Ireland day 0759. Friday 27 October 2023- Scotland 2 *

Ireland day 0759. Friday 27 October 2023- Scotland 2

Today’s summary	Drove over to Fyvie to look at the National Trust for Scotland stately home, formerly owned by the Forbes-Leith family. Interesting if somewhat embellished house tour. Wonderful evening by the fire as the rain poured down outside
Today’s weather	Heavily overcast and rainy all day. Moderate easterly wind. Appx 7c

Today’s overview location (The blue mark shows the location of our route)		Close-up location (The blue line shows where we walked) (Click button below to download GPX of today’s walk as recorded, or see interactive map at bottom with elevations corrected): Fyvie castle

Commentary

(Summary blog only. Last full blog was Day 0368).

It has rained pretty much constantly since e arrived in Scotland yesterday and we are loving it. We’re staying with friends high up in the Cairngorms and its cold wet and windy outside. So a lot of time is being spent eating too much and drinking too much, sitting by the fire and looking at the red squirrels outside.

But despite the manifold attractions of lethargy, we did manage to drag ourselves away from the home comforts to drive an hour or so to visit Fyvie castle, over in north east Aberdeenshire. We hadn’t been before and it was a stunning place, continually inhabited since the 1200’s and embellished over the centuries. The last owners were the Forbes Leith family, descendants of a Scottish-American steel magnate. They sold it to the National Trust for Scotland in lieu of inheritance tax in 1984.

We went on an interesting if somewhat embellished and offbeat house tour, and then enjoyed soup and a bacon roll – followed by an empire biscuit (my favourite!) in the excellent café. All thoroughly enjoyable and friendly.

The only disadvantage was that the riverside was actually the underwater river walk, as it was submerged after all the recent rain. So we abandoned that and had a quick look round the walled fruit garden before calling it a day and returning to the cottage. Another evening by the fire beckons and that’s just fine by me,

Today’s photos (click to enlarge)


Coat of arms above the entranceway	Massive rooms in the castle. It really was quite impressive

Extravagant portraiture in abundance	The staircase is 3m / 10ft wide and one of the previous Lords apparently rode his horse up it for a challenge

Evening by the fire. Perfect	Empire biscuit for lunch. Also perfect

Waterford crystal chandelier with 1100 parts