Day 4 - Edinburgh to Inverness

Today was all about driving. Lots of it, in fact, and if we hadn't left Edinburgh late (blame editing the pics for the blog this morning instead of last night for that) we could have stopped for a lot more photos today.

We did spend about 30 minutes or so trying to fight our way through the road system in central Edinburgh to start with; basically it's just like London but without road signs. Or, the road signs are either right at the junction you wanted giving you no warning to get in lane, or they are 400 yards before the junction (and before the previous two junctions as well just to confuse you). Ah well, you can't have everything I guess, the city itself really is beautiful.

We left Edinburgh heading north and shortly crossed the Forth Road Bridge:





Of course that is completely overshadowed by the original Forth Bridge, which looks like it's about to get yet another coat of paint :)









Back on the motorway, we headed to Perth where we stopped for lunch, though looking back on the cameras it seems we didn't take any pictures :-(

From Perth, we headed north on the A93 to Blairgowrie, then East to Alyth. The intention was to join the B952, B954 then B951 and bimble north on the back roads, but we went wrong somewhere and ended up on an unclassified road. It looks pretty straight on the map but I'm fairly certain no map maker has ever been down it and just guessed it went straight, because we never got 200 metres without a bend on a hill of some sort. It was single track most of the way and we kept meeting
construction traffic for a wind farm they were building locally.

However, there were a couple of very picturesque spots on this road:





This second stream was in Milton, just before we rejoined the A93:





Once we rejoined the A93 we headed north along Glen Shee:







We passed through the Glenshee Ski Area, not a flake of snow in sight, though they could perhaps have occupied themselves by sweeping all the gravel off the road instead of just putting up 20mph signs for 3 miles along one of the best driving roads I've ever seen :(

On we went to Braemar, at which point we swapped over, and Mark drove. Cue me saying "What's that squeaking?" "Don't know, don't think it's us" then twenty seconds later he takes the handbrake off. We're doing 40 by now. Anyway, we followed the A93 for some distance along the River Dee, turning off just before Loch Kinord onto the B9199 and then the A97 and A944 through Strathdon and onto the A939 towards Corgarff.

Just after leaving Corgarff, we found a really nice hotel (whose name we'll have to look up and confirm) within sight of Corgarff Castle. Corgarff is really odd, as it's whitewashed and looks like a big house with a wall round it instead of a castle, but it's undeniably charming in the middle of nowhere. Unfortunately, again, the cameras stayed in the back of the car and at the back of our minds and on we drove.

We headed on along A939 through the Lecht Ski area and Tomintoul, stopping just after Tomintoul for another photo opportunity:





Onwards then through Grantown-on-Spay and along the A939 all the way to Nairn on the banks of the Moray Firth, and then down the A96 to Inverness itself.

I have to say that the A93, and probably the A939, should be on anyone's list of all-time great roads. It's a constant challenge, with unbelievable scenery around (though you'll not have much time to concentrate on both at the same time). However, you can't account for the locals, and we were overtaken (while doing 60mph each time) by various vehicles ranging from Porsches, a Land Cruiser, a 1.2 litre Corsa and most incredibly, a DHL van. It was just unbelievable the speed they are prepared to drive on these roads, and even with the complete confidence I have in the car there's no way I was going to keep up with them.

All in all it was a great day of driving and I'm almost tempted to come back and do the whole thing all over again :)