Blair Castle, Atholl Estates, and Pitlochry

     I've been told that the Scottish village of Pitlochry is the gateway to The Highlands.  Many towns make this claim, but it is certainly the entrance to the Cainsgorms National Park which felt like The Highlands to us!

           Snow on the mountains = Highlands

     Blair Castle has been transformed through the ages, but it looks like a fairy tale castle.  This is the entrance gate.

     Since most of the interior of the castle is restored rather than original, we chose to spend most of our time in the castle gardens (Atholl Estates) searching for some of the tallest trees in all of Britain.  Diana's Grove has some of the country's finest and tallest trees, including some Sequioa trees from the Californian Redwoods

The original tower was built in 1269.  

St. Bride's Kirk

Highland Cows (Aka Scottish Longhorns)

  We also walked to a castle ruins, a waterfall, had a nice (early) Mother's Day dinner at The Fern Cottage (complete with homemade butterscotch cheesecake) and explored the salmon ladder.

Menacing clouds did result in a few hail showers, but they were light and short lived.

We followed this path which included several right-of-ways.  Crossing a farmer's land in the UK is permitted and expected.  It is not "private property" and there are no "No Trespassing" signs.  

This led us to Caisteal Dubh (The Black Castle).  It really was a castle ruins!

There was not much left of it at all!

One interesting thing about this, though, that in its day, this was built on an artificial island (they must have dammed up the nearby mountain stream and flooded the field).

Black Spout Waterfall

This is after walking 9 miles.  We walked over 11 miles on this day.

Good thing that we are used to walking each day!  

We were all enjoying our adventure and exploration and none of us realized how far we had gone.

Fern Cottage for an early Mother's Day dinner

Suspension bridge over River Tummel

This is close to the salmon ladder.

Did not see any salmon jumping, though there were several fishermen out in the river.

Just beautiful!

You can see the salmon ladder on the right side of the photo.

This is where salmon swim upstream.