Pitlochry and the Blair Athol Distillery ISC Trip 2-9-08

Hey Everyone!

Just a letter about our trip to Pitlochry and the Blair Athol Distillery.

Ray and I got up really early in the hopes that we could be happily motivated to go on the trip. It worked! We were up, showered, packed and ready to head out on our Saturday adventure to Pitlochry and the Blair Athol Whiskey Distillery. We were looking forward to a day for just the two of us away from the stresses of school, paper writing, and job hunting. The day was slightly overcast, but relatively warm. It is obvious Spring is upon us already. We waited for the 35 bus, hopped on and off we went to the University.

Our first stop was at Gregg’s for a quick morning bite to build our energy for the day. Sadly, they didn’t have what we wanted, but we settled on a cheese and onion pastie. They are so delicious! As we walked down the Quarter-Mile into the Meadows park, we ate our pasties, which flaked EVERYWHERE, and talked about our expectations for the day. We were the second people to arrive at the International Student Café to wait for the bus. We thought it was just going to be us, but as we waited, we realized Maria was walking towards us. Now, remember, Ray isn’t a real fan of Maria and would prefer not to be around her. She grates on my nerves as well, but I am more willing to put up with it because sometimes she can be quite fun. I think the main reason she rubs Ray the wrong way is because she is so rude to him. She completely ignores him and only looks at and talks to me. She wasn’t with anyone either, which meant she intended to tag along with us. My heart fell alittle.

Then it was time to get on the bus and Ray and I grabbed the front seats. Maria sat behind us. Everyone was commenting on how different the bus was (three seats on the one side and two on the other). This became a problem later on, because even three skinny people were having trouble getting comfortable in their seats. Poor Ray road for two hours with a seatbelt enema. The buckle just wouldn’t push down. What really bugged us, though, was that we were the first people on the bus so that we could pick the seats we wanted most. Once the bus had everyone on it, one of the ISC volunteers said “would you mind moving so the volunteers can sit here?” And I looked her straight in the eye and said “No, but the girls across from us might let you sit with them.” It was the three-seater and there was one seat open. I already knew the other volunteer was going to sit in his own seat down in front of us where the microphone was. She looked very peeved, but if she wanted the front seats, she should have saved them. I also found out that they canceled a second bus because not enough people signed up for the trip, which meant they had to call a bunch of people and tell them their tickets were revoked! And yet we had at least 8 single seats available on the bus. Go figure.

As I said, the drive was 2 hours long, which is much longer than intended because of road construction. But we did eventually make it to Pitlochry and the Blair Athol Distillery. The bus dropped us off at the Distllery and we went into the waiting area and were ten lead off in two groups of 26ish for a tour. Our tour guide was named Jeff and, in a picture taken at the end of the tour, looked a bit like Uncle Greg! Haha! Ray got to shine with all of his knowledge about liquor and how it is made. We got to see how they make it and the processes, which was really neat! Then we got to sample the single malt whiskey, which you really can feel run from your mouth down to your tummy. It wasn’t bad. Ray talked a little more with the tour guide about what other distilleries are owned by the same company and then sampled two more whiskeys that were out on the table. Then we went downstairs to the shop and Ray one bottle of the Blair Athol single malt whiskey, which was on sale plus our 3lb off voucher and then I got a jar of whiskey whole-grain mustard. Whole grain mustard, by the way (btw) is really delicious and worth buying. Then I got a couple postcards and a larger picture of the whiskey making process to remember everything. Maria was still tagging along and kept rambling about silly stuff. Saying this really cheap Whiskey is so much better because it is cheaper. Ray was very irritated by this, because it’s a naive thing to say and she was only saying it because she doesn’t really appreciate how these things are made. She tries to act like she knows, which is probably why she feels so intimidated about Ray because he actually knows about the things she talks about and would easily put an end to any ruse she was pulling.

But Ray extracted himself from the store for a quick pipe smoke in the designated area and Maria stood in line with me telling me over and over again about how much she liked Whiskey-Mustard and how whiskey is really expensive here (if its not from this distillery). It was a bit like a broken record, but I’ve learned to tune a lot of it out. And once we finally paid, we headed off into the town of Pitlochry.

Our first stop was the Holy Trinity Churchyard. The church itself was not open. So we took some pictures of the neat entryway and some of the gravestones. There were also these neat metal statues all over the city. They are supposed to be planters, but I’ll get to that later on. So after taking our pictures and talking about neat looking gravestones, the three of us headed on towards Atholl Palace and Hotel. While we stood taking a few pictures of the house leading up to the palace gardens, we girl approached us and asked us about Blair Castle. Apparently Blair Castle is 8 miles away and too hard to get to, which was disappointing, but we might as well see the Atholl Palace and Museum. The girl introduced herself as Isha from Miami. She reminded me of a girl named Molly who I went to WLC with. Isha had only arrived in Edinburgh on January 2 and would be leaving in May. I immediately felt bad for her, because the trips this semester that the ISC are offering are really disappointing. Instead they put their focus on events more than exploring Scotland! They didn’t even have a Stirling trip.

As Ray and I talked to Isha about different opportunities around Edinburgh and other travel offers, Maria kept interrupting and talking about how stupid tour companies were and how much she enjoyed just going off on her own. That’s nice, but when you find a tour company (Wild-in-Scotland) that essentially does that for you AND shares the history of places with you. . . you can’t really beat that. But Isha seemed interested in what Ray and I had to say and that was great.

According to Maria, the Palace and Museum were not open. She was the first to venture up the large stairway leading to the Palace. When I got up there it looked perfectly open to me, but since no one else had gone to the top with me, I didn’t even bother looking into it. Maria was just not impressed because it was a real castle or Palace (like Falkland Palace). It was too modern for her and she doesn’t like that. I just don’t like how she rejects anything about Scotland that isn’t more than 200 years old! There is more to Scotland than just old castles and Highland massacres.

I snapped off some pictures and we walked back down the hill and that is when Maria started to say we should hike up to Black Castle. Ray and I tentatively agreed, because we wanted to explore the town and some of the other things Pitlochry had to offer. As we walked into town, Maria felt it would be a good idea to stop at the Information Center to ask how to get to Black Castle. It is here that we learned the best path was to go back the way we came and then go up. When I learned we had to backtrack, I was not pleased. On top of that, Maria was estimating it would only take 20 minutes to get there. Whenever Maria estimates walking time, she is estimating it for herself and herself alone. I knew she wouldn’t factor in the time it would take to hike up steep inclines, etc. I told her I didn’t feel comfortable going, because I have a high anxiety over being late for the bus. I apologized and said if we had more time than just a couple hours I’d go, but not this time. Isha went with Maria and Ray and I walked into town.

Town was very populated with vacationers. We walked around alittle and I kept spying this tower with a clock on it and I was determined to find out what it was. So Ray and I hiked up a hill and made it to what is known as the Pitlochry Church of Scotland and Tryst. We settled down on the front stoop of the church, looking out over Pitlochry and the surroundings mountains and ate our lunch. The sky had some dark clouds looming and I was concerned it would rain, but it stayed quite dry.

After walking around the church and seeing some beautifully kept lawns, as well as lovely Victorian Architecture, we made our way back down to the main road through Pitlochry and window-shopped. I made a few stops in an attempt to find a Pitlochry Pin, but to no avail. We even though we had found another nice tea shop, but we were wrong. It was a place where you could get your afternoon tea, but it was accompanied by finger sandwiches, cakes, etc. We didn’t want all that. Plus everything was so extremely expensive. Like we had been told, it is a very expensive town because of all the tourism.

We didn’t want the church to be the only thing we saw, so we took a walk through the scenic woods behind our bus parking lot. I really had to go to the bathroom, so we stopped in the only public toilets available where I had to pay 30pence (60 cents American) to use a toilet!!! I made sure I took my time and really made sure my bathroom experience was worth 30p!!! HAHA! As I walked out, the guard had let a mom and two kids in for free because she claimed to have let her wallet on the bus! How unfair!

I related this story to Ray and he was flabbergasted. As we laughed about the most expensive bathroom experience I’d ever had, we walked through the woods and found ourselves among some garden sculptures. We sad down at a metal picnic table and ruminated on how poorly planned this trip was. Pitlochry boasts its plantlife and gardens, but here we are, visiting in the winter when nothing is alive. If we had come only a few months later, we would have been surrounded by the beauty of blossoms and wonderful aromatic smells. You would tell the place was built for flowers, because there were pavilions everywhere and public planters that were empty. Later on, we saw a metal man at the train station that said “Welcome to Pitlochry in Bloom!”

Having finished smoking his pipe and complaining about the poor timing of the ISC, we decided to walk down to the Tummel hydro-electric Dam. On one side was Loch Faskally and on the over side was the River Tummel. The Loch was absolutely placid and quite, but once you look to the left, the waters are rough like Niagara Falls and loud! It was the strangest thing and quite beautiful. We also got to see the Salmon ladder, but it wasn’t really the time of year.

Once done with that, we figured we’d walk back up to the bus, because it was just about that time again. We had to cross over the railroad tracks and walk quite a ways around just to get to our bus. Once there, we took one of the three-seaters so that we could spread out and be comfortable. When the volunteer who asked us to move last time got on and asked us for our ticket numbers, I said “we saved you a seat on the other side for the ride home.” She completely ignored us. We don’t really like the people from the ISC and when you read about the Edinburgh Treasure Hunt I did, you’ll understand a little more why.

Maria and Isha were almost late and we found out later was Isha that the Black Castle were just ruins and Maria was a real slave-driver up the steep incline. Isha, like myself, struggles with steep inclines because of our feet. I have a feeling I have some stress fractures that have never really healed properly because of all the walking I do. But I was glad I didn’t go to just the ruins after I saw the pictures. Plus that was all they really had time to do.

No one contested our seats on the way home, so Ray and I had an enjoyable time riding with room for two hours. I listened to an audiobook and Ray drooled on his shirt! When we got home, Ray and I stood outside the ISC with Isha just talking. She’s here till May and so we said we’d try to get together with her if we head out anywhere before then. Maybe if we go to anywhere in Edinburgh or whatever. But she was really nice. We traded our addresses and everything. We met her the same way I met several other people on trips before Ray got here. I’d just walk up to people and ask to join their group. It’s the best way to go.

And that was our day in Pitlochry. It was a nice little day out and we hope to go back when it’s more in bloom so that we can enjoy the beauty of the place instead of just the sites. On the flier that is supposed to inform us about they area, they didn’t even include half of the neat stuff we could have seen. Here’s a link to the site that lists some of the neat historical places to go in the town: http://www.explore-highland-perthshire.com/pitlochry/pitlochry-historic-trail.htm

We aren’t going to Carbisdale Castle next weekend, because it was just too pricey for one night in a castle. So our next trip will probably be to somewhere that is a mystery, because it is a Mystery Trip. Haha! It better be somewhere good, because the trips this semester are pretty much everything they did last semester. Pitlochry was canceled last semester because those who got tickets for the Highland Trip were going there. Now that they’re imposing new lame rules at the ISC, next weekend will be the first time I am sneaking him on the trip under a false student ID number, lent to me by a friend through Film Studies. Carlos Antona. That’s Ray’s dad’s name (Carlos Bonilla). Just thought it was funny.

So that’s it from Scotland. I’m still trying to get all those other letters out, but I felt compelled to write this immediately!!! So here it is. Enjoy and I hope everyone is doing well.

http://s9.photobucket.com/albums/a74/reelmonkey/Scotland/2008/February/Pitlochry/?albumview=slideshow

Much love and kisses,
Sarah & Ray