Way home

Monday - back blipping .....

After going to bed at 10 pm last night we were up just after 7 am. After shower and packing we went to breakfast. The choice was again this lovely omelette with smoked haddock and cheddar. I need to find out how to do that at home.
We packed the car, paid and set off. The plan was to drive along the Spey up to Dufftown then head back to Tomintoul and go down the other side of the hills to Ballater and the Deeside.
We had our first stop in Gantown-on-Spey which I remembered as a lovely village. It is still a lovely village but it seems to be declining. A lot of shops were closed and looked abandoned. Sad, as it is pretty and should have a lot of tourists passing on their way to the Whisky.
From Grantown we moved on along the Speyside. The weather was lovely - as usual very different from the forecast. We drove through lovely country side with fields of barley which is needed for the Whisky production and a lot of signposts to all those many distilleries. We stopped at Macallans, mainly because we were intrigued about the HUGE building site. Really HUGE! We had to drive quite a bit through it in order to get to the original distillery, warehouses and visitor center. We were told that his is a 138 M project to build a new distillery and visitor center with grass roof, which would up the production by 50%. It should open in June 2018!
I bought a miniature bottle of whisky for Dougie and then we headed to Dufftown, the Capital of the whisky with currently 6 active distilleries.  We stopped in the "town center", visited a whisky shop and went for a coffee. It was very quiet in Dufftown. The coffee was amazingly good, coming from a roaster in Lossiemouth!
From Dufftown we took the road to Tomintouls, which is the highest village in the Highlands.
Funnily the highest village in Scotland is in the Lowlands! And it is beaten by 6 meters to be the highest village in Britain (which is Flash in Staffordshire, close to where Neil comes from ).
Tomintoul was even more deserted than Dufftown or Grantown! We went for a wee stroll along the one main street, which funnily ends in a track.
There was one quite touristy shop (see extra) where we went in. To my delight they had Orkney Ice cream which I consider the best ice cream in Britain. I could not resist having some (rhubarb and custard) and also Neil tried it (I think he tried fudge) and confirmed how good it was. 
Tiem was creeping on and we headed towards the Deeside, on the other side of the Cairngorm.
My old friend Murray runs a Hotel in Ballater with his parents and I had not seen him for years. I could not reach him by phone or text, so we stopped anyways, hoping he was there. And he was!! It was so great to see him. We studied at college in Edinburgh together - me photography, he film. He was the most brilliant photography assistant for my shoots and I dearly miss his gay excentricity and humour. We had coffee at the hotel terrace and caught up a bit. We were lucky to have hit the late afternoon hours when the hotel was quiet. I also caught up with his mum. 
It was after 6 pm when we got on the road again but still stopped in Braemar for a wee look around. We ended having Fish and Chips (yes - I am pushing it with the wheat now) which was lovely. I had Fish and Chips there years ago and rated them best in Scotland at that time, which is not what you actually expect in Braemar. The fish was smaller than 6 years ago but it was yummie! 
After this junk food dinner we continued to Glenshee. One more photo stop to capture the bridge before we tried to make some miles to get home.
We were in Glasgow just before 10 pm and quite tired from the long drive.

It was a great weekend trip and I am desperate to do more of those in future. 

Main Blip: 
The old bridge between Braemar and Glenshee
Extras:  
Tomintoul shops, 
Dufftown square, 
Cairngorm from the "other" side with the old military road