Day Six/Seven: Our Brief Taste of the Highlands

One of the best and worst things about this trip is that every place we went was my favorite and I wanted to stay there forever. Nowhere did I feel this more strongly than Pitlochry. We were smart enough to allocate several days to Islay. Glasgow and Edinburgh are amazing, but I'd also seen them before. The Highlands, however, were an entirely new experience for me.

We left Stirling Castle in the late afternoon, and, after a panicked search for a gas station (seriously. There was a dearth of gas stations in the greater Stirling region) we were en route to Pitlochry. At first, the roads looked much like New England: two lane highways twisting their way through rolling hills liberally covered in pine trees. If you squinted your eyes a bit, you'd almost be home. But, at a closer glance, everything was different. The pine trees were tall and slender, not short and squat. I'm not sure what the other trees were, but I don't think they were maples. The flowers were different. As our tiny little Peugeot bravely made its way higher and higher, the scenery became more stunning and dramatic. The trees grew taller. The hills were higher, their tops more rocky and stark. I was staring out the window, drinking in the landscape like I was dying of thirst.

Unfortunately, I didn't take many pictures. I'm guessing because I'm an idiot. For most of these posts, I've been choosing between an abundance of pictures, but you're literally getting everything I have of Pitlochry. Oh well, reason to go back to the Highlands?

I did get a few snapshots of Pitlochry itself. It looked, to me (who has never been to Switzerland) like a town from the Alps that somehow lost its way and ended up in the Scottish highlands. I knew straight away that one night and one morning wouldn't be enough.

Our hotel in Pitlochry was a converted mill. You all may not know this about me, because why would you, but I have always and forever had a fondness for converted mills. It also had a working toilet and a shower with sufficient water pressure and hot water. Despite the fact that the staff (chiefly Eastern European with a smattering of New Zealand. No, I don't know) was not exactly authentic, I could've stayed there forever. 

We decided to eat at the hotel restaurant because, well, hungry. This was a good decision. The food was amazing and restaurant-y and we had sticky toffee pudding (with ice cream. Which I know is not necessarily traditional or legit, but honestly. Ice cream). I'm sitting back here at home, with my sad lazy single person dinner of triscuits and goat cheese and almost drooling on my computer remembering that food. 

After dinner, we visited a super fun bar that boasted both a great deal of whisky and live music. I would've happily set up camp there for ages, but the temperature inside the bar was about twenty degrees higher than the outside and I was wearing a wool sweater and rapidly melting. 

This is the bar we visited. A++ would go back again. 

What is better than combining a picturesque town with ICE CREAM?

The next morning, we headed off for a quick tour of Blair Athol before a drive down to Edinburgh. I was immediately struck by the differences between Highland distilleries and Islay distilleries - look at that non standard green lettering! There is nothing of white walls OR large black lettering.

Blair Athol is interesting for several reasons. They are part of the Diageo family and, like other Diageo distilleries (including Caol Ila, which we did not visit on Islay), the majority of their whisky goes into blends. The precise percentage we were given was 99.7%. You actually can't get Blair Athol whisky in the States, which is a shame, because it's really quite nice. 

The tour guide here was also named Ian. It was sad to experience our last distillery tour, and a bit disappointing that we weren't allowed to take pictures inside any of the buildings. The grounds were pretty in a Hansel and Gretel storybook sort of way. The whole operation certainly looked extremely different than the Islay distilleries, and made me want to see more Highland distilleries in the future. 

Pitlochry also left us with the most hilarious traffic sign that I've possibly seen in my life. I have not seen this before in the UK, and we did not see it after this. I'm eternally thankful that E captured its existence on film, so it didn't become just a myth, passed on to future generations.