A Friendly Place
We visited Scotland during autumn. The weather was beautiful and the crowds were nonexistent. Our travels focused on visiting Skara Brae, a late Neolithic village on the West Mainland of Orkney Island, and Aberdeenshire, an area filled with castles, standing stones, and friendly people.
We were quite pleased to discover that no matter where we traveled in Scotland, we made friends. We can not wait to return some day.
Travel to Scotland can be achieved via Iceland or London rather easily. From London, one can take the trail and arrive in Glasgow in about 4 hours. We decided to fly, albeit a roundabout way, from London to Glasgow, to Inverness, to Orkney, via little planes with little propellers. The flight was a great way to see the green countryside and land's end from a falcon's perspective.
The time of year, though late for tourism, was still a great time to visit gardens, but the hills of heather had started to turn brown. The evening air was crisp, but nothing will ever surpass being on a tiny island in a field of grass watching the Northern Lights over the ocean.
We did most of our planning and reservations using www.visitorkney.com/ for the Orkney portion of our travels. For the Aberdeenshire part of the trip, we went by chance. The flight to Aberdeen was not too expensive and the flight was at a good time. We used our AAA map to find points of interest and stopped n the evenings when we found a place to stay.
Places we missed that we regret not visiting are listed below:
- Archeological sites on the north shore of Orkney
- Archeolink Prehistory Park
- The Castle Trail in Aberdeenshire
- Inverewe Gardens
- Loch Ness (but of course!)
For history buffs, here is an excellent link noting the sites:
Places to Stay
We stayed at the Mossatt House Bed & Breakfast. On the card, the address is liated as Kildrummy Alford Aberdeenshire. We can not find any information on the web anymore about this place, and perhaps it is no longer in business. Ann, the owner, was wonderful and our room was so comfortable. Her husband helped print out maps for us for our daily adventures. I would want to stay here again given the chance.