14 April 2017 Keiss, Scotland

I woke up pretty early this morning and noticed the bright light coming through the window blinds. So I went into the bathroom to check out the sunrise.

Later, breakfast was had and we chatted with our B&B hosts, Ann & Marco, for a while. Ann is from a small town a few miles outside Edinburgh and Marco is from Sardinia. They are really lovely and they make it seem fun to run a B&B (a lot of work and some rude guests, but they love meeting people and having them stay). After a long chat about Scottish referendums, all the interesting people from all over the world that they meet, the behavior of chickens and the need for only one cockerel (fancy pants for “rooster”), the fact that having goats or other farm animals isn’t a good idea for them, the similarities between Alaska and Scotland, and whether or not to put a few drops of water into the whisky (I vote yes!), we went to Dunnet Head, which is actually the most northern place on mainland Scotland (Britain).

We walked around and quickly realized we were “bogged out” and decided to drive over to Dunnet Bay and the huge beach there. We walked the entire length and back (just under 6 miles), explored rock formations, tide pools, dead birds caught in seaweed, and other junk caught in seaweed (there was a lot of seaweed). 

We found some interesting shells and stuff. The colors were amazing. There were bright yellow and orange snail shells, polka dot shells, purple shells, cool rocks, not yet ready sea glass, and other random things. 

Scotland provided us with a fairly nice day on the beach. It was windy, but not wwiiiiiiiiiiiidy. It rained a little bit, but we were later rewarded with a rainbow.

After that, we had a pressing need for petrol, so headed over to Wick for that and groceries, then back to the B&B for our hotel picnic dinner and a little tipple of whisky (with a few drops of water) to end the evening. Again, Scotland rewarded us with a stunning sunset.

It’s our last night in Keiss and we have had a great time here (not withstanding a few slips and falls and the strong need to punch nature in the face). Tomorrow we head off to Inverness for a few nights, where we will be doing laundry because, yep, it’s time for laundry. For those of you keeping score, no we still don’t know what we are going to do in France (well, that’s not entirely true, we did decide on some vague ideas maybe), but we still need to book it.

Also, I forgot… the internet is slightly better at the moment, so I may actually get photos in here. I think we discovered the reasons why the internet was such a jerk last night… two teenage girls. They were at breakfast with their parents talking about how “you can stream all sorts of stuff over YouTube on the TV.”