Dornoch, Golspie and nice Scottish sceneries

We sleep quite late and linger long in the hotel, talking to Iain and Cathy. When we drive away we first go to Inverness and then to the north. We have been in this area before, but there are still many roads to explore. We have our old map, which is hold together by tape, with us; on it we have marked all the roads we have been onto, until now.

Our first stop is in Dornoch, a small village which seems to be well known for it's golf course, the 11th in the world. The village was founded is the 11th century and there are still many old, colourful houses and next to the castle even an old-fashioned jail (to the right).

The last witch in Scotland was burned alive at Dornoch (1722), in a cauldron with boiling tar. A small stone in the back garden of someone, near the nice beach and the golf course, commemorates this atrocity.

The castle (here on the background, originally a fortified bishop's palace) and the cathedral dominate the friendly village, which seems a bit sleepy today.

We drive on towards Loch Fleet where we can see seals sunbathing on a sandbank. One can see them often here when the tide is low, but our camera's are not good enough to get a better look of them. Many people park here and watch them through binoculars.

For a while we search for Skilbo castle, the one where Madonna held her marriage, but we can't find it; it lies probably somewhere hidden in the woods. But we see enough other nice houses and streets, like here in Golspie.

Near Golspie we visit Dunrobin Castle, once home of the family Sutherland. It has 189 rooms and looks like it belongs in some fairy tale. The family once was the biggest landowner of Europe and notorious for the many cruelties it committed against its tenants.

The romance of castles is often overshadowed by the gruesome deeds which were committed in and from the castles. The Sutherlands chased away 15,000 people from their lands, often with violence, to use the land for the more profitable sheep breeding. But the tenants lost their land and therefore their means of income.

From Dunrobin we now drive inland to see some more typical Scottish nature. The views are beautiful and often we stop to take a picture. The land becomes hilly and in the distance we can already see the mountains.

The roads are narrow but there is not much traffic. Now and then we see a house in the distance or, like on the picture to the right, a digging machine, lost in the scenery. We enjoy the quietness of the landscape, this is really a nice area to drive through.

Then we are eye to eye with a few Scottish Highlanders, a couple of fat bulls and a nice albino. They are very curious and we can make a few nice close-up pictures.