17.10.2011 – 17.10.2011  6 °C

Last day in Scotland today (and last ‘holiday’ day in the UK) and I spent it driving from Loch Ness to Aberdeen.

The drive took me about 4hrs (you can do it quicker but I stopped a couple of times) and I went via the Whisky trail through Speyside. I would like to tell everyone that I stopped at every distillery and tasted some of the single malt goodness but reality is that when you are driving by yourself and catching a plane that arvo you just can’t! The whisky trail is in the Cairmgorn National Park (the same park as Balmoral) and if anything the park looked even more lovely than it did a couple of weeks ago when I drove through. The extra couple of weeks meant that the leaves on the trees have turned that tad darker and browner. The mountains are a welter of rusty brown’s and deep reds.. Really, really gorgeous! I could have spent days driving through but only had a couple of hours!

Stopped off in Duff Town (whisky capital of Scotland) to post more junk home to Oz.. As usual 40mins later (and 60 pounds lighter) I left the post office frustrated and grumpy. I’ve worked out it is a pre-requisite to be an old pain in the arse to work for any type of post office in the world (any Aussie post office workers reading this apologies but your counterparts overseas have no patience with sending Int Mail)!! Today’s lady was half deaf (and wasn’t wearing any sort of hearing aid!!) and was super flustered at having to do parcels to International.. Couldn’t work the eftpos machine and generally f-ed up the whole process. I’ll be impressed if my parcels make it because by the end she had stopped talking to me!!!

So after cooling off (literally as the temp hit a high of 6 degrees today) I continued my beautiful drive the last 30 mins into Aberdeen where I dropped off my rental car and did the usual hectic process at the airport. Three and a half hours later I was checking into my London digs this time opposite King’s Cross station at the St Pancras Youth Hostel.. It is nicer than most 3 star hotels in town (definitely better than my hotel I stayed in on the bank’s of Loch Ness!!) and is only costing me 19 pounds.. that’s what I call a bargain!!!!