Crossing the Cairngorms

 

Wow, just wow. The A9 is one of the most picturesque roads I think we have ever driven. It just keeps on giving. We didn’t stop at Perth as we wanted to make it further north but somewhere at home I have a fabulous photo of me, Rachel, and Jane ( I think… ) Having checked with Jane she says …”yes me you and Rachel!”  in Perth in the mid to late 1980’s - for some reason being the 3 wise monkeys, sat on a bench. We were visiting as part of the BMYC Scotland tour and this was clearly how we chose to amuse ourselves!

Anyway, on we went, stunning view after stunning view. The photos from Agy on the move, really don’t do it justice as you have reflections and swatted flies, but honestly, you should come…  It is beautiful.

I said before we would have more stunning lunchtime locations, well we did. Not too far from Aviemore, we found a place to stop and eat, soak up the view and generally appreciate how fortunate we are. There isn’t much to say as we were driving a fair bit, but the photos probably say enough.

We were really hoping to stop in Inverness and have a wander, we have been once before, but wanted to have another look around. Unfortunately, it seemed everyone else was driving through Inverness at the same time as us and car parks were in short supply unless you wanted to go underground. Underground car parks and tall vans do not mix, so we kept on going and started looking for a place to spend the night. I’ve mentioned ‘search for sites app’ before, but it really does come up trumps every time, I quickly looked up where we could stop and found The Old North Inn pub and hotel  https://www.oldnorthinn.com/ that came highly recommended - and we can stay for free in the car park, and so we did. The landlord gave us the warmest welcome and there was haggis on the menu, so I was very happy - Ian did not partake of the furry little creature for dinner. If you want somewhere to stay, I should think the hotel is great too. 

We’d previously thought about doing the NC500 https://www.northcoast500.com/ a stunning 500 mile route along the north coast of Scotland, but hadn’t considered we might do it on this trip. This time we wanted to go as far north as possible, and didn’t think that where we wanted to go, might just be on the route. In fact a friend Dee posted on Facebook commenting on one of my posts that we should look at it - so Dee, we did! It turns out, the Old North Inn is on the NC500 and it basically follows the route we found to head north, so off we go!