Rhonda Bracey: At Random

What a magic day today, in all possible ways! I slept around 10 hours, a miracle for me. Gorgeous clear skies. Late breakfast, then we were on the road from Inverness to the ruins of Elgin Cathedral, where everything was as green as you could possibly imagine.

After Elgin Cathedral, we went a few streets away to Johnstons of Scotland, a working mill that makes cashmere products for the likes of Burberry (yes, we even saw some Burberry cloth on one of the looms). We had an hour-long tour of the mill, going through all the processes, but unfortunately, we weren’t allowed to take ANY pictures inside the mill. The mill employs about 800 people, with another 300 at Hawick who turn the yarns into clothing products. The Elgin mill spins and dyes the yarn, and makes the flat cashmere products such as scarves, blankets and homewares. Fascinating stuff!

As a bonus we had afternoon tea in the restaurant at Johnstons. Very posh!

The sun shone most of the day, only turning cloudy on our trip back to Inverness. No rain at all. I was even in a t-shirt for some of the day.

The saddest part of the day was saying goodbye to Willie, our bus driver since Glasgow. By law, he cannot work more than 6 days straight and today was his 6th day with us.

After our rough-ish ferry ride back to the mainland yesterday, we hugged the coast to Ullapool. The bus was first on the ferry and first off, so we got underway to Inverness in quick time.

At Inverness Cathedral, we were broken up into 2 groups of 10, and each group had the same 2.5 hour walking tour of Inverness, but from opposite directions. Fortunately, there were very few stairs and we were on flat ground (though a bit uneven in parts) for the whole walking tour. My legs liked that! (I’m SOOO over stairs!!!). Inverness is a pretty city, but I think we were all too tired to appreciate it. Lunch for many of us was in the excellent food hall in the Victorian Market, where there was an impressive array of different foods from all sorts of cultures.

Then it was on to our accommodation just outside Inverness. This is the BEST hotel I’ve stayed at so far — walk-in shower, wooden floors in the main room, really spacious, lots of natural light, very modern decor and facilities, and because I had an accessible room (not requested), there were grab rails everywhere in the bathroom. One of the issues with most hotels we’ve stayed at is the propensity for falls in the bathroom — the showers have been over very high tubs and there has been nothing to hang onto to get into or out of the bath to take a shower. For example, at the hotel in Stornoway, I measured the drop from the rim of the bathtub to the floor — it was some 3 and a bit hand spans, but from the rim to the bottom of the bathtub was 2 hand spans. This meant about an 8-inch difference in height getting into and out of the tub to take a shower. And nothing to hold onto. That hotel was NOT unusual — most have had the same issue of differing heights and nothing to hold onto.