Day 73: Tulloch Castle

Distance: 16.4 miles
Rooms: 7

Today I ordered a full Scottish breakfast, with two poached eggs, minus the black pudding and haggis. "No haggis?", said our server. "You've got to have the haggis!". So, for the fifth or sixth time in my life, I had haggis. So far, I've really not liked either the texture or taste much, but this was a whole new experience - the best haggis yet, by far. I learned from Brian, back on day 56, that the best haggis comes from local butchers, but the best is not always served at a B&B breakfast. And when I asked about it, sure enough, John, our host, told me that he serves Cockburn's haggis from Dingwall, even though it's a little more expensive. Next to us, from Idaho, was an avid piper and his wife. They were here for expert level lessons at the National Piping Center in Glasgow, and to do some touring around. In addition to playing the bagpipes, he is a haggis aficionado and gave the Cockburn haggis a thumbs up. So it wasn't just me. Unfortunately, I have no pictures from breakfast, so instead you get a picture from laundry time yesterday.


We headed out into the cold Scottish "summer", and made our way out of Inverness, and over the Kessock bridge, seen here from the north side looking back toward Inverness.


Our route took us west along the north shore of Beauly Firth; we could look south over the water and see the hills from which we'd come a couple of days earlier. That was the day with over twenty miles of distance, almost five thousand feet of climbing, howling gale force winds, and driving rain. Jan and Michael were still with us then, and the day took its toll on Michael: he may be more Compeed than human now. We miss their company, but hear that they are enjoying themselves on the Isle of Skye. Fortunately, our day today was much nicer: we had only a little hail, a touch of rain, and twenty knot winds.


Once we moved away from the water, we were worried that we'd get stuck walking along some A-roads. But the National Cycle Network came to our rescue, with bike paths, doubling as footways, parallel to all the A-roads. As a result our walk today was straightforward, if a little boring. We did have some nice views of Ben Wyvis, a monolithic Munro forming a nice backdrop to the gently rolling farmland.


And we saw these cows, just chilling out. They'd found a nice spot sheltered from the wind, and with some passing sunshine.


We made good time on the tarmac, and were soon having scones in downtown Dingwall. A half hour later, we were at the Tulloch Castle.


Like I said yesterday, we ended up here because it was the only room we could find after a boiler fail at our scheduled B&B. The castle's credentials are pretty cool: it dates from the twelfth century, it's had colorful masters over the centuries, and it is said to be haunted. But on the bad side its TripAdvisor reviews are pretty mixed.


But it worked out great for us. We have a whole flat to ourselves, taking up the whole second floor of one wing. You can see Dawn peeking around the last room in our hall. There's two bedrooms, two bathrooms, a claw foot tub, three closets, a kitchen, a dining room, and a spacious living room. It's pretty sweet!


The master bedroom is big enough to be a nice place to stay just on its own.


In total, there are four writing desks. We didn't use any of them. But we did watch Bullseye on the Challenge network.


Coming up are two days with two distilleries. Tomorrow, it's a short walk to Alness, giving us time, I hope, to check out Dalmore. And the next day, another short walk, to Tain, home of Glenmorangie.

Location:Tulloch Castle Dr,Dingwall,United Kingdom