Blair Castle and Glenalmond

After a quick look at Grantown on Spey, we headed south on the A86 and A9 through some steady rain showers, to Blair Castle where - after being amazed by the number of scouts of both sexes, and all ages, all sizes and all nationalities, who were staying in the castle parkland for a jamboree - we spent several hours exploring the very large number of rooms open to the public and wandering through the walled gardens. We lunched there too and were tempted into buying some of their whisky liqueur.

We spent a short time at the House of Bruar where there was a large range of tempting things to buy ranging from food and wine to cashmere and tweed. After finally managing to find a petrol station at Pitlochry (we were getting quite nervous by then), we diverted briefly into Dunkeld, which is a most attractive little town which we would like to visit again.

We arrived at our next B&B, Finlaggan House, in the early evening. It appeared to be in the middle of nowhere but was quite close to Glenalmond College, a co-educational public school. The modern house was very comfortable and attractively presented and, apart from the warm welcome from Tony and Jane, our hosts, we were delighted to encounter Bob and Skye, their two black retrievers and one of their two cats (who made himself comfortable on our bed – we didn’t tell Tony and Jane!).

Having discovered that Jane was formerly chef in their own private hotel and had been awarded 2 AA rosettes we had arranged to have a private dinner there. We had a superb looking, and tasting, meal of an Asian style prawn and noodle starter, followed by stuffed Guinea Fowl and vegetables, and finishing with a delightfully light chocolate cheese cake. This was definitely the star meal of our Scottish tour.