Our Scotland and England Adventure: Day Eleven (27 August)

Today was another lovely sunny day and we managed to tear ourselves away from our comfy bed,

determined to finally see a bit of Burghead, er, um, maybe we had fallen asleep and woken up in Canada?
(Astute Canadians might recognise the PEI provincial flag in the shed . . . can you tell that Jim and Anne are a bit homesick for PEI?) Jeanette (Anne's sister) and her husband Matthew dropped by for a visit
and when I found out that their dog Brodie was in the car, I had to have a peek. Brodie turned out to be a grand dog, who obediently resisted snapping up this biscuit when Jeanette tempted him with it (although his drooling was pretty fast and furious),
and performed a series of tricks, including crossing his paws, in order to earn his tasty reward.
After our morning visit, we set out in the afternoon to finally explore Burghead. Imagine our surprise when we discovered that we were mere steps from the sea!
(That really explained our freezing walk last night.) While we walked along the water, this dog wandered over to say hello
and I loved the seal on top of this house's door.
Burghead harbour was full of boats
and the nets were spread out, ready for the day:
The harbour made for a nice walk
and it was nice to finally enjoy some of the views that the seaside village offered.

Burghead's streets are full of wonderful stone houses (and a few great dogs too),

and even the old jail has been converted into a private residence.
Jim is a minister and he kindly gave us a tour of his church. We saw the church bell, which had unfortunately fallen (Jim had even heard it fall!) and has yet to be reinstated:
Jim pointed out the old-fashioned "hearing aids" installed in front of some of the pews, and when I asked him to pretend he was using one of them, he got right into character:
Bob took a turn in the pulpit,
but thought that it was a bit too drastic of a career change, and handed it back over to Jim. After lunch, the four of us headed out to the nearby town of Lossiemouth to have some ice cream--we sat in the park overlooking the beach and enjoyed our treats.

Bob and I were both shocked to see such sandy dunes in Lossiemouth--we felt like we were in Oregon, on the west coast of the United States, not in northern Scotland!

After we left Lossiemouth, we had been driving for a while when Anne spotted some Highland cows and offered to stop to let us get some photos--of course we took ample advantage of that opportunity! This pair would nuzzle and then look at us and then nuzzle and then look at us, over and over, until they finally realised we weren't going away, and just turned and walked away:
In fact, after a minute of all the cows staring at us, they all lost interest and retreated from where we were standing--all except one!
Our new friend kept staring at us, and wandered closer to inspect the new additions to the field.

Bob tried to feed (and pat) our new friend; he was successful only on the first count.
Finally, when we thought we had spent long enough with the cows, we waved goodbye to our Highland friend.
"What would you have done if the cow had waved back?" Anne wanted to know when we got back in the car. Yes, we are crazy city folk--and I miss "our" cow! On our way home, we stopped at Pluscarden Abbey, whose website informs me is " the only medieval monastery in Britain still inhabited by monks and being used for its original purpose." Founded in 1230, the abbey and the surrounding grounds are beautiful and fittingly meditative:

The cemetery wall contained a wooden gate and a step
that reminded me of our walks in the Lake District, especially when I saw the marked path on the other side of the wall.

We had another peek at the sea
and more surprising dunes, which had us thinking of the United States again--this time the New England coast.

We were on our way home for dinner when Anne had a great idea: how about a fish supper on the beach? The village just across from Burghead, Hopeman, has a shop that Jim and Anne like, so we headed there for our fish and chips, which the bag informed us is "real food":
Add the national soft drink of Scotland, Irn Bru, to the meal, and we had ourselves a proper fish supper!

I don't know about the secret recipe, but Irn Bru was definitely unlike any other pop I've had -- sort of like a combination of Orange Crush, cream soda, and Asian barley tea. (In other words, difficult to describe!) This was the Hopeman view that accompanied our dinner:
Definitely not a bad way to end the day . . .