I have very little planned at my current stop, Aviemore. I'm only here because it's a great location in the Cairngorms national park, and I was hoping to get some great views. As such I didn't rush to get here today, and I took the time to visit Cawdor castle and a couple more distilleries.
All that I knew about the name Cawdor before was its mention in Macbeth. To be honest I still don't know a lot about it. The castle is very pretty from the outside - travel guides love to use "Fairy Tale" when describing castles like this. The interior, however, is best described by that other cliche "labyrinthine". The castle has been in constant use since it was built, and constant renovation and reconstruction has given it an unusual floorplan. The self guided tour leads one through a bewildering procession of bedrooms, kitchens, drawing rooms and lounge rooms until you have no idea which way you're facing. And all the descriptions focussed pretty strongly on the particular features of the rooms, rather than the history of the castle or the family, so the only thing I know about them is that the founder chose the location by letting a donkey laden with gold wander around the countryside for a day and building the castle where it stopped to rest. Very thorough surveying method to be sure.
After taking a number of wrong streets that led me down seemingly hopeless, narrow roads I came to the Cragganmore, then Cardhu distilleries. Now, this isn't as serious a challenge as my Pub challenge, but at Oban I received a little "diary" of 13 "classic malt" whisky distilleries where, if I visit them, I receive a stamp. So I'm seeing how many stamps I can get. Somehow I don't think I'll beat my pub challenge number...
Yeah, still no photos. I'll try to upload some tomorrow in Aberdeen. Right now I'm off to an embarassing looking "Australian" pub down the road.
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