St Andrews Golf Course, Kellie Castle and back to Edinburgh

Rain was forecast for the next day but we decided Keith could not return to New Zealand without having been to St Andrews - he plays golf, of course. Vanessa drove the route suggested by Tony and we drove up the M90 and then skirted Perth onto the A90 and followed the southern edges of Dundee to cross the 2225m Tay Road Bridge to head south to St Andrews. The rain did not seem to dampen Keith’s enthusiasm for watching those going out to play on The Old Course and he also picked up one or two souvenirs in the golfing shops, of which there were a good few! We had a coffee in the City and a look around, and decided it looked a pleasant place to live.

We moved on to 14th century Kellie Castle (NTS) – with the rain fairly persistent by then – and were pleased to find yet another good café, and a fascinating place to look around with very knowledgeable room guides. The recent tenant family (the Lorimers) had included a university professor and his sons, one of whom designed furniture (some of it in the castle) and another a sculptor of note. We braved the rain for a walk around the walled garden.  This was probably the most colourful and interesting of the gardens we had visited, helped by the backdrop of the castle buildings. Of particular interest were the gooseberry bushes being grown vertically up canes; something which might be worth trying ourselves.

Naturally enough we met a fair amount of traffic on the journey back into Edinburgh’s environs via the Forth road bridge to spend the night at the Marriott Airport Hotel. We were staying there as Keith and Wendy had an early start the next day for their departure to Brussels. The hotel was efficient and comfortable enough and Vanessa managed her third swim of the holiday before it was time for dinner, which we took in the hotel (to avoid the rain). It was of better quality than one might have expected of a hotel chain and we were pleased to find a NZ white wine, Vidal (from a producer of the same name), a Sauvignon Blanc from Hawke’s Bay, which none of us had previously tried and which we all liked.