Thursday, we again had an excellent lie in, and a lazy breakfast in the cottage wherein we discussed what we might want to do. There were three hikes that I had in mind as possibilities. 1) The mountain we’d skirted around on our Killiecrankie walk, 2) the loop near the top of the mountain we’d traversed on our Strathtay walk or 3) further up the Tummel river to see “Queen’s View“. The problem was that 2 of those were hilly, and one was long. We didn’t want to continue to tax Sam, and Carolyn’s feet were causing her some problems from ill-fitting hiking boots.
We’re back from another very nice, if somewhat wearying hike. This time, we walked “over the hill” from Pitlochry to Strathtay. The hike was nice, though
View back
over Pitlochry
today, the boots weren’t as magic, and Botticelli, while still engaging wasn’t as thoroughly distracting as it was the day before. Therefore, we had a somewhat more recalcitrant hiker than a couple of days ago. Still, all things considered, I’m pleased with her capability and willingness.
A relaxed day in and near town. The morning consisted of some errands (buy postcards, scan documents for closing, buy a couple presents, some groceries, drop clothing off at the launderette). Lunch was sandwiches from the Scottish Deli. After lunch, we hiked through the Black Spout wood to reach the smallest distillery in Scotland – Edradour.
We watched a video, took a tour and bought some gift-Scotch and some personal Scotch. The personal stuff is “Un-chillfiltered” meaning it would go cloudy if poured over ice (or even stored in a chilly place – gotta get it out of Scotland quickly!) The chillfilitering process is to remove some of the oily/fatty stuffs that’s introduced during distillation process, but which will produce a haze when chilled. So often distilleries will chill the spirit and filter out this residue. But of course, it also removes some of the body and flavor. Our guide likened it to making a vegetable soup and then removing the vegetables. We got bottle 779 of 905 from Cask number 120. Distilled in March of ’99 and bottled in September of ’09, it’s a 10-year, like the bulk of the Edradour line-up.
Today, we hiked.
By the weather forecast, this looked to be the best day of the week, and as we were fresh, and came here to walk around, we set out for a hike.
We got off to a leisurely start. We had breakfast in our cottage, got ourselves packed up and headed off (after a quick trip to the Indian restaurant where we’d eaten the night before to pick up the rucksack we’d left there by accident!)
I can’t count how many times I have looked on the back of a photograph hoping the photographer wrote down who those people are, or when or where the photo was taken. Well, it would actually be a fairly small number, but boy is it annoying when you want the data and it just isn’t there. Digital cameras will almost always automatically embed date information for you (and if not, then the software you pick them up with will!) Newer GPS (sat nav) enabled cameras will capture the “where” as well. But it’s still not automatic to capture the “who.”
OK, It’s not day 1 anymore, but it feels that way.
Train
Saturday we took a train to London’s Victoria station. Then we took a tube from there to King’s Cross station. From there, we took a train to Edinburgh. From there, we took another train to Pitlochry. On the long-haul train from London to Edinburgh, we were fortunate in that we had reserved seats at a table and the reserved seats across from us were unoccupied, as we only needed 2 tickets, because Sam is an “under 5” but that meant we only got 2 seats. We arrived without event except that I’m pretty sure I left my hat on the London to Edinburgh train which is terribly disappointing. I guess another trip to Goorin Brothers is in order next time I’m back in SF. It was always a bit too small, but I’m still disappointed to have left it behind.
I’ve been meaning to do this for a while. Capture some stories that I like on audio. This one’s pretty good for a quick pass. I look forward to improving both production quality and reading. But it’s fun to have read one of my favorite poems and captured it for later and maybe too, for others.
Here is an interesting article. It feels like it might be subject to some (selection?) bias, but the outcome appeals to my sensibility. Key sentiment is below:
My research revealed that lucky people generate good fortune via four basic principles. They are skilled at creating and noticing chance opportunities, make lucky decisions by listening to their intuition, create self-fulfilling prophesies via positive expectations, and adopt a resilient attitude that transforms bad luck into good.
As we’re getting ready to leave this place, I’m occasionally hit by waves of nostalgia. I had a moment tonight as I looked out over the landscape from our front stoop. Off and on while we were in this house, Sam and I would get to spend some time together just before we started the night time ritual where we’d “look at the darkness”. And we’d been doing it off-and-on even from the point of her early language development so it evolved from “I look ah dark?” to “looking at the darkness”. But it was a time that we both looked forward to.
It’s about 2 weeks late, but I’ve been blogging (quite irregularly, obviously) for 5 years now.
Most of my stuff goes on twitter now. Automatically posted in turn to facebook (and to a side-bar in this blog). Anyway, happy belated, self-congratulatory, anniversary to me and my writing. 🙂
