April 10th - From Huntly to Inverness

Huntly Castle


Around 1180 built as a wooden castle on a mound, Huntly castle was only rebuilt in stone 230 years later. After having been destroyed and rebuilt several times, it was finally extended and renovated to become a more comfortable place in the 17th century. The castle is still in good shape and impressive.





Balvenie Castle


This castle is dating back to the early middle ages and has been extended over the years with the main entrance being built in the 16th century. A massive ditch surrounds the castle to improve its position as a fortification.






Elgin Cathedral


We only stopped in Elgin to visit the famous cathedral. The view is quite impressive when you walk through the ruinous remains, but even more from the balcony or the towers.







Spynie Palace


Spynie Palace was the first palace on our trip not being built for a king or knight, but for a bishop. The main tower or David's tower which is the most prominent remaining building was built in the beginning of the 16th century.






The Clava Cairns


Close to Inverness is this prehistoric burial ground. The north and south cairn are built as a passage grave with an entrance into a chamber. Only one grave provides no way in and no-one seems to know its purpose.





Inverness


Exhausted and tired, we finally arrived in Inverness. It was hard enough to find a parking lot and the hostel. We withdrew until bedtime to view the city, park our car on a free-parking spot and to visit the nearby cemetary.




We walked in, only slightly shocked (even more as we had spent the night before in such a lovely B&B), but when we checked into our room... It is hard to describe what we saw. This 8 bed dorm was pre-occupied by 4 permanent residents of which one was an elderly man, working for a dolphin station and living out of his million plastic bags. We also met a Bulgarian cleaner who could barely speak English and just asked us to please leave the window open (which seemed to the time of check-in quite strange as it was cold outside and we would be sleeping directly under the window). However, later when returning to our bed, we had to find out that the old man was extremly smelly and the South-African who only showed up in the middle of the night was covered in smoke and alcohol odor. The last of the four permanent residents decided to chat for almost an hour with the after 1am returning South-African, so that it was quite hard to sleep at all. The couple who checked in the same room seemed to tolerate their and our fate quite well. The other morning, however, we had to find out that there was only one functioning toilet remaining for more than 20 people on the floor... We were only too happy to leave then.