This morning, after breakfast and checking out of the hotel, we drove to the Culloden Battlefield. This was the site of the last battle of the Jacobite uprising. Around 1,300 men lost their lives on this battlefield in less than an hour, and 1,250 of them were Jacobites. We spent longer there than I had scheduled, and it started a chain of events that threw the whole day off schedule.
We then drove to Cawdor Castle. I had pre-booked our tickets, and we toured both the castle and the gardens.
I had decided to visit a Walker’s factory store to buy some more shortbread cookies, including some to take to Carl. Unfortunately, I selected the wrong store in the GPS, which caused us to backtrack for about an hour and put us even farther behind schedule. We also decided to eat lunch in the town where the store was located.
After lunch, we considered driving to Huntly Castle, but it was over an hour away, and we would not arrive until around 4:15, even though it closed at 4:30. So, we changed our minds and drove to Kildrummy Castle instead. It is a ruined castle, but unfortunately, it was also closed when we arrived.
When we entered our hotel into the GPS, it said we were over two hours away and would arrive at 6:48 PM. We had dinner reservations for 7:00. I drove as fast as I safely could, but the roads were narrow, hilly, and curvy, so I could not drive too quickly.
We checked into the hotel and immediately left to walk to the restaurant. It was about a 10-minute walk. We arrived at the restaurant and had dinner. While we were eating, it started to rain, and it was still raining when we finished dinner and began the walk back to the hotel.
We stopped at a grocery store along the way to pick up some drinks and water, then continued our walk in the rain. I was wearing the new raincoat I bought just for this trip, and I think I have had to use it every day.
When we got back to the hotel, we dried off and called it a night.
