Glenkinchie and a possible new scotch convert

July 19 - It’s a rainy day so we decided to take the car and go for a drive in the country.  We took the “golf route” southwest along the coast and found a lovely nature reserve to hike in for awhile.  There were fields of this beautiful flower - I don’t know what it is, but the fragrance was heavenly.  Lots of birds and birdsong that was unfamiliar to our ears.  And off in the distance - golf courses.  Glen has been very good about not golfing on this trip, but I could see his curiosity was piqued. They are massive tracts of land with very few trees and lots of tall grasses.  

Aberlady Bay Nature Reserve

Quite funny - note the safety railing on one side of this
walkway, and not on the other.  

I don't know what this flower is, but there were massive fields of it, and
it's extremely fragrant - smells like honey.  

Entering a forest tunnel

Beautiful place for a walk - we could hear animals and
birds in the bush, but it was so thick, we couldn't see
any of them.

Leather firebeater on the path.

Marshland - so pretty

We carried on and drove through a golf course development with some Whistler-style chalets that looked very out of place, and ended up in a little town called Berwick

where we had some fish and chips for lunch because they said they had the best ones in Scotland.  Seems every little town in the British Isles lays claim to having the best fish and chips.  They were good, but I’m starting to not believe everyone!  This town has an old monastery, a huge beach and what seem to be very large tides.  Not quite Bay of Fundy huge, but these boats appear to be stranded for the next while.

This little basin is basically just mud in the picture - no-one's taking
these boats out for the next few hours!

A clever swimming pool that is emptied and filled with the tides.  

There was a monastery here a long time ago, and there are still some
remnants of it - see below.

The monastery walls and the entrance of an old church

Not the most elegant church we've seen on our travels!

High Street Berwick.  Note how close the cars are.
Not a lot of room to spare

I really just took this because I liked what they did
with the paint job on this old dresser.

England and Scotland are the land of tiny sinks.  This one wasn't even
as wide as one of my hands!

On the way back from our tour, we stopped at Glen golf course (guess why?) to have a look - fantastic site right beside the ocean.  And then we headed to the Glenkinchie Distillery for a lesson in the making of scotch.  Not being a fan of scotch, I wasn't particularly interested, but this was definitely on Glen’s list of must-do’s.  I’m so glad we went - it was really interesting to see how it’s done, and the small building that’s been making it for a couple of hundred years.  Unfortunately we couldn’t take pictures inside the distillery.  I was surprised that such a small place had such a large output.  We were able to stick our heads inside two of the fermenting vats (to have a good smell!) - crazy, frothy bubbling stuff inside massive large wooden brewing pots.  At the end, we had a tasting - I actually didn’t mind it too badly - at least not the regular Glenkinchie.  The stuff they had that was made from peat-smoked barley was not to my taste at all.  I was tasting a smoky taste in my mouth for about an hour afterwards - yuck!

Glen likes having his golf club right on the seaside.

It's raining, but the dedicated ones still go out!

Beautiful location.  That grey in the background is the ocean!

Apparently it's irresponsible to go to Scotland and NOT tour a scotch distillery. 

We came back to our little flat, had dinner and chatted with Glen’s family back home in Horseshoe Bay.  Some issues have arisen with regards to his dad’s health, so we are keeping in close touch to see if we can help handle things from here, or if we’ll need to head home for awhile.  He should be ok, but it’s a worry for us.  Fortunately Rhonda is there to look after things, but we don’t like to leave it all up to her.  We only book our places to stay a couple of weeks at a time, so we can be flexible if necessary!