Monday, September 21, 1998

Edinburgh, Scotland to Pitlochry, Scotland

I woke up as we were pulling into the bus station at Edinburgh. At 6.45 am this is a quiet city, and nothing was open. Which is typical because I was both starving and busting to go to the toilet.

It took me 15 minutes to walk to Haggis Backpackers from the station, but had to wait another hour before it was open.

The bus left at nine am, with only ten or so people, with the sun blazing. We made a stop within a couple of hours at Perth to pick up two more people before moving on to Pitlochry. All but one of us got off here, and stayed at the youth hostel. Once we’d gotten everything in our room, we, Adam from Woy Woy, Andy from Brisbane, Ania from Adelaide and Catherine from South Africa, headed down to the tourist info and picked up walking maps.

We had some lunch in a park nearby before heading off on our trail. The trail took us out of Pitlochry to the south before getting on the walking track. It wasn’t long before we came across The Black Spout – a beautiful 60-meter waterfall, where we stopped to get some photos.

Black Spout, Pitlochry, Scotland

Not long after this we came across the Edradour Whiskey Distillery, up above the town. This is the smallest distillery in Scotland and one of a few which still use manual labor instead of “factory line production”. We did a small tour of the distillery and sampled some of the product (not for me) before continuing on.

We walked for four hours all up, just taking in the views of Pitlochry and the neighboring town of Moulin. When we finished, we stopped at a market to buy some dinner and then went back to the hostel. I was stuffed after a long night on the bus and a half day walk, so I decided to stay in – as did everyone else. We ended up in the common room for a night of Trivial Pursuit until around midnight.

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