First impression of the Scottish Highlands is green. Wet and green. Lots of lochs!

After a long day of travel over the Atlantic and a connection in London to Inverness, we stayed at the Inverness Airport hotel to catch up with the time change.

As soon as we saw this sign in the hotel bar, we had to have a beer! Of course, we both chose hoppyness.

Then, Monday night, we slept fitfully because we forgot to bring the Melatonin… sigh.

Tuesday we started at the Highland Folk Museum, which is an outdoor area with reconstructed buildings and artifacts from three eras in Highlands history. Learning the cultural history early in a visit is an excellent foundation on which to build one’s understanding of an area.

The above four pictures are from the oldest part represented, called Baile Gean, a 1700s Township. Nine sites exposed dark, windowless buildings with steep roofs. A period-clad woman explained that the buildings collected the smoke from the peat fires, allowing the humans to smoke their meat while they were inside the building. Seems nonintuitive now.

The mill area reminded us of a scene from the Outlander Series, when the main male character, Jamie, waited underwater for the menacing Red Coats to leave. We found many sites from this series to visit on this trip.

The Balameanach area, the middle village in the museum, featured 13 sites from about 200 years later.

The last area was Croit Allt Larigh, from just a bit later than the middle part of the park, er museum. Many artifacts and buildings were preserved from this more recent era.

Driving

Left side. Driver is always toward the center of the road. Remember. Look right before left.

We thought that would be our main stumbling block, but – 20% grade? Who are you kidding? But 20% they were, and 13% and super windy. At least we were warned by the signs.

Also, single carriage with passing places. Hm. Single lane we get, but the turnouts were too few for the traffic. We found ourselves, (well Brian, as he was driving) stomping on the brakes to avoid head-on collisions, unfruitfully seeking a passing place.

We made it to our nighttime destination, Craigendarroch Suites in Ballater, where we slept. Lovely place.

“There’s no place on Earth with more magic and more superstition mixed into its daily life than the Scottish Highlands,” says Frank to Claire in the first episode of Outlander.

Geeks Clare and Brian will travel to Scotland in June to see ancient sites on the islands, visit castles and other sites that were filming locations for the Outlander television series, sample whiskies, and view geology along the northern coast (North Coast 500).

In 2013, Brian and Clare visited the Scottish Highlands as part of a geology field trip which focussed on the important controversy concerning the identification of major thrust faults in the northwest Highlands. Read a brief summary of that trip here:

Put together this puzzle to review some of the geology.