Scotland Round TWO!

Day 1 – 3 Nottingham, Edinburgh, Inverness
And we’re off again! All of the washing was done, everything repacked and we even managed not to run late!

The main mission for the next two days is to fire north up the motorway and make it to Inverness (Scotland) to start the NC500 roadtrip.
 
This will be the only time I get in the car this whole trip!

Along the way we stopped for lunch in Leicester and overnight in Nottingham with friends, leading to a mild hangover for the next day! However hangover and a little bit or rain aside we made it to the border mid afternoon!

I stopped to take a quick photo and Lou continued on in the car. For this trip we’re taking both vehicles to Inverness; then leaving the car to do the NC500 on the bike, then returning to collect the car (and fresh clothes) to do Edinburgh and the Lake District.

Stopping at the next services I was shattered to find M&S had run out of Iced Coffee!

We arrived at our accommodation in Edinburgh at dinner time after a 5 hour trip! I’d made the silly choice a half hour earlier to just ‘ride on’ when it started to rain (rather than stop and put on wet gear) so I squelched my way to the shower and set about hanging my jeans, boots, jacket, gloves helmet around the room in the hopes of drying them overnight!

As most bars & pubs were booked out due to the Euro 2020 finals we settled for some Deliveroo in the B&B!
 
https://www.duthuslodge.co.uk/
Duthas Lodge - £100 for the night including breakfast & free parking.
We’d booked close to Edinburgh centre to go for a walk around, but as we were coming back to Edinburgh for 2 days later we decided to call it an early night and fell asleep to the sound of a storm passing overhead!
 
 
Next morning after hair dryer-ing my boots we were ready to go again – thankfully a slightly shorter day (only 2.5 hours of travel). We continued north into the Cairngorms National Park stopping at the delightful Ralia Café for a well earned coffee! 

And the weather was incredible – seriously unexpectedly beautiful! We blasted up the A9 motorway to Perth, then through the national park (which I did a terrible job of recording), finishing by arriving in Inverness mid afternoon!
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Dropping our bags at the hotel (more on that later) we took off for a wander around town, and the mid-afternoon sun on the river was stunning!
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Still trying to prioritise outdoor eating we weren’t able to be seated at a few pubs in town (only indoor tables left paired with lack of staff) – however we managed to get a table at a Spanish Tapas  restaurant (La Tortilla) right opposite the castle; and had a delicious sunny dinner!


And back to the hotel we went – as Inverness is effectively a waypoint for the NC500 I hadn’t expected much – however was a little disappointed by this one. Admittedly it’s an older 3 Star hotel so facilities were pretty much as you would expect from a 160 year old building, however sadly the staff were rushed and a little rude at check in – that combined with being the worst breakfast we’d had (perhaps we’d been spoiled for the prior 2 weeks in Cornwall?).
 
I think a lot of this could be put down to Covid, the larger hotels seem to have struggled to Covid-Safe their breakfasts where smaller hotels are better able to, so rather than having all 50-100 rooms trickle down to breakfast ad hoc and then serving them their choice of cereal/toast/spreads etc each one at a time, they had laid out a selection on the table – which resulted in a mess hall / packed school lunch approach to breakfast. Plastic wrapped croissants, some sugary cereal and a room temperature yoghurt – still very much breakfast food, but not at all in keeping with the last 2 weeks of breakfasts. Perhaps we’ve been spoiled…it was the only day I’ve not demolished the entire plate of food!
 
 
https://www.royalhighlandhotel.co.uk/
£111 including breakfast (overnight parking was easier to arrange via YourParkingSpace around the corner in the supermarket carpark)