We don’t have far to go today.  We are staying in a town called Ardersier.  It is just outside of Inverness but close to the airport for our flight to Belfast tomorrow.

We make our way to our next B&B so that we can drop off our bags and head back to the airport to turn in the car.  We need to fill the car with gas but discover that the nearest gas station is in Nairn.  If you look at the map above you can see part of Nairn  if you  look directly east of Fort George.  In Vancouver at least, there are gas stations are close to the airport so that you can fill up your rental car.  Here (at least in Inverness, not the case), it is about 15 minutes away. Odd.  We drop the car and grab a cab back to Ardersier.  The fare comes to 8.20 GBP, so give the driver a 10er.

Our B&B is called Inchrye.  I will enquire about the name at breakfast.  We have a nice room.

Fort George is a 30 minute walk.

The beach walk is amazing!  Here are some of the photos from the 1.6km walk.

From the map above you can see Fort George out on the point.  The construction of Fort George was begun in 1748 after the Battle of Culloden.  King George II had this fort built as a secure base in the Highlands for the Kings army.  To suppress any other Highland uprisings.  It is a very imposing structure.  It occupies an area the size of five football (soccer) pitches.  We have an audio tour of the fort.  It is quite enlightening.

On our way back we see a kayaker out in the surf.  The tide is coming in and it looks like a lot of work in the kayak.  She comes to shore, but it seems she wants to paddle further.

We heard from Jess at our B&B that there are dolphins in the firth.  We see this sign along the path.  Maybe it is a good thing we haven’t seen any dolphins (which would be really cool).

It very blustery on our way back.

We walk to the nearest pub for a beer.  It seems like an imposition to serve us.  We both have a half pint, 2 different beers.  Stu’s is good, I don’t care for mine, so I drink is slowly.  We look over the dinner menu as this place is one of the 2 options that we have in this town.  It seems to specialize in game meat.  One dish is described as pheasant, pigeon and another bird that if don’t recall, but there is a note that the dish may contain “shot”.  We pretty much crossed this place off the dinner list.  Stu decides to have another half pint as he is finished and I am not.  He goes to the bar and  waits for over 5 minutes.  The bartender is nearby, but does not seem interested in serving.  There is another “punter” there who also isn’t being served, but he doesn’t seem concerned.  We decide to just leave and check out the next option for dinner.

This place has much more going on.  There are 2 sides to the bar.  It also has a restaurant section.  No tables available, so we sit up at the bar next to a local lady who advises us that we should have a reservation if we want to have dinner.  We make a reservation for 7:30.  This place is called the Star and is so busy, while the other place is empty.  They serve us a very nice meal.  We walk the 4 minutes back to the B&B