The route for today goes north to Dunrobin Castle, then retraces the route south back through Inverness before terminating in Grantown-on-Spey.
The map can be found here.
The morning began heading north along the A9 in eastern Scotland, past a few of the coastal towns on the way to Dunrobin. Our morning plan was to make it to Dunrobin Castle close to the opening time.
Dunrobin Castle
We arrived about a half hour after the opening time to find the parking lot was already half full and buses were beginning to arrive. The Castle itself is a collection of buildings and expansions dating all the way back to the 13th century through to the mid 19th century. The furnishing inside is primarily Victorian and the gardens in back, designed in the style of Versailles, were definitely a highlight of this castle for us.
Cawdor Castle
On our way back south, we stopped in the town of Tain for lunch and gas. It was a good way to break up the driving and a nice little town to briefly walk through. We ended up at a local coffee house called Pipers Coffee House where we found some great lighter food and of course excellent coffee. From there we headed straight to Cawdor Castle.
We eventually arrived an hour and a half before closing. We unfortunately were forced to make a choice between Cawdor and Brodie castles due to time. It was a difficult decision and there was no clear winner. But we decided the gardens perhaps stood out somewhat more based on limited photos we had search. In person, the Cawdor gardens were excellent, which is truly saying a lot after coming directly from the gardens in Dunrobin Castle. We spent most of the time wandering the grounds getting lost and taking photos. I’m still not sure if Cawdor was the better choice, but it was definitely a good choice.
Grantown-On-Spey
After leaving Cawdor we headed to Grantown-On-Spey to check in to our hotel and find dinner. The town was picked as it is in a good location to start the next day of driving over the Cairngorms. It is the northern end of a section referred to as the SnowRoads Scenic Route. The town of Tomintoul might be a good option as it would reduce tomorrows drive by 30 minutes. Caringorms area is known for several famous distilleries, and if you can work one of those into your route then all the better. But when doing research, I found they tend to close their tasting rooms early, making it a challenge to fit into a road trip. And end of day whiskey tasting would have worked out very well, but would require ending the day around 4pm. Grantown-On-Spey was a nice quiet town though, and we spent the evening walking the streets and enjoying a few local whiskeys at the hotel.
Notes
The route to Dunrobin Castle was an hour each way. The road moved relatively quickly, but still I felt we could have made better use of this time. Rather than spending the night in Inverness, it might have made sense to spend only the day there, and head north in the early evening to spend the night in Golspie or somewhere closer to the castle. This would have given plenty of time on the way north to visit several smaller coastal towns (Invergordon, Tain, Golspie or Dornoch) at our own pace. It would have also given us more time the following day, where we might have been able to visit both Cawdor and Brodie castles.
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