110 - Day 6 - Sweetheart Abbey, Bladnoch Distillery, Culzean Castle

Before we get started, I have to ask... what does this say to you?

It says someone has a devilish sense of humor, it says I have a filthy mind, or it says that someone didn't run this past their peers before they chose this font... Oh dear.

We saw five rainbows in two days. I love Scotland. These lucky people have a pot of gold in their barn. I wish I had a pot of gold. Hell, I wish I had a barn.





Yep. I love trees.




This was so picturesque. They don't use is anymore, but it was a working wheel at one time. A couple of pictures down you can see the wheels they used on the inside to grind the grain.







But first, take a gander at this wee fella




Dam. Dam. Dam.

I promised you a wheel-y good time.

Oh it gets worse.

We're approaching Ayr. And it's pronounced "air." As in "Air we go..."

They call these table top graves and they were all the rage in... the past.

More graves. These are in front of Sweetheart Abbey. I think I already mentioned the story behind it, but in the interest of repetitiveness... When Lady Devorgilla's husband died, she had his heart embalmed, and carried it with her in an ivory box. She had this Abbey built in his honor. When she died, she was buried here, and his heart was buried with her.

Here's our pirate friend again.

They keep looking at me... Make them stop looking at me...

Sweetheart Abbey interior and Lady Devorgilla's grave

More Sweetheart Abbey

And here she is in all her glory

Deer farm. They're there, I promise. The close up photos are blurry. So you'll have to zoom in.

Highland Coos!

Sheep!

This is Bladnoch Distillery. You can always distinguish a distillery by the pagoda on top of the building.

Our tour was the best ever! We showed up around 10 am, and the tour was at 2 pm, but the lady was incredibly nice, and she toured us around anyway. So we had our own private tour.

Bladnoch was shut down for several years, but it was recently purchased by an Irish family, and they just finished their first run after reopening. In 8 years you can sample their first batch. But never fear, there are bottles available from their previous incarnation. I bought a 19 year old whisky. What I like about it, is that they don't use peat in the majority of their whiskys (in fact they made a special batch that is 'lightly peated'), so it is smoother and less abrasive (but still kicks you in the pants... I think my bottle is 52% alcohol by volume... it makes you feel warm and tingly inside).

Quit looking at my butt.

There are four different cask sizes, and the butt is the biggest... go figure.

This is the Bladnoch river. It was scooting along pretty good. There was a lot of flooding in the north of Scotland, and a lot of the rivers we saw in the south were pretty swollen. I took some video, and I'm sure it will show up at the bottom of the blog... just to show how quick the current was.

Somebody has a sense of humor almost as warped as mine...

What do you think this means?

That's right... no smoking. If I had been thinking I would have taken a picture of the Men's bathroom... the fact that it had the same little sign underneath is the only thing that tipped me off!

Cool scene as we drove along

Culzean Castle. How would you pronounce it? I said Cul-ze-in. I was wrong. As usual. I can't get the hang of the language.

It's pronounced Cul-lane. And it's where I want to live... I love houses perched on cliffs with the waves crashing against the rocks below... and it was surrounded by woods... all it needed was a river and a bagpipe player and it's my version of heaven.

Interesting use of uprooted trees... And I like the face in the trunk of the tree (with the long mustaches and pronounced brow bone)

Nice lawn

Nice gate

Awfully nice...

Nice cannon... I'm likin' this place...

And this... is the money shot... Ooooh... Aaaaah... The only thing that detracts from this place... and it's a small thing... is that some of the windows aren't real... they're painted on to balance things out... So... from far away it looks awesome, but up close it looks a little cheesy... Why not just put in real windows? You run out of money or something???

Excuse me Mr. Tree... You're very tall... and knotty...

More trees

We're heading to Ayr... I was fascinated by that island... but not fascinated enough to remember its name... Just that you can see it from Ireland as well. And that it's damned hard to get a photo that puts it into perspective when you're in a moving vehicle and there are rain drops on the glass and your cousin's head is something you have to work around.

Pretty shoreline

The two heads of Ayr that started it all. I said in our country we'd call them blondes... get it? Ayr heads? Oh yeah... I started in with the puns, my favorite of which was when I asked if the pub we were going to for lunch had st-ayr-s. I'll stop at that. My cousin already choked me, I don't need you to choke me, too.

The view from our room in Largs. I'm a god.

Video of the Bladnoch River. Toldja it'd be at the end.

The End. For today anyway.