A brilliant idea!

Okay, so we are having lunch in the "spectator village" which has a great selection of food concessions and a picnic table area at which to eat. Here comes this enormous eagle swooping overhead and it lands on a post nearby. Then it makes another pass over the tables and lands on a nearby rooftop.

After lunch we walked around and found a little corral where the eagles--two of them--were headquartered for the Open. They, and their handlers, were hired to keep the picnic area free from seagulls and other pesky birds who would take advantage of all the good food in the area. By swooping around from time to time, they sent the seagulls a pretty strong message: buzz off!

The Open: day one

Today was a practice round day at The Open Championship. The players get to practice the course in a stress-free, casual environment. It was also a good day to practice being a spectator as we learned the driving route, the parking situation, and got a good chance to visit all the shopping concessions, the food booths and see a good part of the town of Saint Andrews--all before the big crowds arrive for the actual tournament days. Another good thing is that we could take photos today, but not during the actual matches when we return on Saturday.

I brought along my opera glasses, which was a great idea because I was the only one in our group who could identify all the golfers coming up the fairways at some distance.

John Daly and his crazy pants: 

Ian Poulter: 

Jordan Speith!!!

We got to see many famous players up close and were in the right place at the right time when Jordan Spieth and his group came up to the 5th tee. We got within 10 feet of the tee box, just behind the ropes--it was quite thrilling to see some of the top players in the world.

When we return on Saturday, we will be ready for a great day of serious golf.

Plan B

The guys were supposed to play golf this morning, but it was raining pretty hard and the club pro pretty much told them they'd be silly to go out in such nasty weather. So, whereas Patty and I were going to go shopping and poking around by ourselves today, I was charged with coming up with a new plan that included all of us. No problem!

We started at the visitor center in Crieff where there is also a crystal outlet, a glassblower and garden shop. It was so cool and wet outside we were happy to stand and watch the glassblowers working in front of their kilns for awhile. One was making perfume bottles and the other was working on paperweights.

Then we headed for the village of Aberfeldy, which was about 45 minutes away on one of the most beautiful roads I've ever seen. The landscape was filled with heather and fern-covered mountains. Very sparse, dotted with white sheep with black faces laying next to rocks that could be their twins. Occasionally a clump of wild pink foxgloves sprung out of the ferns. Hardly a tree in site as the weather is prone to extremes of wind and temperatures. 

We got to the charming town of Aberfeldy and walked in and out of a few shops, one of which was selling fleece pullovers for 8£ so I went in and put one on under my rainjacket and asked the clerk to take the tag off. It was the smartest thing I did today as it allowed me to enjoy all of our activities without being frozen.

We had a nice lunch of soup and toasties at the Tay Café before heading out of town to find Edradour Distillery, an historic single malt maker near Pitlochry.

We took the tour, which was much better than the Famous Grouse in many ways. We loved our guide James, who was a big white-haired Scot with a booming baritone voice. He was certainly passionate about his distillery and the products they produce and it was reflected in his tour. 

The woodland setting was gorgeous and the crisp whitewashed buildings with bright red doors were perky and just plain cute. We tasted two of their single malts--one aged in oak casks in which sherry had formerly been made, and the other in a cask in which Super Tuscans are made. I preferred the first, thought the second was a bit too gimicky. We received a classically shaped "nosing glass" ( in the right of the pic) which is used to enhance the aromas of single malts. 

Back at the house, the cows were up near the driveway again. We've learned that they all have routines and spend certain times of the day doing the same things. It's amazing how close they actually come to the house. The pheasant is on the clock too--he arrives at his spot under the birdfeeder around 5 a.m.

Stop staring at me!!

Seriously, look at somebody else!

Crisps, not chips

My favorite aisle in any UK supermarket is the snack foods. Here, I always get a big laugh over the crisp flavors, which usually sound awful to me.

Case in point:

Only in Scotland!!

A wee dram

I am not a whisky drinker, but when in Scotland, I should partake in all the cultural experiences that are available to me. Today, we ended our day being tourists with a go through of the Glenturret Distillery, which is just 8 miles from our house.

The tour is called The Famous Grouse Experience as it's the most popular whisky in Scotland and part of a whisky consortium including the historic Glenturret, which began on its site in 1775.

We learned how water, barley and yeast are transformed, over many years, into the product that's coveted around the world. From the time the barley is dried and ground into grist to the day it goes into an oak cask is about two weeks. We saw how hand labor and old machinery are still in use today in all phases of the production. After the whisky achieves the desired alcohol content it goes into casks, which are are stored away for at least three years and as many as decades till the desired product is born.

The final phase of the tour was a tasting of two of their products. One by Glenturret and the other was Black Grouse, a smoky flavored version of whisky made by drying the barley over a peat fire. 

The first one burned going down, but had a delightful aroma. The smoky one tasted like drinking Scotch and smoking cigars at the same time.

When we got into the gift shop the clerk asked if we'd like to have a taste of another product called Naked Grouse, which is the famous grouse, but aged an additional six months in oak barrels in which Spanish sherry had been made. It was very smooth and quite pleasant. We took a bottle home to sip on a cool night.

Hits and misses

Today is one of two days this week that we do not have a big event scheduled, so this was a day to be tourists in our region of Perthshire.

We heard that the town of Falkirk had a couple of good attractions so we set the GPS for that directions and, though we had a few glitches in the directions, we made it to the Falkirk Wheel--an amazing engineering achievement that allows for boats to be lifted up from one lower canal to a higher one so that it's possible to complete an east to west boat crossing across Scotland. The wheel is liike a giant Ferris Wheel that carries two boats at a time--each suspended in a giant tub of water. Really amazing to watch from the bottom, and, though we didn't do it, you can take a boat into the wheel to see what it's like to try it out.

Next, we wanted to see The Kelpies, a pair of 90-foot tall steel sculptures of horse heads, but the GPS refused to cooperate and kept taking us past them on the highway instead of getting us off on the right exit. We gave up in frustration after a few wrong turns. Strike one.

We set off to see Stirling Castle, which is one of the most visited tourist attractions in all of Scotland. We got to the parking lot at the top of the hill only to find that they had to close the castle (in fact, all of the historic district of the town) to tourists as there was a major water main issue and no way to provide toilets, etc for the thousands of travelers there today. Strike two.

So, we headed over to the William Wallace national monument near the site of his great battle in 1297. Wallace was the warrior in the movie Braveheart, which I want to watch at some point. We arrived and paid our admission, but soon realized that every level of the museum was up about 100 narrow spiral steps in the tower--with people climbing up and down at the same time. Joe and Patty wouldn't go up at all, while Don and I made it to the first level. The exhibit there was good, but it was not worth it to us to make two more steep climbs to see the rest. Strike three.

We passed through a cute town called Bridge of Allan and found a nice, cozy pub called the Westermore Arms and had a very pleasant lunch there. 

Then, we decided it was time to try a wee dram of whisky, so we went to the ancient Glenturret Distillery for The Famous Grouse Experience. See next blog.