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Driving around Aboyne

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Wednesday 07 September, driving around Aboyne

We have slept like roses, a lot better than on the boat, and we are just getting going slowly. Fortunately, we have a nice house although it is very red inside. We have enough seats for the two of us anyway. What I really like is the wood, laths on the walls and also most of the furniture is made of wood. And before us we have a view of a garden with a pond, without houses in front of it, those stand next to us.

Outside we have a deck terrace with wooden chairs which I find less comfortable but Teije finds it fine, and he prefers to sit outside as much as possible.
Only at noon we step into the car, first to find a petrol station with lpg. And that is not so easy. On the internet we had looked up a few addresses and wrote them down but they no longer exist. Then we just drive around in the neighborhood, a visit to Aboyne and ..., but actually we have no goal at all. Ah, it's nice weather, the scenery is beautiful so what does it matter.

Aboyne is a spacious village along the river Dee and not at all so old, for Scottish terms then. Only when a bridge over the Dee was built (1828) did the village begin to grow. The bridge flushed a year later by flooding but a new one was built and 30 years later there was also a train station. But it seems that the growth really took place when a golf club was opened in 1883 after which all kinds of hotels were built here.

On the way we of course encounter enough nice buildings such as gatelodges or gatekeeper houses that often stand on the edge of an estate. In Glen Tanar we drive past a gatelodge onto a dead-end road and arrive at the Glen Tanar Estate where you can rent houses and do all sorts of activities such as horseback riding, fishing, hunting and even safaris as they call guided excursions through the mountains here.

We drive to the end and park the car to go for a walk. You can walk through the whole glen or valley and then climb Mount Keen. When climbing mountains in Scotland you should think more about brisk walks because the slopes are not as steep as for example in the Alps. Mount Keen is the most easterly Munro and Munro climbing is a true sport in Scotland. A Munro is a mountain that is higher than 3000 feet (914.4 meters) and Mount Keen is 939 meters high. But for us a walk of half an hour is more than enough.

Now we need something to eat. But unfortunately, one restaurant is bankrupt, the other opens in more than an hour. Then I chose a very nice spot at the Falls of Feugh. No, sorry, we are just 3 minutes closed. That is at 4 o'clock and the next restaurant will not open until 5 o'clock.
Well, we are now 20 km from Aberdeen and according to a card that a petrol station holder has given us this morning, there must be autogas somewhere around. But in the meantime it is almost 5 o'clock and you should never drive into a city at rush hour. At one gas station they have never heard of LPG (you are kidding me, something else than gas or diesel, where they mean regular petrol with the English word gas, although in Dutch we use the word gas for lpg) and at the other they offer us camping gas. Previously we always had an LPG guide with us, but in recent years we have never had problems finding lpg so the guide is still somewhere at home.

In the meantime we end up from one queue for a roundabout into the next file. But in the end we find LPG and we can fill up the tank.
Now we only have to drive 60 kilometers home, on narrow roads, which takes us one and a half hour. In the local supermarket we buy some soup, so we still have a hot meal.
All in all not quite the day as we had hoped for but oh well, it is holiday, we are not in a rush.

Driving around Aboyne

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Wednesday 07 September, driving around Aboyne