So we have finally done the right ‘lack of rain dance’ to stop it raining, alternatively the Scottish weather gods are finally smiling on us as we had distinct bits of blue sky today. For our last day in Inverness we stayed relatively local, first stop Ballindalloch Castle, the only continuously inhabited castle in Scotland, 23 generations have lived there. We parked the car (by the Doo’cot – Scottish for dove cote!) we then started walking to the house, only to see a sign for the ‘Trains’ but this was a misleading as this is a model railway, not at all what I was expecting. So we walked round to the front of entrance which is possibly a little understated considering some we have seen but the rock garden by the front of the house was quite stunning with azaleas and a number of other plants in bloom but not recognisable to Chris and I – someone should have told the gardener to leave the garden centre labels by the plants, how else is he going to remember what they are?! Anyway, we entered the house / castle which is a self guided tour and explored all of the rooms that are open to the public. My favourite was the library but then again it normally is, this one is on the 1st floor in a corner room so you have light from 2 windows and a massive fireplace to make it cozy.
They were obviously friends of the royal family as a number of photos of them are scattered around, quite a few of them were actually signed Christmas cards as I think I have seen them in the papers, other photos were of various members of the royal family opening things in the area. We then climbed the spiral staircase to the children’s nursery observing that it is as far away from the main living areas as possible, I didn’t see the problem with this but Chris felt it was a little strange.
Once we had finished walking round the house we were going to take a walk round the garden but it is actually a massive estate not a garden so we gave up as it was trying to rain so it was back to the car and onto our next stop Spynie Palace. Although this a ruin it is actually still possible to make out a number of the rooms we climbed David’s tower which shows how the rooms were laid out, interestingly the fireplaces don’t follow the same line on each floor which seems to have caused a lot of work for the builders but they didn’t seem to mind! The views from the top were great you could see the loch that had once been alongside the palace but has silted up over the years and is now quite a long way away. This palace was actually the residence of the bishops of Elgin, it remained in use for quite some time and at once stage one of the bishops actually issued a diktat stating that ‘they could sac Elgin Cathedral but they must not touch Spynie Palace’. We were the only visitors so we had the run of the place which was really nice. Once we had finished looking round, we set off for Elgin Cathedral which is another ruin but again quite easy to work out what went where, although it was ruined around 1700 there seem to have been burials held there up to 1930. The graves are really interesting as they have a lot of information on them, such as parents name, spouse, children, jobs as well as things like when they were promoted. From there we set off back to the cottage to have something to eat, pack and get ready for going to Peebles tomorrow.
