hoping for a
good game of delayed footy, but it was not to be.
This morning we finally hit on the perfect
breakfast – we found muesli hidden away in a little drawer and followed it up
by soft-boiled eggs with toast. We have our jar of Vegemite and I have my tin
of Jasmine tea, so if all else fails, we can survive on tea and toast. This
afternoon we will walk back to the Pitlochry Festival Theatre to see Single
Spies by Alan Bennett, and finish our time here with dinner in our hotel’s
restaurant. Tomorrow we head off to Oban, back to stay in a B&B. Thanks
for reading and for your comments.
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