Friday 6 April 2018

Follow Me: Scotland - Stonehaven

Day 3: St. Andrews and Stonehaven

After the punishment I put my poor body through yesterday, you would think that I was not going to do it again, and soon. I though exactly that, but here are th!e stats for today (as at 20h30): 12824 steps, coming to 8.8km. The majority of this was accumulated in two hours; what we had in terms of paid parking. And we made it with a minute to spare. Now that is what I call efficient use of time and money. So where did this miracle of efficiency happen? St. Andrews.
No, we didn't play a round of gholf. We drove past the course, but we spent our time at the castle and cathedral ruins. We took pictures (including one or two incriminating selfies!) and walked everywhere in the centre of town. At the castle (which is looking more like a cemetary than a garden with all the gravestones) I was eminently surprised when I found a grave stone (or a commemorative plaque to be more exact) dated 20 January 2017. I didn't think it was allowed any more for recent burials in historic sites. To my thinking the person buried there must be a direct descendant from one of the original families of that castle. Mind boggling to think you can trace your family history back for 500 years (or even more). I can barely trace my family across the country, let alone millenia!
After St. Andrews we tackled the long road to Stonehaven, approximately 120 miles. Yes, in Scotland they measure distance along roadways in miles. A little weird for a country that is using the metric system, but we knew that before we landed, so it wasn't a problem at all. Only pain was it took us a while to realise that we forgot to set the GPS to this timezone. It constantly made us wonder how far the guesthouse was from Stonehaven that it would take another hour to get there! Luckily we got that fixed, and practically arrived 5 minutes later.
It is a really nice guesthouse (Crawfield Grange) and we are both already half-asleep on our beds despite the early hour. Francois mentioned that the house would make a very nice drawing, so I had a look outside, and in agreement took a few pictures for exactly that purpose.
Using what daylight we had we went to see Dunnottar castle, but dammit it was cold and windy. We decided the temperature gauge in the car was wrong. After a few pictures we left, but decided to return tomorrow morning if the weather is less unforgiving. My nose still aches from the windchill and freezing temperatures.
Before dinner we made our way to Stonehaven beach and harbour to take another stack of pictures. When we got tired of that, it was time to think of food again. The Ship Inn looked good, and we had a very meal of sea bass for me while Francois ordered a beef and Guiness pie. Man, I missed my veggies (always a problem when one relies on cafe food during travels) so I was doubly appreciative of the stack of green on my plate. The fish was good too!

Tomorrow we will be traveling to the Argyle area.

Find the two of us having fun @ Instagram

Always, Linzé 

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