Leaving Portree we drive south and back across the bridge to the mainland highlands heading east. Along our route is the Clava Cairns historic site. Three bronze age burial cairns. There is not a lot of information and so we do not stay long before heading on.

We motor on through Inverness, and down to Cairngorms National Park, which contains, among numerous other delights, the Rothiemurchus Forest. The drive was uneventful, other than we had to divert from our path for 15 miles to find a gas station. Long trip: about a four-hour drive. The forest, just incidentally, has been in the Grant family’s estate since 1540, and is now owned by Johnnie, the 13^th Earl of Dysart, who sold 5,700 of its acres to the Forestry Commission Scotland a decade ago.

Aviemore is a resort town: skiing in winter, golf and fishing in summer, an ice rink year-round, scads of tourist boutiques lining the main street, and thousands of people walking about. The MacDonald Aviemore Resort – the only place with an available room when we tried to book one in early March – is a sprawling, overused 1950’s HoJo’s: perfectly serviceable but dingy with age. The corridor to our room had cinderblock walls. But painted!

The weather is … our usual … so the better planner says, “Let’s hike the forest around Loch an Eilein today, when it’s just spitting a tad, and go to Stirling Castle tomorrow when it’s supposed to rain harder but we’ll be inside.” The hike around the loch is lovely and the drizzle disappears as we walk under towering Scots Pines: the first pines to grow in Scotland, starting in 7000 BC. We have the place pretty much to ourselves and a few ducks.

We eschew the Aviemore Resort’s grub after our better planner directs us to the pub in the Old Bridge Inn in Carrbridge: a truly local place 11 miles away where we sit next to a real fire and the cute waitress can’t wait to pose for posterity. We sample more local Scottish gin before dinner and plan for the morrowg.