Car problems and whisky

Yesterday evening we booked a distillery tour at Balblair, we wanted to be sure we didn’t miss out this time. The tour started at eleven so the plan was to have breakfast at the local Cocoa Mountain (there are only two shops in the whole world and we found the second one) and after breakfast we would go to Edderton were the Balblair distillery is stationed.

Things turned out differently. After a quick shower Tos was packed well in time and we were ready for that delicious mocca hot chocolat from Cocoa Mountain. So we jumped in the van and drove off, NOT!

For the first time this holiday Tos did not want to started 😢. Turned out the battery was empty because the dynamo did not do what it is supposed to do, charge the battery. We had a quick look and decided to change the starter battery with the extra one for the camping part. It didn’t took too long but we still had to skip the hot cocoa for breakfast to be in time at the distillery. I was a little disappointed by that, but we had already booked the tour, so well, these things happen. 

We arrived well in time at Balblair. And one of the nice things about a campervan is that you can allways make coffee, and so we did. We had coffee and a croissant for breakfast at the parking of Balblair.

Breakfast in front of the distillery

At eleven it was time for the tour. Due to new health regulation laws it is not allowed to make photos inside the distillery, so no pictures from the making process. But it is a nice small distillery, not the most beautiful one we ever visited, but nice.

Cask filling - 45 seconds for 250L whisky

Cask on its way ti the warehouse

Inside the warehouse

After the tour it was tasting time, and of course we bought a bottle. A very special one this time! It is a single cask whisky which we bottled ourselfves. Our names are in the bottle and in the archives of Balblair. So we made a little bit of history today 😊. Bottle 228 of cask 711 from the year 2006 is bottled by Tanguy and Liane Cagé.

We are on the kable and in the books






Pouring the bottle




Labelling


And there it is

After making our own history it was time for some serious Scottisch history, the Culloden battleground. The way there was beautiful again, green and full of Furze (Brem in Dutch). 

Culloden itself was impressive, as to all wars there’s more of a story behind it than just the Scottish against the British. It was the Jacobites fighting for their king Stuart, against the British Government. Both armies contained Scottsmen and British men, but the Jacobite army also contained French and Irish soldiers. Culloden was the last full-scaled battle to be fought on British soil, and meant the end of the Scottisch Clan culture. 

1800 soldiers were killed here within one hour






Fraser - One of the important clans during the battle

We spent quite some time an the memorial grounds, not even trying to imagine how it must have been there on 16th of April 1746.

Being still a bit impressed, and thinking also about the problems with Tos we diceded to leave Inverness behind and started our way towards Newcastle. So we found a nice campsite in Craggie and had a look at the car. We think we fixed the problem with the dynamo for now, and cleaned the bougies. It will hopefully take us home now. And there we will take some more time to solve the problems more seriously.

We had dinner outside in the sun 😊