Blue Lagoon Traveler

Welcome back!  I promised to share the flower pictures from Dunrobin Castle's formal gardens in northern Scotland. If you're not a horticulture fan, feel free to ignore this post. Otherwise, I'll assume you love beautiful flowers like I do, and you might even want to know their official names, which I try to identify using PlantNet, so here goes: Hoary Stock Matthiola incana Giant Bellflower Campanula latifolia Crisped-leaf pelargonium or Lemon geranium (none of the sources had this very cool variegated leaf) Pelargonium crispum Giant onion Allium giganteum (this was a tough one - lots of different Allium options) What if I just say roses?  There are so many cultivated roses in gardens here. I'm not an expert :) Atlantic Waterlily Nymphaea candida Fuchsia Fuchsia magellanica Dusty-miller Jacobaea maritima Queen of the Alps Eryngium alpinum Chilean nightshade Solanum crispum Tutsan Hypericum androsaemum Before posting, I decided to add a few more flowers from my bike tou...

Tuesday was a really good day. Just north of Dornoch is Dunrobin Castle, ancestral home of Earls and Dukes of Sutherland, the area of Scotland we're in right now. This is one of my best wasn't-meant-to-be-a-postcard shots.  I didn't even see the reflection in the pool until later! During my previous (and only) trip to Scotland, I visited several Scottish castles. They're all beautiful and memorable in their own ways, but Dunrobin is one of the most impressive. Here's my ride, tearing away for a round of golf at nearby Brora, leaving me to amuse myself at Dunrobin for a good five hours. My first view of Dunrobin, from the land side. I was impressed. I had plenty of time to find the loo and a cappucino, before the falconry demonstration was due to start in the gardens.  Then I realized the demo would be way down in the back of the gardens (where you can see a group of people standing around, close to the beach), so I picked up the pace. This trainer Andy has a deal wi...

 Road trip! Bet you've never seen a sign like this before. Neither had we. Road trips on a rainy day can be a bit of a challenge.  Armed with a map of north Scotland, we headed northwest in our rented pickup truck, planning on a few hours' drive to a 9-hole golf course Herb was convinced he just had to see. But wait. What were those dotted lines on the map?  Could they mean... the dreaded one-lane road? If you thought driving on the "wrong" side of the road was a challenge, that's nothing to playing chicken with oncoming cars. This parade of sports cars decided they needed to get by us, even though our relatively sizable pickup truck didn't have a handy "passing place" to dive into.  Passing places are like little semi-circular pieces of extra asphalt, alternately on the left or the right side of the road, every 100 yards or so. Still, we enjoyed the scenery, like the many waterfalls cutting through the hills, and the occasional slow lambs dotting th...