Our Scotland and England Adventure: Day Ten (26 August)

After yesterday's drive-a-thon, we decided to give Anne a day off from the wheel and head off on the bus for a day on our own--well, okay, not quite-- Anne still kindly gave us a lift to the next town, Elgin, where we caught our bus. I finally remembered to take a photo of our Burghead home

and the charming front garden
before we ventured out today. The water pump is one that Jim rescued from a rubbish heap back in PEI and has lugged around with them ever since! Oh, I don't think I mentioned that Anne and Jim used to live in Canada, on Prince Edward Island. In fact, Bob and I stayed with them there, when we drove across Canada and the United States back in 1996. They were as hospitable then as they were these eleven years later, and we have been very lucky to stay with them on two islands, an ocean apart! From Elgin, we took the bus to Inverness, where we spent the afternoon. After yesterday's touring through villages and small towns, Inverness seemed very big and very busy! We wandered for a bit, looking in the shops and enjoying the pleasant town,
complete with picturesque castle
overlooking the equally scenic River Ness.
Instead of spending most of our time in town, we decided to walk along the bank of the River Ness, toward the Ness Islands, a lovely set of small islands connected by pretty footbridges. Peaceful and full of friendly folk (and their dogs), the walk was the highlight of our time in Inverness:

I noticed this artistic bench on one of the islands, but it wasn't until I got closer that I realised the bench wasn't made out of pieces of wood, as I'd first assumed, but was in fact fashioned from a single piece of wood: a work of art and comfortable too.
The second bench we spotted was my favourite--I liked its fluid appearance, and really liked how the higher portion could also be used as a table:
The third bench we saw seemed a bit animal-like,
which set up our next sighting very nicely--I guess the reason no one's found the Loch Ness monster is that everyone's been looking in the loch when Nessie clearly likes hanging out in the river:
(I hope our Nessie photo has lived up to your expectations--the sight made me laugh out loud when we walked around a bend on one of the Ness Islands and were greeted by this sight!)

After our lazy, puttering walk, we realised that we had to hurry back to the bus station to catch our bus back to Elgin. On our way, two last sights made it onto the camera: this grown-over door that obviously sees little use,

and this great bookshop, right beside the bus station--fantastic name and amazing logo, if you ask me (Bob spotted it first, I have to admit):
We arrived back in Elgin on time, but were a bit worried about the bus we saw pulling away just as we pulled into the depot--our bus from Elgin to Burghead was supposed to leave two minutes after we arrived, but after waiting around for about ten minutes and consulting the departures board, we realised that our connecting bus had left early--which was extremely annoying since the next departure wasn't for another two hours! Even though we were both grouchy about our last bus not waiting ten seconds for our bus to pull in before leaving, it turned out to be a fortuitous glitch in today's schedule, since it gave us time to explore Elgin, a town half the size of Inverness, but with a lot of charm. My guidebook said there were some cathedral ruins in Elgin worth seeing, so we headed in that direction, not really sure what to expect. Like Eilean Donan Castle yesterday, what we found was an incredible, beautiful sight, and one that we had never even heard of until we saw it in the distance.
Although the grounds had just closed for the day, we walked around the perimeter and got an excellent view of the cathedral, which was burned down in 1390. The fact that we were the only people there made it seem even more surreal:

"Why is that one stone so white and legible?" I wondered, and after we read the inscription, we understood why:
This metalwork, spotted in front of a group of private residences just across from the ruins, makes creative use of its archway:
We walked around some of the residential neighbourhoods for a while--something about the grey stone with splashes of colour added in really appealed to us:
The town centre was quite nice too, although it was after 6:00 P.M., so all the shops were closed and the streets were empty:

This inn
was "the great lodging of Scots medieval kings" and Bonnie Prince Billy stayed there in 1746. As the night was getting distinctly cool, we decided to head into a coffee shop on the high street and nursed some hot tea for a while before again realising we should rush back to the bus depot. Those hours "stuck" in Elgin that we were grumpy about had turned into time that was very easy to fill and we couldn't believe we had been unhappy about missing our bus! We didn't even have time to climb the hill to the "tall thing," as we called it, visible just outside the bus station: We later found out that it's the Duke of Gordon monument, commemorating the fifth Duke of Gordon. When our bus showed up, the woman who got on before us gave the driver an earful about leaving early on his last pass through Elgin, and although we had felt the same way earlier, we happily got on our bus two hours late for the ride home, with an ocean view to boot!

When we arrived home, Anne had just put the potatoes on and we soon sat down to a lovely meal with a very pretty first course:
It wasn't until we cleared away those dishes that I realised what was on my placemat--our beloved Eilean Donan Castle! So strange to think we were there just yesterday:
One of my favourite meals followed: roast beef with veg and Yorkshire pudding . . . mmmmm Yorkshire pudding . . .
After dinner, Bob and I thought we'd finally get out and see a bit of Burghead, but I must admit that I didn't bring enough layers of clothing for Burghead's windy nights (with the wind coming from the north, right off the sea), and after about ten minutes of shivering, we arrived back home. What we saw was mighty atmospheric, with the moon peeking out onto stone houses which were already eerily lit by exceedingly yellow streetlights: Tomorrow morning we'd walk around Burghead, with the sun, rather than the northern wind, accompanying us on our walk!