Inveraray

Hi all,
Today we have decided to stay local and visit Inveraray which sits in a lovely position on the banks of Loch Fyne. We took a pleasant nine mile journey through Glen Aray and arrived in Inveraray around mid-morning.
Because our main focus for the day was to see Inveraray Castle, we went there first hoping to get around before the masses arrived. Inveraray castle is the home of the Duke of Argyll, chief of the Clan Campbell, so as you would expect it is a magnificent building. It also houses enough swords to keep lovers of cold steel more than happy. What I found very pleasing about our visit to Inveraray Castle was the car parking arrangements. If you check out the photo below you will see our red Modeo estate parked almost in front of the doors.
Compare this with a visit to most stately homes in England, where car parks seem to be getting further and further away from the buildings one is visiting. I always think it is nice if one can at least park in the same county.
Anyway, after taking a tour of the castle and the grounds our stomachs were starting to grumble so we needed somewhere to eat. I don't know how it happened, but we ended up in a cafe in the Argyll Wildlife Park which we found a couple of miles further down Loch Fyne from Inveraray. Below is view looking towards the eastern end of Loch Fyne.

We don't usually visit Zoos, but it had a cafe so we went in and both had an adequate serving of pastie and chips. Hot and cleanly presented we enjoyed the meal and because the wildlife park looked interesting we thought we'd give it a try. The wildlife park is set in over fifty acres of trails, so we reasoned that it would do us good to stretch our legs a bit. We enjoyed the walk and looking at the animals and birds although I would prefer to see them in the wild. There weren't any exotic animals here except a completely white peacock, but they all seemed very happy. The only animal I was disappointed with was a Scottish Wild Cat, it looked like a tabby and more bored than wild. Our next door neighbour's moggy, Biscuits, looks more dangerous to me.

After the the wildlife park we went back into Inveraray to have a look around the town. It is quite small which suited us because we were feeling the effects of our earlier exertions. The main shop in the town was the woollen mill which seemed to be attracting most of the visitors. A tartan clad piper stood outside blowing for Scotland and once again I was reminded of next door's cat because the piper was making the same noise the cat made when it got its tail stuck in the shed door.
Sorry about that, I know some of you love bag pipes, but they are just about the most annoying thing about Scotland.

I'll leave this post with another view of Inveraray
and a reminder you that you can find out more about my books by clicking here.

You can find out about my attempts at phyrography by clicking here.

If you would like to see some of our paintings please click here.