Packing day

There isn't much for me to blog today. We stayed in Strathaven because we leave Saturday and we had laundry and packing to do. Tomorrow we will be going to Chatelherault (shat-ler-oh). And Saturday we will be visiting the Edinburgh castle before our flight to Lyon, France. 

Once we had breakfast and got laundry going we went walking through Strathaven. We walked through the parks and played putt putt then stopped into the pub for a drink. 

Putt putt was fun. Kevin won! 

The pub! The pubs here are cozy. Laura and Kevin played pool, and Laura beat him...a few times :) it rained while we were in the pub. The people are so nice here, and really friendly. The pace is so much slower than at home. We have such a fast pace of life and it's not like that here. Especially in the smaller villages like Strathaven. 

Kevin likes this land rover...he had to have to a picture :) 

We thought this was pretty cool. It is a google earth image of Strathaven and a google earth image of Loudoun Hill. 

Stirling, Scotland

Today was a castle day! The 2 closest castles to where we are staying is Stirling and Edinburgh. We fly out of Edinburgh (properly pronounced Ed-in-burr-uh) on Saturday so we will see the castle then. 

Stirling is about an hour away from where we are staying. 

On our way to Stirling Castle we stopped to see the Battle of Bannockburn memorial site. We had tea and tiffin- tiffin I would describe it like oats and popped rice with chocolate, I'm not sure exactly what was in it but it was good with tea. 

That is the memorial with the Scottish flag flying over 

Statue of Robert the Bruce King of Scots

Stirling was such a cute town! Here's a few pictures

Stirling castle was a little more modern. Things have been refurbished. But it was very beautiful and interesting. 

The King's Outer Hall 

The King's Inner Hall 

Ceiling

The King's Bedchamber 

The Queen's Bedchamber 

Ceiling 

The Queen's Inner Hall 

The Queen's Outer Hall

Being silly

Everyone drank ale from morning to night in the 1500s 

Kevin is standing in one of the rooms of the punishment block. 

For lunch we had sandwiches and tried a cheese and onion pastry. We have seen them everywhere we have been so we had to try it. It was good. It almost tasted like there was also potatoes in it. Total lunch was only about £6-7 ish. 

After lunch in Stirling we headed off for the distillery and had a beautiful view of the castle from the road. I wish the picture was more clear and not so blurry but you get the hint. :) 

Deanston distillery in Doune (pronounced Dune) 

So a little history of Deanston- it was an old cotton mill for many years and became like it's own town. They even created their own currency and built a school to educate and take care of the workers of the mill. Eventually cotton became too competive with overseas competition and it had to close. It was able to reopen as a distillery in later years and had another hard time and had to close again and has recently reopened in 1974. It is completely self sufficent and provides it's own power with the river and turbine engines. 

Here's the river: 

It is recognized as an organic scotch whiskey. They use only barley from Scotland. 

Here are pictures from our tour. 

This is the open barrel mash 

The stills 

This is the room where they store the whiskey. It used to be where the cotton looms were. Around 2,100 barrels can be stored and aged in this room. You aren't typically allowed in a room where whiskey is aging and stored but at this distillery we were lucky. The room smelled so strong of whiskey. It was a good smell. It was because of the Angel's Share. 2% out of each barrel is evaporated/lost each year it ages. That's the Angel's Share. After 12 years of aging 1/4 of the barrel of whiskey is lost due to evaporation. 

Whiskey tasting. I didn't like this whiskey much. It was really strong and burned my throat. 

We had dinner at Nando's. It's kind of fast food but it was sit down. It's a chicken place. 

We had dinner with Laura and Gail's brother Allan.