We opened our eyes to clear skies and relatively warm weather. For the first time in 3 1/2 weeks we could comfortably wear shorts. We decided to hike to the Birks of Aberfeldy, immortalized in a poem by Robert Burns. We even saw where he sat and supposedly composed the poem.
It was not a long hike but it was steep, passing by waterfalls and stair-steps flowing over mossy rocks through deep, dark, and narrow crevices. Hard to describe but beautiful and definitely worth the effort. When we reached the top there were two ways down, one by road and the other reversing the hike we just made. Poor Jim was still having trouble with his knees so he took and road. James and I took the trail.
By this time in the early afternoon Jim was ready for another distillery tour. By this time we had done dozens of tours. The whole spiel was how scotch is made. However, by listening to this education dozens of times, by now, we could give the talk ourselves. Come on…to be honest Jim was there only for the free scotch. We are a family of three, Jim always received a tasting, I got a tasting but I don’t drink scotch so Jim drank mine, and most of the time James got tastings because distillery presenter looked the other way and figured they were cultivating a future scotch drinker. (By the, it worked! James is exclusively a scotch drinker!) However, at fifteen Dad was getting his tasting, as well.
It was a miracle!!! At the culmination of the distillery tour Jim’s knees stopped hurting and he settled down for a nice long afternoon nap.
