Another great breakfast at the Rossmount Bed & Breakfast.  It is always too much food.  This morning we pack up the left over continental breakfast of a croissant, a bun, ham and a variety of cheeses.  We have made them into sandwiches that we can eat along the way today.  Robert, our host offers to drive us to the train station where we will pick up our rental car.  Very much appreciated.

We arrive at the EuropCar kiosk in the Inverness Mall.  We stopped by yesterday just to be sure everything was in order for today.  The woman at the desk said that a 9am pickup would likely be an issue, that 10am would be better.  Not a problem for us, so we arrived for 10am.  We are told that the car we were to get is not coming back.  Not exactly sure of the reason, but whoever had it decided to keep it, or it was damaged and needed repairs, and they have not enough inventory at the moment.  Either way, no EuropCar for us.  🙁  We booked through RentalCars.com, so the young man from EuropCar is calling them to try and get us a replacement booking.  He gets one through Avis, but it is at the Inverness Airport and it won’t be ready until noon.  We plan to take a 6:30pm ferry to the Orkneys, the drive is about 3 hours, so we can still make it.  We want a leisurely drive along the coast, following the route below.

The airport is 20-25 minutes from the train station.  They arrange for Mathew, the young man we were dealing with to drive us there.  No extra taxi fare for us.  If the car that Avis provides cost more than the one we get, EuropCar will pick up the difference.  So I guess the only thing we will loose is a couple of hours.

We get the car just after noon.  I have been elected to be the driver and Stu is manning my phone with google maps loaded to our destination of Gills Bay where the ferry will take us to St. Margarets Hope.  We make our way from the Inverness Airport across the large bridge that crosses the Beauly Firth.  There are several large busy traffic circles we needed to navigate.  Stu is being very calm and keeps reminding me to keep left.  🙂  It isn’t long until we leave most of the busy traffic behind.  We are passing small pull outs every few miles.  As I am just getting comfortable with a new manual transmission car and driving on a different side of very narrow roads, I take advantage of pulling over to let others pass.

We come to a very charming village called Golspie.  We find a place to park and wander around taking in the the atmosphere of this little town.  I notice a large structure on top of a fairly large hill nearby.  There is an older man coming out of a shop.  I ask him what the structure is.  He explains that he is a proud Scottish Nationalist, he believes that Scotland should be autonomous, that he is a proud Gaelic speaker and former anthropoligist!!  He is a lot of things!!  This is a statue of the Duke of Sutherland.  He is one of the architects of the Highland Clearances.  We had only heard of the Highland Clearances yesterday from our guide.  During the 19th century Highlanders homes were burned, they did not own the land so they had to move on.  The reasons they were burned out was so that the Duke could make way for sheep production.  It was during this time that many many Scots immigrated to the US and Canada.  This gentleman would like to topple, explode this statue that he told me the Duke made the elder and in firmed people build for him.  It sound like that there is a difference of opinion on the destruction of this statue from what I have read on line.  For now the Duke stands high above Golspie.

We find another pull over, so I let the speedier drivers pass again.  This is at a place called Keiss.  There is a castle of sorts here and some interesting stone walls.  Stu takes advantage of the stop to take some shots of the castle.

We arrive at Gills  Bay just before 4:30.  We were aiming for the 6:30 ferry, but pull up to check on the process before we double back to take some photos of some brightly painted buildings we just passed.  One of the ferry personnel comes up to our car and asks us our name.  We tell him that we don’t have a reservation.  “Oh” he says and then gets on the radio to ask someone if there is room for one more car???  We are a bit confused.  We ask is this the ferry to the Orkneys?  When is it leaving??  Right now is the answer.  Wooo.  OK.  That works.  The schedule we were looking at sounds like the winter schedule to this fellow.  This is the 4:30 sailing and the next won’t be until 7:30.  Pheww.  We are happy to take this one.

We arrive in St. Margarets Hope just after 5:30 and make the 15 minute drive to St. Marys where we are staying for the next 3 nights.  We cross 4 causeways that join the smaller islands together before we get to St. Marys.  Here is our Bed & Breakfast here.  We are paying 80 GBP per night ($130 CAD).  We can already tell that these islands are so much quieter than Inverness.  There isn’t anything really close by for dinner so we drive about 10 minutes back over those 4 causeways to find a nice pub/restaurant.  Had a great meal, then home to The Inn.

Another great day!