Thursday, July 05, 2007

A wee holiday to the Ritchie homeland

We had our summer holiday, british style. In that it rained for the whole trip and barely cracked 20 degrees. But at least it was better than they had in England.

Our first stop was Aberdeen for a weekend to visit Meg. It was sunny when we arrived, so Meg took us to the beach for lunch. I know the german’s do it, but I am not convinced that the north sea is a good spot for a summer beach holiday, especially when the wind gets up as it did for us. We headed into town for a walk to see the sights, and I realised what Meg meant when she said that it was a great place to live but it is really not a tourist city. I wasn’t the only one with a camera out, there was one other person.

Aberdeen is known as the silver city because it is made of granite. The old buildings are beautiful, similar to old sandstone buildings except while a lot of effort has been put in to make the stone at the front of the buildings perfectly flat and square, the stone on the sides are unfinished, which I mention because I really like that cottage-y stone look.

the beach


Aberdeen


the funky stones


Adam wanted his photo taken with a scottish pay toilet...


Meg in a world of cheese


We did a road trip, via the Glenfiddich distillery for a few pre lunch whiskey shots, to Loch Ness. It also took us through Ritchie country, which was rather sparsely populated. And wet. We’d been warned that in bad weather you can’t see loch ness from the shore, but we were lucky enough to be able to see the loch, and the low cloud cover shrouding the hills around. Meg (whose been many times before) and Adam had afternoon tea at the visitors centre at Urquhart castle while I braved the rain to traipse over the ruins. As the rain continued, we decided to turn to indoor activities for our last day and just hang out and go to the movies.

Glenfiddich distillery


and the source of the special peat filtered spring water


the mash tank




Ritchie country


carving on a trebuchet


Urquhart castle


Urquhart castle, with loch ness behind

2 comments:

angela said...

Every time I check your blog, you guys have been somewhere new!! I thought you moved to the uk for work, but I now find this was all a lie... The photos look great - did you find the seat of the richie empire?? Be seeing you guys soon :)

mockingjay: hunger games said...

sorry, i don't mean to mislead you. from now on i will post in a way that reflects our lifestyle: went to work. made dinner. watched tv. slept. went to work. made dinner. watched tv. slept. etc.