26 July - Dufftown to the Lecht Mine

boB's 43rd birthday!! And we celebrated in serious Highland style!

We packed up the from Glen Royal Oak and headed south further into the mountains. The scenery was absolutely stunning (as usual!) and we were quickly overheating from hill climbing. Continuous Up and Down and Up and Down ... after an hour we were exhausted, and collapsed at the official entry to the Cairngorms...

And then for breakfast we stopped at ... A DISTILLERY! 

The Glenlivet distillery is HUGE. It was somewhat more industrial in character than the other distilleries we have visited because it's one of the largest in the world. With 6 million liters of spirit produced annually, they're expanding their plant to double production next year, and then again three years later. We had a dram after the tour, and then had breakfast in the parking lot before setting off. 

And of COURSE we passed the Tomintoul distillery. No tours were available on a drop in bases- sadly we hadn't booked ahead for a tour. Next time, right?  :-)

Here's another fantastic bridge. Seriously well built, and ancient. This is The Bridge of Avon, which is Anglicized of A'an, and pronounced "On" but it sounds like it should have a silent H in it. Try "Ohn" and we'll call it good.

Once we arrived in Tomintoul we found The Best Shop in town - the Whisky Castle!! We stopped in for a brief look and ended up enjoying a spontaneous hour-long tasting with Sam, one of the owners, and learned quite a lot about tasting whisky. We left feeling quite warm!

If you ever have a chance to try this whisky, you must. The Old Ballantruan is a very lightly peaty Speyside whisky. It's rare for Speysides to be peaty - that's the Islay style - but this one is perfect. 

We left Tomintoul after dinner at a lovely vegetarian restaurant, and headed into the cold gales to find camping for the night. It was miserable weather - about 40F, super windy, and misting heavily. But onward we went. 

Melinda spied a parking area for Lecht, and we investigated back about a half mile. Riding through the glen (with boB herding hoards of sheep) we found this old building, a manganese mine from the 1740s, called the Lecht Mine. In amongst the old smugglers' trails that were used to transport illicit whisky, it still has a roof and stout walls-it sure looked good for camping!

Well... turns out the sheep like the place, too! The floor was covered in sheep poop. We considered moving on, but the wind and rain were getting worse. Soooo... we plugged up our noses, carefully pitched the tent, and avoided touching the ground at all. 

Here's the rest of our haul from The Whisky Castle - and a great way to celebrate a birthday! In addition to the Old Ballantruan, we picked a small sampling of other hard-to-find whiskys: Glencadam 15, Tomintoul 16,  and Glendronach 18. The Glendronach was our favorite of all - very rich, very flavorful, and warming on such a miserably windy night.

Our total miles ... 32.7.