Pitlochry – Episode 12

We’re now in Pitlochry, this village is even more stunning than Aberfeldy, more flowers and surrounded by mountains. We woke up in the Carra Beag Guest House to the smell of a promising Scottish Breakfast and the sun shining outside our windows. Since we’re so far north and sun rises at about 4:00am and doesn’t set until about 10:pm. So no matter how tired we were, we had trouble catching enough sleep.

We went down to breakfast and were seated with a family (husband, wife, and 13 year old son) from Padova, Italy. Poor things spoke little or no English so completely botched ordering breakfast. On the other hand so did we, we ordered the standard Scottish breakfast, which included fried bread, eggs, beans, grilled tomatoes, sauteed mushrooms, bacon, bangers, black pudding (basically oatmeal and blood,) and, of course, no Scottish meal would be without Haggis! Our Italian table breakfast companions had only managed to order, husband=bacon, son=bacon and wife=black pudding. And were now looking at us with hunger, lust, or revulsion, maybe all three.  They simply couldn’t take their eyes of our plates. After offering them our toast we struck up a conversation of sorts, there was a lot of gesturing going.  They were absolutely wonderful people and even though we had a huge language barrier we still managed to have a wonderful conversation. We all had a good laugh when James, to the wife, with the use of his wrists, throat, and his table knife, explained what her pudding was made from. She was horrified.

Today is the first day we decided that we were going to split up and go separate ways. After watching all those salmon swim up river Jim and James went fishing. I’m not a fan of the sport so I was off for another hike. My initial plan was to go east to the Caisteal Dubh (Black Castle,) then turn to the northeast to the little village of Moulin, and back west to Upper Drumchorry. But it didn’t turn out that way and hence my next story, in Episode 13.

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