Go West!

 

Many more beautiful stops on our route this past week. After Cairgorms National Park we followed the river Spey, very well known by whisky drinkers. We of course, took the opportunity to stop at a distillery. But neither one of us being a connaisseur, where do you go in a region that holds 50% of all of the distilleries of Scotland??? With a little research and Jérôme having heard of the name, we decided to stop at Glenlivet, who also proposed a guided tour with tasting 😋.

Surprise at our arrival, the French flag is floating in front of the main building. We kinda figured it wasn't for us😏. But we learned during the visit that the distillery is now part of the French group Pernod Ricard. Without knowing it, we had chosen well 😂. Chosen well yes but above all because the visit was really, really interesting. We discovered a very nice product with a fascinating history in beautiful surroundings.  

We tasted 3 whiskys: a 12, 14 and 16 year old. Although we are not experts, we really enjoyed them and could really tell the difference between the 3.  And, to avoid drinking & driving (it is a bit strong) and also wasting, they distribute some take-away kits. So you are free to not drink it all during the tasting and continue to enjoy it aftewards, without having to buy a bottle. But we bought one anyway 😜.

Before we continued our journey North we made another stop on the coast in the very charming town of Lossiemouth and its nice beach. There are really nice beaches in Scotland and we see lots of people swimming so...

But, we admit the water isn't very warm and, with the wind cooling down the air we just didn't feel hot enough to go for a swim. We did however put our feet in, thinking very hard about all the ones who are suffocating under the strong heat at the moment ...

Our route was after taking us through Inverness so, we made the must do detour to loch Ness to see if the monster was hanging around. Well surprise! We didn't see it... But the silly legend put aside, the lake really is beautiful and there is sort of a mysterious feeling floating around, particularly with the stormy skies we had that day. 

But the place was a bit too touristy for us so we headed back towards Inverness to make a stop at Chanonry Point, recognized as a top bottlenose dolphin observation point. It is apparently one of the best places in the world to observe dolphins from the shore as they come very close to it.  We figured we'd have better chances than with Nessie 😊.

Well, we stayed and looked at the water for an hour and a half and, nothing !! It seems the region wasn't bringing us any luck so we headed West. 

To cross from East to West we had several options. Many take the NC500, a touristic route that follows the entire coastline. But, as it's over 1,000 km long and quite popular, we decided to cross over a little bit lower. I don't know if we missed out on anything but the road we took was absolutely AMAZING. It was so beautiful we wanted to stop every 10 minutes. The weather was perfect, it helps of course and we just enjoyed every mile all the way to Coigach peninsula where we had chosen to stop, also a bit by coincidence sayong "hey, that looks like a nice and not so crowded place to go". 

So nice we stayed there for 2 days and went on a hike that turned out to be quite sporty! Taking a look at it we thought: "it's only a 600 meter elevation gain, that's nothing for people who live in the Alps like us"! But it was steep, very steep, the trail wasn't marked at all and the trail was there, and there wasn't... It wasn't easy to figure out where to go. Luckily a local hiker helped us out and showed us the way. The panorama at the top was well worth the grunt and disorientation of the climb, it was absolutely breathtaking. 

And then we headed back down to our room with a view 😍.

To see the map and more photos : https://sodeslau.travelmap.net

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Jérôme & Sophie 😎