Beautiful sunny day – my Dad always said May is the best month to visit Scotland. Drove south to a small (but very-award-winning) gin distillery, Kinrara. Walked out with three delicious (or so LL tells me – as designated driver I could only sniff each tasting) and truly beautiful bottles of gin.
Then some more stunning countryside and a couple of bowls of Cullen Skink for lunch in an adorable pub in Boat of Garten. Now, off to sleep in a castle!
LL was excited at the idea of sleeping in a castle, so months ago I started researching: had to be a castle, in the north, dog-friendly, with a restaurant, and hopefully nice decor and pretty views – found one! Sometimes the audio on my Waze won’t sync with the car, so LL has become the voice of my SatNav, holding the cellphone and interpreting the instructions – she’s doing very well and we arrived in the parking lot of the 12th century Tulloch Castle Hotel exactly as planned.
That’s where the planning started to go sideways. These next few observations are all going to sound rather whiny, and truly any one of them would not have deterred us, but . . .
It looked appropriately castle-like inside, and the staff was lovely. We decided to take Scout and our smaller handbags up the several flights of stairs first, before coming back down for our far-too-heavy cases. The room only had a double bed – not even a nice big queen, just a double, when I had booked two beds, and fond as I am of LL, well, that’s just not on. Then we saw the bees. Brits don’t use screens on their windows and I think there was a hive just outside, ’cause there were lots of bees inside. LL is allergic. The staff were apologetic, but the hotel was full so no chance of changing and anyways, the manager had just gone for bug spray, as the bees were throughout the castle.
I went online, and with no research, no pre-planning, no comparative analysis, called the first hotel I saw and booked us in. (He warned us the kitchen was closed, but the hotel is right in town – bound to be food somewhere).
Well, it was absolutely delightful. They were short staffed, but the receptionist (also bartender and all around general factotum) was amazing. Because we’d had a bad experience in Tulloch, she didn’t charge for Scout, she gave us a sea view room, and she told us the best place to order in pizza, and even let us eat it in the front sunroom while we watched TV on LL’s iPad.
Rabbie Burns may have been right that the best laid schemes gang aft a’gley, but sometimes that’s a good thing.
*Oh – today’s overall theme was cars: we parked the Corsa between a Lotus and a Rolls in Tulloch, and while we were polishing off pizza in Dornoch, a dozen young car aficionados pulled up to the hotel: BMWs, MGBs, and a Bugatti.