Posted on by markusoreallyus · 1 Comment

A quiet day in Speyside

This will be a relatively short post. I was feeling unambitious today. It’s two weeks since I left Vancouver, and tomorrow will be two weeks since I arrived here. Maybe that has something to do with it. I’m having a great time in Scotland, as I did in Ireland, but I’m missing my wife, my friends and family, even my cat. About the only thing I’m not missing to some degree is the daily commute to and from the North Shore. I also miss the variety of foods on offer in Vancouver. Here, most places offer variations on a theme. Maybe that will change in Edinburgh.

That sounded complainy. It shouldn’t. As I said above, I’M HAVING A GREAT TIME here. There are just things I miss about home. And the main one is Adele.

One thing they have in abundance here, but which we don’t have at all back home, is malt whisky distilleries. I could spend a week just visiting distilleries in the Speyside region, and still not get to all of them. Given that I can’t do everything – I never did get to John o’ Groats, for example – I’ve had to be selective. To date, I’ve toured two distilleries: Glenmorangie, which I wrote about a couple of days ago, and earlier today, Glenfiddich, which was my father’s favourite.

The Glenmorangie tour was very good. The Glenfiddich tour was excellent.

They’ve been making Glenfiddich for about 120 years in Dufftown, and it’s still owned by the same family, and largely made the same way they began in 1887. Like most other distilleries, they no longer malt their own barley, but buy it from maltings. Unlike most other distilleries, they have their own cooperage on site, and do their own bottling. They now sell to 184 of the 196 countries on earth, which makes them the biggest of the single malt whiskies on the planet.

Biggest isn’t always best, and to be honest, although I like Glenfiddich, especially the 18 year old expression, I’m more of an Islay malt guy. I like a bit of peat. Ok, a lot of peat. And even among the Speyside (and other Highland) malts, it’s not my first choice. Not far down the list, but not the top, either. (Sadly, The Glenrothes doesn’t have tours, or even a visitor centre, at their distillery.) But as they say, there are two kinds of single malt whiskies: good ones, and better ones. Glenfiddich belongs in the better group, just not necessarily at the top.

I do think it’s cool, though, how many of their employees are lifers. They have one cooper, for example, who’s been with them for 50 years.

And their tour would be hard to beat, even by a whisky I prefer. (Laphroaig and Lagavulin, Bowmore and Bruichladdich, Ardbeg and Bunnahabhain, among the Islays I’ve sampled.) It was surprising how different their approach is to whisky than, say, Glenmorangie. Using wooden washbacks, for example. (Made from Douglas Fir from British Columbia – just saying.) Or the fact they age their whiskies in both sherry and bourbon barrels for the full 12 (or more) years, and then blend those together to make their end products, rather than using bourbon barrels exclusively for the first ten years, and then “finishing” their whisky in sherry (or port, or Sauternes) barrels.

As I went their on the bike, I couldn’t partake of the tasting at the end. Scotland’s drink-driving rules are even stricter than those in British Columbia. The legal limit is 0.02, which is as close to zero as you can get and still have a test. Careful what mouthwash you use here! They gave me a wee bottle of the 12 to take with me.

The tour lasts 90 minutes, and afterwards I didn’t really see the point of visiting another distillery today, so I rode off into Cairngorms National Park. I didn’t set a destination on the GPS, just followed the road that led into the park on the assumption that all roads lead to somewhere. This one certainly did. Not only did I pass the Glenlivet distillery on the way to the road, it led me (after close to an hour) past the Tomintoul distillery, too.

The beautiful little B road also led me through some of the most beautiful scenery I’ve ever ridden through. I stopped and took pictures along the way, although I haven’t transferred them over from the camera yet, so you’ll just have to take my word for it for now. It ran beside the Avon and Spey rivers (at different points, of course), through farmland filled with cattle and sheep, along steep hills and through green valleys.

And of course, like all roads, it did lead to somewhere, in this case to a junction with another, larger road, which ultimately brought me back to Elgin.

Tomorrow I’ll be off to Edinburgh, where I’ll meet up with my friend Gillian for a while. After that, I’ll be down to England and Wales. I can’t believe my time in Scotland is almost at an end! It’s been fantastic. The only thing that could make it better is having Adele here with me. Next time!

Posted on by markusoreallyus · 1 Comment

O Western Wind

O western wind, when wilt thou blow,
That the small rain down can rain?
Christ! That my love were in my arms,
And I in my bed again.

– Anon.

Well, the damned wind blew today. Did it ever! Damned near blew me right off the highway. The rain wasn’t small at that point, though, and if it had succeeded the last two lines would have been very unlikely ever to occur again.

I woke up with the sound of the wind outside my window, howling down Crown Street in Inverness, shaking the small trees, and making them bend, but not break. It had rained in the night, but wasn’t raining when I got up. I showered and dressed and made some breakfast. I washed the breakfast dishes, and brought the cases in from the bike to pack my things into them (everything fits like a charm now), and then waited and read the news online for a while, since checkout wasn’t for another couple of hours.

When it was time to go, I dropped the key with Malcolm and Maggie, and thanked them for being such great hosts. I had set the GPS to hit a couple of distilleries on the way to Elgin, which Google Maps said was only about 90 minutes away from Inverness. There were four hours between check out and check in times, and that left me with 2 1/2 hours to kill. I might as well use the time productively, I thought.

As I got the Tiger started and waved goodbye to Inverness, the rain began. Just a mizzle at first, then more and more insistent. The wind picked up, too, and by the time I was on the A9 heading south, it took effort and concentration to keep the bike upright and going in a more or less straight line. The rental helmet doesn’t have an anti-fog shield (note to self: always bring your own helmet!), and I had to keep it cracked open to let in enough air to keep it clear. Unfortunately that meant water running down the inside of the visor. There was just no winning.

After a half hour or so of this, I decided to pull at a roadside parking area and reset the GPS to come straight to Elgin. I’d find someplace to hang out until I could check in if the weather wasn’t any better there. I pulled a u-turn, as instructed, at the first safe opportunity, and then the GPS sent me down some B roads heading east. The GPS said the speed limit was 60 mph, but you’d have to be mad to do that on a nice day on these roads, and this wasn’t a particularly nice day. I kept to about half that. Gradually the wind died down to merely blustering, and the rain all but stopped altogether. Overhead the clouds raced furiously across the sky. No type of weather was going to last long, except windy.

I saw a sign for the Culloden Battlefield historical site, so I took the road in that direction. When I got there, I discovered the National Trust wanted £2 for parking and £11 to access the site. I’ll all for preserving heritage and history, but I’ll be damed if I’m paying £13 to hike through a muddy moor in the rain. In wet motorcycle gear. With that wind.

A taste of what I missed not stopping at Culloden.

I found a gas station and filled the bike up, and then found my way back to the gloriously deserted B roads, which it turns out are part of the Tourist Route of the Highlands. Who knew? I didn’t stop at any of the castles along the way. I like the architecture fine, but I could give a fuck about the asshats who used to occupy them, literally lording it over the local population. (I find the idea of aristocracy and royalty offensively undemocratic. You may disagree, and I’m not going to try to persuade anyone otherwise who wants to be subservient to those whose ancestors killed someone else’s ancestors and took their land. It’s just not my idea of how the world ought to be.)

Anyway, the GPS by hook or by crook will take you back to a highway eventually unless you’ve expressly told it not to, and even then it might not recognize A roads as highways, and just keep you off the motorways instead. So, after a while, I was on the A96, whether I liked it or not. I should have tried harder to defeat it. For a long stretch we crawled along at under 30 mph anyway. Our progress was slowed by trucks hauling enormous propeller blades for wind generators, which we eventually passed when they took up the entirety of the left lane during the brief mile or so that we had a passing lane. (Note to North Americans: the right lane is the passing lane here.)

The wind began to pick back up again when I was about 10 miles from Elgin, although still not at the speeds it had been earlier. Storm Hector, as I’ve since heard it’s called, followed me eastward.

When I got to town, I found my hotel quite easily, and they were kind enough to let me check in early. The storm is supposed to blow over this evening. I’ve been out walking around, and the wind is still quite blowy, but it hasn’t rained in a couple of hours.

Elgin is a nice enough town. Almost like a miniature of Inverness, with a lot of old stone buildings and narrow streets. The lanes here are for walking only, or maybe you can cycle down them; they are far too narrow, and their widths too varied, to risk a car in them. There are a lot of shops in the centre of town, and a few pubs. I plan to eat at one of them tonight.

Tomorrow, weather permitting, I’ll head out to the Glenfiddich and Macallan distilleries, and explore The Cairngorms a bit, too. Maybe I’ll even take some pictures, something I’ve done much less of than I’d planned. If the weather is like today, though, I’ll find places to hang out and read. David has inspired me to take another crack at Ulysses. I can think of far worse ways to spend a day.