Scotland 2022 - Day 4: Falls of Shin and Dunrobin Castle

The summation of today is that the fish are flying but not the birds.

We woke up this morning to a still blustery, but sunny day looking out over the Moray Firth.

The schedule for today started with an hours drive to the Falls of Shin and so we were up and away reasonably early. The drive was the first experience of more windy roads with some lovely views of the Scottish countryside.

Once at the Falls we made our way to the viewing point and started our search for the promised leaping salmon. The Falls of Shin is a known location for spawning salmon to make their way up the waterfalls to find the refuge of Loch Shin between the months of May to September. We only spotted one in about 10 minutes of staring and so decided to make our way to the pond and play trail walk with a promise to the kids to come back later as Paloma was upset as she hadn't spotted the one brief glimpse that we had seen.

Forrest at this point became incredibly grumpy after finding out that the falconry displays at Dunrobin Castle that he had been looking forward to later in the day had been cancelled due to unforseen circumstances. Although snacks, friends and time soon worked the moodiness out he was still very disappointed by the second cancellation in two days.

The aforementioned pond was so overgrown that we had walked past it before we realised and the play trail wasn't as engaging as we expected but the hunt for wild blueberries and raspberries certainly kept the kids entertained. So much so that a 3/4mile trail took us well over an hour to complete.

With a quick lunch made in the motorhome (the convenience of having a stocked fridge and pantry on the road with us is amazing) we then headed back to eat our wraps whilst once more trying to spot the elusive leaping salmon. This time was much more successful with Paloma happy to spot a few herself and Forrest reaching a total of around 15 salmon spotted.

We then drove on to Dunrobin Castle where with Forrest, still upset about the lack of falconry display, decided to stay in the wagon whilst we went to have a look around. We had already decided that without the display it wasn't worth the entrance fee to enter the grounds as neither families wanted to see inside the castle and they didn't offer a gardens only ticket. We weren't sure how much access we would be able to get without paying but we discovered a road down the right hand side of the building that led down to the beach and had some lovely views of the castle and also across the Dornoch Firth / North Sea.

Aware that Forrest and Matt were stuck (albeit quite happily) back at the motorhome we headed back and onwards to Brora, our final destination for today. Following a short stop for a supplies restock at the Co-op and some ice-creams from Capaldis, a local Italian ice-cream shop, we parked up at the campsite for the night. Then after a quick tea we headed across the golf course to Brora Beach.

The kids were keen for a paddle which soon turned into waist deep splashing in the water. They were also joined (at a distance) by a seal who kept popping his head up above the water. Once the water got too cold for them they started exploring the beach and the rocky areas hunting for fossils which have been known to turn up in this area. We did find a potential fossil but it needs more investigating to identify what it is if anything. By 8pm the skies were starting to darken so we decided to take the easier and less distracting route back across the golf course and after a further run around in the campsite we finally got the kids tucked up in bed.

It's an early start tomorrow so with the late night tonight I am not looking forward to the morning....

Blogged by Amber.