On tour

Working in Inverness tomorrow. Spent 3 hours on the interweb trying to find accommodation. Nothing. Inverness is full to bursting. Nearest I could get was the far from promising Highland Hotel in Newtonmore. 40 odd miles away!



My dear friends D&G who live on the patch, suspecting I was looking to cadge dinner and free lodgings are not returning my calls, I think they have taken to travelling abroad to avoid me.



The Highland Hotel, is a timber built budget hotel that google earth (street view) does no favours, however it was an absolute delight. Dinner is a single sitting, everyone at 7:30pm, it was like being back at school. I thought the service would be awful but they are a model of efficiency, an army of waiters worked like clockwork and the food was pretty decent too (washed down with a bottle of a very reasonable Shiraz). Two hundred and fifty of us, in and out, hour and a half tops. Three course meal, tea or coffee all for a tenner.



Dinner, bed and breakfast (and a huge room) all for £45! I opened a mini bar in a London hotel once and it cost me more than that.


I've stayed in some pretty swanky gaffs and this isn't one of them but I enjoyed it very much.


Spent a great evening talking to Americans, Germans, Canadians, Poles, South Africans......come to think of it, there was nobody there (including the staff) that seemed to come from Scotland.



It was like being abroad!

Aberdeen awaits Sunday