Tim wakes at 6, Olga at 7, Cleo at 8, and Zeno at 9. Tim made 2 liter tea, Olga never has patience to prepare tea on the campsite, so having a cup of hot tea is special for us. Olga prepares breakfast, Cleo does the dishes. It’s almost sunny. We enjoy the warmer air and we leave at 9:30 .
We visit the summer residence of King Charles today: Balmoral Castle. We arrive at 10 sharp and are one of the first to enter the estate. It’s a ten minute walk to the castle. Normally it’s closed in August, but apperantly King Charles is somewhere else.
We can only visit the ballroom, where there’s a nice picture exhibition of Queen Elizabeth. All other parts of the castle are closed. There is a restaurant and a small exhibition of the western capercaillie, a big black grouse. We realise the grouse we saw yesterday must have been the female capercaillie.
We explore the garden, a labyrinth by King Charles and the outside of the castle before we head back to our car. We could have explored more trials, but Tim’s achilles is getting worse so we have to decide carefully about the steps we take.
It’s a stunning drive passing castles, purple heather, the river Dee and the mountains to Mar Lodge estate. We take some pictures of Braemar Castle and try to find the free parking in Braemar to explore the town. The signs leads us further and further until we’re out of town. We’ve seen all we have to see of Braemar, a lovely village but mostly tourist shops, so we continue on.
Tim reads out two warning signs, one for red squirrels, the other for deer. Before he can finish his sentence, a deer jumps onto the road, and back in the forest before we can take a picture. Some heather is burned, so sad that the wild fires even reached Scotland.
We do a short hike along the banks of Quoich Water. It’s very ideallic, passing the picnic cottage of Queen Victoria, and jumping from stone to stone. Of course Zeno jumps a few time “accidentally” in the river, but he does not mind continue jumping in wet shoes. Tim has his tripod with him to take some long exposure shots.
Cleo and Tim prefer reading a book in the car and skip the second hike through the wetland and heather mountains, seeing river Dee and its water falls from a higher distance. People are even swimming, it’s sunny today and even a nice 18 degrees. But we did not bring our swimming suits, so we take the scenic drive back to our campsite instead. There are many warning signs to drive carefully because of the red squirrel. We saw one in the park in Barmoral, but none in the forest today.
It’s past 16.00 when we arrive at Corgarff Castle, it was closed when we passed this morning and now again. So we’ll just have to take a picture and get back to the campsite around the corner.
We cook dinner despite the tempting fries and burger smells of the campsite kitchen. Luckily, our pasta tastes nice too.
