Seen Along the A9: from Perth to Inverness

Screenshot of Google Maps: A9 from Perth to Inverness

When we went on holiday last week, we drove through a section of Scotland from Perth to Inverness. The road for this whole journey is the A9, a motorway with 2 lanes going each way.  As you can see from the map above, there are a few towns along the way, and a lot more small villages and open space.  As we drove, I made notes in my phone about what we were passing.

•  A sign advertising the Birnam Highland Games
• A House of Bruar mail-order warehouse. Unlike the Amazon.uk warehouse between Dundee and Edinburgh, this one looked like an oversize barn. Turns out House of Bruar is a company selling clothing and food "Scotland's Most Prestigious, Independent Store" according to the website.
• The Allium Garden Centre
• The Nae Limits Outdoor Centre
• Lots of Hills (maybe even could call them mountains)
• Trees
• Sheep
• More sheep - close sheep, and far sheep (Scotland wealth of animals grazing by the roadside demands precision: as we drive, Audrey and I comment, "Close sheep, Audrey's side!" "Far cows, Claire's side!")
• A sign advertising the Blair Castle Horse Show in late August
• A car shrine (an actual car) with a sign "Mrs, Ingram (?) murdered by (something/someone I couldn't read)
• More House of Bruar signage, located in the actual town of Bruar this time
• Stag Leaping signs (according to Google, they are actually "Caution Deer" signs. Paul and I were joking that they must have little signs in the woods "Caution, driving humans, next 3 miles. Watch for traffic." Surely Gary Larson has been to Scotland.)
• Rivers and Lochs
• Falling Rocks Next 7 Miles sign (or that was my interpretation)
• Sheep grazing about 10 feet from the road ("close sheep!")
• Two trains
• Two dead deer by the roadside
• A major sheep farm with hundreds of sheep grazing between the road and the train tracks 
• A small sign proclaiming "Nude Farm" (?)
• A TV repair shop called Telly on the Blink

Just to give you an idea of the trip, at one point Audrey, Claire and I were playing "I Spy."  We had to stop after a few rounds, first, because Claire, at not-quite-three, couldn't really play, but second, because we were running out of things to Spy.  You can only do "I spy with my little eye something that is Green" so many times (Tree? Bush? Grass? Hill? Moss?) Scotland, land of Green.

Caution Deer Sign

10 Things I Learned on Holiday in Scotland

1. 75 degrees is very hot in Edinburgh.
It's amazing how hot mid-70's feels when your baseline has adjusted to 50 and windy. Our Dundonian cab driver described the weather while we were away as "a scorcher" (no lie), probably meaning in the 70's.   

Audrey atop the Nelson Monument

Heat requires ice cream. Real Italian ice cream.

 2. Inverness is lovely, and has a beautiful park and playground for kids (Whin Park)

Walking along the River Ness

3. Sometimes the city decides to open the bridge across the Caldonian Canal right by your hotel for 2 hours, without any warning, at 8 pm.
Fortunately, there is a footbridge. Unfortunately, it is a kilometer away, "just around the bend."
 

Our hotel is JUST across that canal

4. Urquhart Castle by Loch Ness is a ruin because its owner, loyal to William & Mary, blew it up himself on the way out the door rather than wait to be sacked by the Jacobites who were not loyal to the English crown.

Urquhart Castle with Loch Ness behind

 5. Super Bear was born to be a medieval knight. 

6. Despite kids books promising that Nessie will come by the say hello, she actually is scared away by all the tour boats. This does not stop your 6-year-old from looking for tell-tale bubbles.

7. The scenery driving up to the rural highlands in Gairloch is beautiful, and the roads are very narrow and windy.

8.  Glamping is not so bad, except for the occasional swarms of midges (imagine a cross between a gnat and a mosquito - swarm-y and bite-y)

Our wigwam

View across campground to sea

9. Beaches are still great, even if it's too cold to swim for more than a few minutes

Lots of stones on the beach = sculpture!

Low tide

10. If your car breaks down in the rural highlands, you're really glad you're covered by RAC (similar to American Automobile Association) for a tow all the way back to Dundee

Our trip from Gairloch to Inverness, our blue car on the back