Sorry for the delay. I have had some serious issues with my OneCloud. It has said it is full for a couple of years now and I need to buy more space. Not going to do that… I have plenty of space on my computer and Adobe (though I need to reinstall that one from a computer crash last summer). I started going through all my stored pix to get rid of all the duplicate and triplicates and other unnecessary stuff… and it is TEDIOUS and TIME CONSUMING to say the least . I have discovered… that I can actually upload the pix from the locked folders directly here… but I have ZERO clue what they are until uploaded. Then I need to delete what isn’t needed. So, sorry for the delay… enjoy this part of the trip!
We started this day at out first distillery tour. The guy giving us the lecture at the start was full of himself. Said they don’t say Aye in Scotland… poo hockey. It is a common word here. I liked this whisky. This tour was very educational as I hadn’t been to a tour before.. but I had one serious issue… See through floors. I wasn’t expecting it. Got to the fermenting section and the floor was a grate… OMG… I about to panicked. I am not good with heights.. but a lot better since I got on the pills for my autoimmune issue… but see through floors are the BANE of my existence! I made sure I was last for everything so I didn’t impede anyone on the tour. At the very last tun, I was holding back and Brian wanted to be the last one. He was herding us. I couldn’t get him to go in front of me. He asked me what was up and I told him that see through floors are the bane of my existence and nothing more. So, I looked at the ceiling, held on to BOTH hand rails for dear life, tried to BREATHE slowly and got my arse down to the ground floor.
Glengoyne Distillery 8/23/2017 pic 2100
And then we went to Loch Katrine for a boat ride in a steam ship! The weather was stunning and the trip peaceful. I took a lot of pix and was really starting to see things differently in terms of what to photograph. It really helped me see the world in a whole new light. More like I was when a child.. excited at seeing EVERYTHING. It also helped that, when I was able to post some of the pix, the folks at home were enthralled and kept asking me to keep posting as they were living vicariously through my pictures! Loch Katrine is the main water source for Glasgow and very near to the Rob Roy area of Scotland. I still haven’t been to see the Rob Roy parts (on the agenda for after COVID lockdown and after panic is done)
The steam engine was in the hull, but open so everyone could view it
This picture will have significance later in a separate blog
Most everyone stayed inside… I spent almost all of mine out on deck
Random castle like building on the road as we drove
Travel horse set up for the night!
Ahhhhhh Ben Nevis Pub
The last 2 pictures are in our hotel The Abode and at the Ben Nevis pub where we listened to the session players again.
I hope to start getting these out far more regularly now that I have figured out how to circumvent the system… TTFN while I go try to delete 5000 more photos in hopes it will behave!
With everything going on in the world right now and all my stuff arriving from California… I posted some stuff as issues came up for me. Now I am back to the story of how all this came about.. what caused Operation Freedom to happen. It is very important that I keep plogging through this trip because many final things happened that placed nail after nail into the coffin of a relationship of almost 3 decades. One of the things I didn’t mention in my last Scotland 2017 blog stream (the Isle Of Skye) is that Kevin HATES hiking. He REFUSED to hike with me except on 2 occasions (well, one was a couple of months of occasions). The first was when I badgered him enough he finally went on a 3 mile hike around Mt. Gower (just stepped outside our backyard and started off… the county park is right behind his house). For the first time in our relationship, Kevin couldn’t keep up with me. It was then that he finally admitted that he had a physical issue and maybe needed to go to the doctor. Well, DUH. He refused to go to a doctor for anything… hadn’t had a physical in YEARS… so I literally screamed at him for WEEKS and he finally went to the doctor. He had SEVERE bone spurs in BOTH Achilles tendons (one was so ugly it looked like you could use it to take the top off a beer bottle) with little spikes poking into the tendons and causing minute tears every step. NO FUCKING WONDER he hurt… took a LOT longer to get him to consent to surgery too. Well, he had to get it done for both ankles and they would only do 1 at a time with a 3 month wait (and he had to prove he could manage walking before they would do the second one). So, his recovery exercises (after he got out of the boot for the second surgery) was to walk down to the local coffee shop 1.5 miles down hill (about a 3% grade) from the house and have a cuppa, then walk back. He had very specific walking things he had to do while walking too.. so for 3 months during the summer of his recovery.. we walked (well, I would run sprints and walk back to him so I could get better exercise) with the dogs there and back.
So, when Kevin made voice to go with us on the Old Man of Storr hike.. I actually, in a bitchy voice said.. in front of everyone.. You HATE hiking Kevin.. why are you going with us? You wouldn’t ever hike with me at home! Not my best moment… LOL Needless to say I was NOT happy with his decision (and his parents went on the coach to tour the island without him). Usually Kevin allows NOTHING to come between him and his parents.. the world absolutely STOPPED any time they visited.. it was VERY disturbing. So, he went with us.. and to be honest, he was mostly pleasant (except when I fell and he laughed and laughed.. not laughed because it was funny.. laughed because he was happy I fell).
Our next stop was…
After Skye we traveled on to the tourist center at Loch Ness to catch a glimpse of Nessie… which we did. We spent some time going on the tour of the center which has a really good museum on the history of the monster. We spent a couple of hours here and then on to Urquhart Castle.
Had a spot of lunch here
I liked the color on the leaves
They had a really nice, small garden
This is heather
and this is heather
and this is also heather
Urquhart Castle
Loch Ness Monster Tourist Trap Stop
Urquhart Castle was one of the highlights of the trip for me. It was a gloriously sunny day and I was more confident in my photo taking. I really enjoyed this stop!
Trebuchet
Stone for the Trebuchet
Reinactors
Some of the group
Thislte
It was a STUNNING day
Just a cool and different capture
I learned what a dovecote is!
I DIDN’T get the guy in his underwear in the Loch
Oh ho wI love Bluebells
From a window in the castle
He RARELY looked happy
Urquhart Castle
We left the castle to journey to our hotel in Inverness.. it was getting late and almost no time to explore. We got in just in time for dinner, then Brian gave us a little concert and we all went to bed after a bit of a yarn in the bar. The hotel was GORGEOUS.
View from our room
Lounge area for guests
River directly outside the hotel
Inverness Castle across the river
The end of a beautiful day for a quick stop over in Inverness. We would come back to explore this city another day
The next day we traveled north to Dunrobin Castle. This was another memorable place as they had spectacular gardens and the most incredible Falconer! I’ll do a separate blog (after this one) for the falconer as it was that special. This garden is unique. It is a mix of cottage and English traditional. We had a few hours to spend here and I loved every minute of it. I took hundreds of pictures (of which I am only showing a few…LOL). I also learned a valuable photography lesson here. I had been in the gardens about an hour. I was experimenting with the remote feature of my camera (it works with my phone so I can take pictures from farther away. No one ever has pix of themselves during vacations.. so I was trying to get a few) and generally enjoying the gardens when I met up with a couple of gals from my tour group. One of them I really enjoy.. the other one, I found out in the next 20 minutes, was not a pleasant person. She did nothing but complain (nothing was good, she hurt, the buss was uncomfortable, the food too whatever or not enough… even things about world events) for the entire time we strolled the garden. I couldn’t get rid of her without being seriously impolite.. but dang.. her ugly attitude was not fun!
Now… you ask, what has this to do with a photography lesson? Well, we were strolling along and came to a beautiful fountain in the middle of the garden. I was enthralled by the fountain which had a rock feature with moss growing all over it. It was stunning. It was also a good way to distance myself from this woman. In steps Brian. He is trying to attract our attention. He says, “Come over ladies, you really want this picture.” But what I heard was he wanted to get a picture of us.. I wanted ZERO part in being in a picture with this woman so I kind of hung back (I’m sure my face had something like a sourpuss look on it too). Brian then (in his seriously perceptive way) saw I wasn’t going to come over and said a little louder, “For real, you really want this photo.” At which time I realized he wanted me to take a photo of the pond.. and then I saw it… plain as day IF I had been aware of the different ways to actually see something. I saw, through Brian’s gentle insistence, the reflection in the water. I am embarrassed to say, I was so oblivious and angry about the other gal interrupting my revere that I failed to see the stunning reflection of the Castle in the water. It was then that I realized I had stopped seeing the things in life that had so enthralled me as a child. I had lost my inner child to the daily grind and in doing so, I had ceased seeing the wonderful, incredible world and all the little things of beauty it has to offer if you just look. From this point on, my photography got a lot more interesting and better ( also had a lot of horrible pix, but that was because I started experimenting with the different features the camera allowed me to do).
It is still a working castle too. There were occupied rooms we were not allowed to see
In mind August.. they had a fire in the fireplace
Castle cat
Was very friendly
Dunrobin Castle Garden Part 1
Not everything was manacured
Experimenting with the camera remote feature
To die for gate
And a naturalized area with so many flowers
Peacock butterfly
I had no idea Salvia wuld grow here
Kevin’s parents
For once, he was aware of where I was
And when we left….
An antique care show
Was in the front of the Castle!
Back on the bus to Glengoyne Distillery
Dunrobin Castle Part 2
Once the coach was able to enter the area…. he had a hard time because of the volume of old cars coming in for the show and a few tight turns… We all got on feeling wonderfully sated from the glorious garden and the fantastic Falconry demonstration (next blog.. I promise). We headed out along the North Sea to Glengoyne Distillery for a tasting and tour. This was a very unpleasant end to the day for me as it was painfully clear that Kevin was a complete asshole but no one else was allowed to see it. The tasting went very well. Kevin got up to get an additional tasting (they only give you 1 shot of a whisky they sell lots of) of the remaining whiskys and I just started to see some really cool things to photograph.. namely, the glasses on the table. I was taking a bit of time to get the glasses lined up just right in the lens (they were in different planes on the table and i wanted the 3D effect). Well, Kevin came up next to me with the whisky and I said, “gimme a sec.” To which he grunted something unintelligible. It escalated from there (mind you, I took less than 3 minutes to do this whole thing) to Kevin stating in an angry voice just low enough that only I heard it, ARE YOU DONE YET?” When it was obvious I was still trying to get the right angle. He literally pushed my chair out of his way and if he hadn’t had whisky in the cups, he would have slammed them down. As it was he forcefully banged the platter down next to me… right in my field of photography. I cannot, for the life of me, remember what nasty thing I said to him.. but I called him out on his nasty behavior and I wasn’t quiet about it. We started tasting the whisky. I almost died laughing when another gal in our group wanted a picture and I was in the way… she politely asked me to move so she could get it… the look on Kevin’s face was PRICELESS. He was so angry he was about 40 shades of red… but he couldn’t say a single word to the person. I made him move too.. just to make sure her shot was clear of us! The rest of the trip to our hotel I was steaming mad… he had been a shit in front of everyone.. but no one saw it or heard it because that is the narcissist way. Make everyone think I am the bad person for my overreaction to him being a nice guy… while he sabotages my self worth in a manner that no one recognized or heard.
I was so angry that I told our hosts (Kim and Brian) that I needed to go for a long walk before dinner to cool off or I would just end up biting everyone’s head off and generally being unpleasant. It was on this BRISK walk (I REALLY made it a fast walk… I knew I needed to get some serious physical exercise in to beat the anger down) that I found my happy place… I found a forest. I only had an hour before dinner and I made the most of it by exploring this little piece of Nirvana and making it to dinner just as they started serving everyone. I ended up having to sit with asshat and his parents.. but it was all Ok.
Low tide, North Sea
The offending photo shoot
Gorgeous bottle
Nirvana was reached about 3/4 of a mile up the road
I spent almost an hour here getting my anger under control
Glengoyne Distillery and where we stopped for the night (don’t remember the name of the town)
And with that, having taken 5 days to complete this blog post… I must admit, I was NOT looking forward to rehashing that distillery incident and so procrastinated mightily on getting this day done. I also had other things to accomplish that took a higher priority because it is important to me and the people who shall receive the fruits of my labor (when I finish my Comfort Pebbles I will post a blog on those and why they became so important that I do it NOW and not let other stuff interfere… even though some life did). I am now off to try to weed the last section of the front garden because we finally got enough rain to loosen the soil again (we have had glorious sunshine for 2+ weeks now). I have been procrastinating on that part too and it will now be much harder to get done. Oh well, it will look fantastic once I have it at maintenance! TTFN and enjoy your lockdown activities… there is ALWAYS something to look forward to no matter the circumstances… just get on with life and it always works out.
operation Freedom 