11 August

This morning's plan was to take a bus six miles south to a three-mile archaeological hiking trail, then return to Wick and catch the noon train for Inverness. That all fell apart when we arose to rain and heavy clouds. The TV weather-guessers were equally gloomy, so we scrapped our plans and took the 0800 train instead. Our landlady had fixed to-go breakfasts for us to take on our hike, and we ate them on the train.

Our first stop of the day was Dunrobin Castle, home of a succession of Earls and Dukes of Sutherland. We alit from the train in the nearby village of Golspie and had to walk about 1.5 miles in the rain to the castle. The rain obligingly stopped as we arrived, so we were able to tour the grounds without being bundled up.

It's a long, complicated story, but the current Duke of Sutherland doesn't own this estate. The current owner is the Countess of something. Anyway, it's a really nice place. It's much larger than the Queen Mum's house, with larger, more decorative gardens as opposed to the other's functional gardens. They had a top-notch falconry exhibition and the self-guided tour of the castle was very interesting. The second Duke was a railway enthusiast who acted as engineer when Queen Victoria came to visit and there is a private station right outside the entrance to the castle. Some of the trains will stop there on request. Unfortunately, our train this morning was not one of those. However, the 1439 southbound train was, so we stood by the tracks waving and it stopped for us. While we were waiting for the train, a group of hawks entertained us with their hunting activities in a field across the tracks from the station.

We wanted to spend the night in Inverness so we could take a two-hour bus ride to Fort Williams tomorrow, but we found our lucky lodging charm to be low on power. The tourist info office reported no rooms available from their client list. The clerk even called every hostel in the area, and they were all full. He then suggested an area across the river that is thick with B&Bs. We walked around for about thirty minutes and probably passed twenty B&Bs and one hotel, all with no vacancies. Beaten, we went back to the station and got on the next train toward Glasgow, the first leg of a 7.5-hour train journey to Fort Williams. On the advice of the conductor, we got off in Perth. We followed the conductor's directions and found a hotel room straight away. "We'll never have Inverness."

Dunrobin Castle

11:00 am	11:36 am	12:08 pm	Joe with giant rhubarb
gardens	gardens	gardens	gardens
Find the Falcon	too small to identify	1st Duke of Sutherland (larger photo)	Joe's old job

Hawk Show

Harris hawk	Harris hawk aloft	eye on the prize	action shot
	Harris hawk with lure	Falconer with Harris hawk
introducing the Gyrfalcon	action shot	nabbing the lure	Falconer with Gyrfalcon

Train to Inverness

2nd Duke of Sutherland

Dunrobin Station

mobile office

Inverness

Kessock Bridge

Unicorn Monument

Greig Street Bridge

Inverness Castle